The sumptuary manifesto

The article tends to manifest the idea of peerless leader's argument that: "Freedom is not much concerned with tail fins or even with automobiles. Those who argue that it is identified with the greatest possible range of consumers' goods are only exceedingly confessing their simple-minded and mechanical view of man and his liberties."

First he claims that a sumptuary society is different from Puritanism, which stifle people's psychological and physical desires. Sumptuary society is about social responsibility. With the government intervention, we can live a happier and more altruistic life.

Second, the author claims that some consumption like education, environment protection is innocuous. We shouldn't adopt automobiles or factories, which will bring about negative externalities.

Besides, the author advocates parity price (a kind of price floor), tariff, price ceiling, domestic implicit taxes.

There is no doubt that this is an article full of ignorance and bullshit. The reason why we are about to analyze this article is to use what we have learnt in the class to rebuff the economic fallacy and understand that still there are a bunch of people hating free market notion and thus we have to get prepared to keep economic way of thinking off class and school.

The author claims in the article that a sumptuary society is about social justice and responsibility, which bring people serenity and altruism. This kind of manifesto reminds me of socialism and communism. But as I has written before, the Marxisms like to compare a utopia world non-exist with the free market in a imperfect world. The world is full of scarcity, and the reason of scarcity is that people's want is unlimited compared with the physical limit of any resources.

It's safe to say that no one should consume any resources at any amount as he wishes, but the free market actually does that constraint, with the tool of "price". Because of the law of diminishing utility and the constraint of budget, any buyer cannot consume infinite amount of capital and thus he has to think about what he values most. The combination of willingness and capacity to pay enables him to get maximum utility. But within a sumptuary society, you are not allowed to get things even if you are willing and capable to get just because you have "overconsumed". As a result, the producers and buyers both have to bear considerable deadweight loss. For me, this kind of prohibition is actually a burden of freedom to arrive at a voluntary agreement.

Besides, the author's simultaneous claim that education is innocuous is weird. My question is: since you have already inhibited the production and consumption, how can this lack of division of labor and incentive draw more good teachers? In addition, if we care so much about the pollution that we eliminated cars and railways, how can we take children to a better school far from hometown? The notion "innocuous" suggests that we will bear any cost to get good education, but since now you leader has prohibited the more efficient way of transportation, people are not discouraged to send children to out-of-hometown schools. Isn't it an irony?

Third, this quack advocates price ceiling and floor, tariff, unnecessary taxes. Is not he a scum? These kind of acts prevent people from arriving at a voluntary agreement that could have been reached within a free market, and if this intervention has nothing to do with self freedom and liberty, I wonder how the author defines freedom and liberty.