Oh unconquerable cataracts,
Water piling over rocks and crags,
Rushing dash-smash and cast

High your vapors.
Ever do you empty yourself to fill up another.
Look how peaceful!
Look how tranquil!
The glassy pool below rests content
Your truest bedfellow.
You never hold back your happy gift,

Grip-clutch or clench
And you would cease,

Dry and die, and so would she.

And if in icy winter,
The one below, your love, should freeze,
and refuse your self-pouring
life giving streams,
Ever patient do you wait.
She melts to you,
She always melts to you.

Friday Bay pt 1.

Blow bash, ye untired winds,
And find me yet upon the lake.
Though these waters roll and shake,
I only sink to bathe my sins,
To learn my heart once more to swim,
My head to follow in its wake.
Oh Soul! Cut free your anchors,
Forsake all your ties
To risk upon the fearsom depths, out I fling,
Till like the Son of Man did once in Galilee
I may sleep and dream amidst a stormy sea.

Friday Bay pt 2.

Lash me down!
Lash me down here a bed!
Let the spray wash and salt this bread,
Typhoon rain whip and blow break
Upon my brow
Ye windy sirens coo and call –
Ye are but hens!
Yes, despair's a storm
A melancholy song,
A wave tide surge and pull,
“Come deeper and sink-swallow salty water,”
She coos and coos.
Bawk on carrion comfort!
I'll list not, and not be listed.
I'll not be counted a wreck and sink.
Bawk on!
But morning breaks on your eastern back.
I'll weather you yet,
Lashed here to Christ, my mast and bed.
Sleep my soul, sleep.

The D'Ambrosio's, for the most part, have never been an intensely science mathy left brainy organizy family. After the first three kids graduated with degrees in literature, philosophy, and then literature, it has been left up to Cristina and Nick to do something piratical with their lives. Everyone thinks Nick will do great things.
(he actually got an A in algebra).

 It seems that out of all the siblings, I am the absolute worst at the practicals. I'd like to tell you a story to illustrate my own inability, and by doing so, entertain you greatly.

My sophomore year at Ave, I promised my mother I would get A in biology. She laughed. It was not exactly a vote of confidence. Who could blame her though? Class was Monday Wednesday Friday at 8:15 in the morning. I still don't get up that early. Let alone for lecture hall powerpoints on the inner workings of ATP. But I was not dismayed. Professor Davis wasn't exactly consistent with his role calls. On the first day of class, he told us that his tests would be similar to the tests on the study disk that came with our $200 biology text book. I decided studying that test instead of going to class would be a far more efficacious method of inquiry. After taking the first test and scoring far higher than any of my class going classmates, I stopped going to class entirely. I was made. This was going to be such a great semester. But alas, there was one biology period I couldn't get away with missing, or faking. Lab.

Yes, lab was my greatest fear, my greatest nemesis,  the one class that I couldn't talk, study, or charm my way around. Applied science. The place where exact measurements, test tubes, bunson burners, dead organs, putrid orders, and chemical fires abound. Here, there was no hiding my absolute inability. After failing to measure 54 ounces with my pipette on the first day of lab, I was forsaken by my classmates. I was abandoned, cast aside, tossed to the wolves-the wolves being my good friend and fellow lab failure, Daniel Schnaider.

Now, all the labs called for groups of three. The way it broke down, for each lab project, there would be 5 groups of three and one group of two. Guess who was the group of two every time? The two people who seemed to be constantly breaking flasks, setting desks on fire, and in general causing great terror in the classroom.I still have many battle scars from that time, and every time I see a test tube I grab the nearest inoculating loop and go on a postal rampage, but outside of the PTSD induced nightmares, my psychiatrist tells me I'm recovering well.

One war story, however, stands out among the rest. One fateful Thursday, Schneider and I looked at each other awkwardly as all the other lab members found their groups. General Davis stood before the group to give us today's battle briefing. Today, we would be cutting up spinach leaves with a hole puncher, putting them in a flask with 4 ounces of water, sucking the air from them (so they would sink to the bottom), and recording how long it took for the leaves to re-oxigenate (or whatever) and rise back to the surface. It's among the greatest mysteries of the universe. We were privileged to get to solve such an enigma. “Before you begin, my students,” he said, “when you go to the vacuum to suck the air out of the flasks, make sure you are wearing your eye protection. I've never see it happen in all my 20 years of teaching, but flasks have been recorded to shatter when the vacuum is activated.”

