[PEN-L:2709] Olasky or Malthus

[Lisa Rogers <eqwq.lrogers@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Re: Review of Olasky's _The Tragedy of American Compassion_

Thanks to Meeropol for posting that review.  This Olasky thing sounds
like a mate to George Gilder.

Presented as "economics", Gilder prescribes religion and
anti-rationalism as ways to stimulate and preserve capitalism.  Also,
more economically dependent women with more children will make men
work harder to try to make more money.  Yes, old-fashioned 'family
values' stimulate entrepeneurship!  Yech.

But, back to Olasky.  Part of his history, as I glean from the
review, sounds pretty accurate - for England around the 1830's !!

I just read some Malthus, and the parallels are _striking_.

There is some truth to the idea that paupers used to rely on family
and church charity.  Of course, it was not livable, and it wasn't
very reliable, I mean 'rely' as in they had no other options.  To the
extent that this is historically correct, it is equally unacceptable
as a prescription for social policy today.

But I'm sure that many of you already know about the infamous Poor
Laws.  Illegalized and severely punished camping out/ squatting,
distinguished 'deserving' poor from the non-deserving, imprisoned
paupers in abusive and exploitative 'work houses' [work-fare], etc.

Malthus was an Anglican clergyman himself, who presented his
"biology" and "economics" as "scientific", when it was all the
baldest apology for defending the interests of the landed
aristocracy.  He was not a friend to the capitalists, except that
both of those segments benefited by keeping the working class as poor
and powerless as possible.

All this came about [Malthus' first publication, on his population
theory, was 1798] in the context of the aftermath of the French
revolution.  There was a great deal of labor unrest in England, and
the ruling classes were panicky about the possibility of revolution.

They all adored Malthus for his contributions to the false
'justification' of social policies, for his 'scientific' support and
contribution to the already existing ideology.

Malthus prescribed exactly the same fixes that Olasky seems to favor.

Funny thing is, Malthus was accused of plagiarism, because Robert
Wallace published something similar in 1761.  I wonder if Olasky read
Malthus before writing his own, uh, re-write...