Don't Throw the Bath Water out with the Baby

In an era in which everyone is trying to make ends meet, why not take your chances on some DeCoster eggs? With medical and dental insurance costs on the rise, and Republicans threatening to make Swiss cheese out of the Obama health care plan, it makes sense to cut corners. Warehousing and discounting have enabled the rise of Walmart and shopping clubs like BJ’s, Costco and Sam’s. But as the Times pointed out recently, there are many people who can’t even afford to stockpile. This has accounted for the rise of the dollar store, where it’s possible to purchase very small amounts of merchandise at bargain prices (“Stores Scramble to Accommodate Budget Shoppers,” NYT, 9/21/10). Now, a new market is opening for seconds—tarnished and even diseased goods. Say there’s a little salmonella in my eggs, and say they have even caused deaths to elderly patients, as some did at Bird S. Coler Hospital on Roosevelt Island (“An Iowa Egg Farmer and a History of Salmonella,” NYT, 9/21/10)—what is the point of throwing the baby out with the bathwater? In fact, sometimes it makes sense to throw out the baby and save the bathwater. Here you have millions, even billions of eggs that are going down the tubes, and yet you have needy families and hungry kids. One omelet looks as good as the next, and an argument can be made that a few salmonella infected eggs mixed in with some trichinosis infected bacon can add up to a satisfying Betty Crocker style breakfast. What better way to spur cash squeezed American families on their way to prosperity? Why should it be the burden of the eggs to make sure they get there?

War of the Worlds

Lingua Franca and Social Text, Hagler and Hearns, Nixon and Kennedy, Plato and Aristotole, Coleridge and Wordsworth, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, Heraclitus and Zeno, light and dark, hot and cold—marriage in general. Whereas one commentator on the institution once said seemingly oppositional partners displace onto each other desirable attributes, such as reserve or gregariousness, it’s unfortunate that so many people grow to hate the differences they once loved, admired, and envied.

Hegel’s philosophy of history was based on the idea of opposition. Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis were the terms he used. In modern terms, Walmart and Amazon go to war and give birth to a new discount giant. What will be the synthesis of these two oppositional elements—Walzon? In the Enlightenment, the pessimism about human nature posited by Hobbes and the clearly idealistic vision of man portrayed by Locke coalesce in the framing of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights—checks and balances, the inalienable rights of the individual in the face of the democratic rule of the majority, all are products of two opposing views of human nature.

   

In the 20th century, communism lost out to capitalism, but historical progression created the curiosities of elites within the Politburo and the decline of class in the mercantile structure. But what are the new warring forces of our present age? Fundamentalism (in both its religious and political incarnations) versus globalism, literal versus abstract, uni- versus cyber-verse, e-mail versus snail mail (no contest). Then there are the oppositions that are still-born, like pre-op transsexuals who maintain both female and male gonads without fusing into a new creature.

Naturally those who analyze the market seek to discover the answer to such oppositions on a daily basis, considering that profits lie in the secrets of mergers and acquisitions. Will Citicorp continue as an unruly giant, or will it be forced to sell some of its divisions? Google has already triumphed over Yahoo, but will an emboldened adversary come to the fore, developing a new service called Houyhnhnm? Big- and small-world theories, special and general, relativity, quantum, and string—the war of the worlds continues.