Newsies

As my first post, I'd like to detail what exactly inspired the creation of this blog. A few nights ago I was hanging out in Fairfax, VA with a few friends when we decided to break out a classic movie of my youth: Newsies. For those not familiar with it, Newsies is a 1992 Disney musical starring Christian Bale (and also featuring Bill Pullman, Robert Duvall, and Max Casella, of Doogie Howser fame). The film chronicles the 1899 strike of New York City newsboys, launched in response to an increase in per-paper cost of one-tenth of a cent, hardly negligible for a poor working-class newsie in turn-of-the-century New York. The skilled juxtaposition of ragamuffin newsies with evil boss William Pulitzer's life of excessive opulence sweeps one away in a wave of populist sentiment against such robber barons who selfishly exploit their honest, hardworking employees. My first time watching it (now almost seven years ago), I was ready to form a union of my own. This time around I was not so naive.

The problem we see in American society is a misconception of what capitalism is. When talking heads say "privatization," when think tanks say "market solutions," when economists say "competition," the picture that comes to most people is akin to those displayed in movies such as Newsies. We think of Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller calling in Pinkertons to beat up strikers, we think of Jungle-like scenes of human and rat matter in our meat products, and we think of children losing their hands in deplorably unsafe sweatshops.

But this is not capitalism.

We make the mistake in America of believing that capitalism is anarchy, and that, at some point in American history, capitalism actually existed. But in reality, capitalism is built upon certain key institutions which, although abstract and often not dependent upon government, are imperative to the realization of the mutual benefits that the economic system promises. Among these are competition (non-collusion), free and (relatively) perfect information, and freedom of contract, along with many others.

When watching Newsies more closely, one finds hidden in the scenes indications that capitalism is conspicuously absent from the industrial revolution-era America. An early discussion between Pulitzer and his advisers shows one of the latter criticizing the price increase to the newsies, as "every newsie we've got will head straight to Hearst." Indeed, it is only due to the close relationship between Pulitzer and Hearst that the scheme can work (P: "...as gentlemen, as businessmen, we also see eye-to-eye on certain things. Now, if we do it, Hearst and I, if we do it, then the other papers will do it.") The New York Sun, which posts the newsies grievances on the front page, is dissuaded from continuing to do so at a late-night poker game with media magnates Pulitzer and Hearst (not to mention New York City's mayor). In this way, collusion has artificially raised the cost of newspapers above what it should be, and the suppression of information prevents the public from knowing about it an making an informed moral decision to boycott the newspapers (think of the American public's voluntary choice to consume dolphin-free tuna, once it knew that dolphins were being killed by traditional tuna-fishing methods).

The legacy of turn-of-the-century business practices (and its vastly inaccurate association with capitalism) is the American public's deep distrust of terms like "privatization" and "market-based solutions" mentioned above. My aim in this blog is to address various issues with a view toward obtaining a liberal result in which the good of both the individual and society is realized. To do this, we must dispel myths about the nature of the market as well as its exlusivity from morality. Further, we must annul the fictitious marriage between American history and capitalism, a system which we are yet to truly see in America, and which has created from capitalism a straw man to distract us liberals from the true obstacles to achieving our goals.