So Daniel and I rush to the fight, punching holes in our five spinach leaves like there is no tomorrow. We aren't the first to get all 50 spinach circles, but we aren't the last. Upon our completion, Shnaider gleefully rushed to the vacuum, but alas, like so many young lads, he rushed headlong to his demise. Not fast enough, in slow motion, I reached out for his shoulder, yelling “Shnaider, you forgot your eye protection!” (I've always been a bit too concerned with safety, it's a bit of a character flaw).

I was too late.

He connected the flask to the vacuum and flipped that fateful switch. He was only 20 years old. 

The flask exploded.

When I say exploded, I mean exploded. The class was shocked. It was all confusion for what seamed like an eternity. A girl screamed, men ducked under desks, and I fell over onto the floor laughing so hard that I almost peed my pants.

The general was less than enthused. “What the hell did you do Schneider?” Schneider still stood there in shock, holding the tip of the flask, his white lab coat covered in little spinach circles. “And you, D'Ambrosio, wipe that silly grin off your face. You have 50 more spinach circles to cut.” I stopped laughing immediately. “DAMNIT SCHNEIDER!” I yelled. “It took us an HOUR to cut that many!”

He was unapologetic. Said something about how he almost died or some crap. I wasn't moved. We spent the next hour trying to cut new holes out of our already torn up leaves. By the time we finished, most of the other groups had already finished the experiment and gone off to run amok. Schnaider was just about to get up to take the flask over to the vaccum, when I heroically volunteered to take his place and risk my well being at ground zero. “I better take this one, Schnaider,” I said, “I don't want to be here cutting holes out of spinach for the rest of the day.” I grabbed the flask and swaggered over to the vacuum. I attached its rubber mouth to the vaccum, and just as I was about to flip the switch, I thought the following thought: “Dr. Davis hasn't seen this ever happen in all 20 years of his teaching? What are the chances it would happen twice in one day?”

Yeah. Who wants to guess what happened next?

It was Schneider's turn to laugh. I wasn't wearing eye protection ether. The general was PISSED. This was the 8^th flask we'd broken up to this point. He told us that we were single highhandedly funding Flasks Inc, and that he would stand for no more tom foolery. If only he knew the truth- that Schneider and I simply were the worst two students that he had ever had in 20 years of teaching. There was no mischeif happening here, no malicious intent. We just were really, really bad at biology. And now, our five spinach leaves were history.

We had no more leaves, and by this time, the other groups were well on their way to curing cancer. They had thrown their spinach leaves away eons ago. But I was not to be kept down! Oh no! Not this man. I once saw a motivational poster that said “when the going gets tough, the tough get going,” and I was going! I refused to surrender this lab to a few green smears that once were spinach! Cue inner dialogue. “It probably doesn't matter what kind of leaves we cut up,” I thought to myself, “This is a photosynthesis lab, after all.”I nodded to myself in agreement, and then casually walked over to the windowsill, upon which stood several different species of flower. I had never seen any of them before. I stole a few leaves from one plant (which seemed overy leafy), and brought them over to Schnaider. He was ever the observant bastard, and upon seeing them, he spouted “Dr. Davis, aren't these leaves from your plant over there?!” There has never been another moment in my life where I have wanted to kill a man so much.

Dr Davis lost his cool. He yelled at me, told me that we were the worst students he'd ever had- which apparently is no exaggeration- and filled me in on the details. Apparently the plant I had stolen the leaves from was an endangered species that grows only on the Island of Simoa. Taking leaves from it at its infant stage could be deadly. This was the only specimen of its kind in America, and I had just delivered its death sentence. He dismissed us early that day. We never did get to solve that great mystery, about which we all wonder desperately. 

Let's be real. It's every child's first question, isn't it?

        Hillare Belloc is basically saying that in a capitalist society, without state intervention, class disparity cannot be solved. The wealthy will hold on to the means of production, and the poor will remain “economically impotent.” GK Chesterton and many other Catholic thinkers have argued this and advocated for the means of production to be distributed more evenly around the economy. Belloc, Chesterton, and all others who think this way are incorrect in their assumption that the rich will always hold capital tight. Yes, wealthy people will seek to do this at times. However, this sort of class warfare sort of argument only works if the means of production are limited. Underlying Belloc's argument is a flawed concept of wealth that smacks of Mercantilism. Capital is as limited as there are problems in the world to be solved – that is to say wealth is unlimited. As long as people want a better life style and have desires for comforts, new experiences, and more effective methods of producing, there will always be more money to be made.
The only real way to limit the hands that wealth belongs to is by state intervention. In the free market, for instance, if a bank makes mal-investments and goes bottom up, it's assets are sold at low prices, and competitors can enter the market more easily. Those that don't have the buying power they would normally need to enter into the competition, now are more able to. However, when there is a state in place that has the power to intervene, those banks/companies that failed to utilize their resources effectively go to that state begging and pleading saying “we are too big to fail!” And then the state uses the money it stole from us via taxation to buoy up these firms. In the free market, no such safety mechanism for the rich would exist. A rich man can fail just as easily and just as spectacularly as a poor man. Only the state provides a method for limiting the distribution of resources. This is what happened in 2008, when republicans and democrats both voted to bail out the banks and car companies. All of those resources should have been sold off to new competing firms (good for poor people) for a fraction of the price.
        The rich, however, are not the only ones who use the state to discourage innovation and limit wealth. The poor of America have learned that they can use the state to punish the success of some by taxing the rich more and by suing those with resources. By definition the state does not support itself. It only relies on what it takes from others. Anyone, then, can lobby the state to steal from one group and give to another. That is what a state does. So when literally everything is an opportunity to sue, the people of a nation live in absolute fear of one another. We get used to it here, but just think of how much the fear of a lawsuit has on American life. The fact that a McDonalds as to put “careful, cup may be hot,” on their cups is a prime example of the poor doing the opposite of what Belloc argues will happen in a free market. The gun of the state is the weapon by which man steals his brother's assets. As Murrey Rothbard puts it, when one uses the state to steal from producers, that act subtracts from production instead of adding to it. “The "political means" siphons production off to a parasitic and destructive individual or group; and this siphoning not only subtracts from the number producing, but also lowers the producer's incentive to produce beyond his own subsistence. In the long run, the robber destroys his own subsistence by dwindling or eliminating the source of his own supply. But not only that; even in the short run, the predator is acting contrary to his own true nature as a man.” As I have already shown in the above paragraph, the free market is perfectly capable of regulating itself. Bad ethics is bad business and is never actually sustainable. Without help from the state, such businessmen as those who caused this past recession always fail, and their resources are divided amongst the less affluent, competitive man. What then does the state do? Only turn man against himself by providing an easy means of piracy.
         So how does the standard of living rise, then, if not by the force of a gun? It rises when Dave the Peasant decides that he is going to save his resources and pool them together, to say, buy a plow and a pair of oxen. When he does this, he no longer needs to dig with a hoe. He gets more work done with the plow than he ever could have with a hoe. Dave's standard of living has just been raised. He now produces way more food, and maybe another man in the community, lets call him Jeff, no longer needs to farm in order for every one to get fed. Jeff figures that the other farmers need plows and that he is just the man to build them. He now builds plows, which makes plows easier to get. Now other farmers can afford them.         You see, a lot more work can get done by a man with a forklift than a man with a horse cart. Of course you had to work 13+ hours a day back in the industrial revolution, everything was still being done by hand! It wasn't government restrictions that changed the situation, it was the desires of generations of men to provide a better life for their families. It takes time for the standard of living in a community to rise up, but there are no shortcuts. It is supreme ingratitude to steal the thanks from these men women and children, from whom we've inherited the standard of living which we now enjoy, and give it to self important politicians. Economic calculation is always open for the poor man. we ought not penalize him for succeeding. Every state law and regulatory burden is an obstacle to the poor man's emancipation. No, Belloc, and the Church, misunderstands economics when they claim that resources will always be distributed only to the rich in a free market system.

        Moreover, it is not possible to force employers to pay employees higher wages by government inflation. Such measures are unsustainable. If you owned a factory in 1920 and the state came and said to you, you must provide your employees an air conditioned working environment, you would have shut down. Well, now this is something that we all take for granted. If the government stopped telling companies to air condition their work places, would all companies immediately stop air conditioning their buildings to save money? No, of course not. Why? Because they are competing for employees. If one company has air conditioning, and another does not, which job is more preferable? A company that does not have an air conditioned work place must pay employees more in order to work there. A man might decide that he wants higher wages more than he wants air conditioning, and that is his business. Far be it from us to tell that man that he must take lower wages and force his employer to air condition.
       No, free association and free exchange of resources is the answer to poverty, not the cause of it. 

         This post is intended as a reply to a friend and I concerning the Church's Social teaching, specifically as stated in the encyclical Caritas en Veritate. I will post three more replies later to counter all four critiques of the free market as raised during our previous dialogue. 

Again, I agree wholeheartedly with the church that the individual needs to be protected from exploitation and that the poor ought to be taken care of. I just disagree as to how practically this ought to happen.

Pope Benedict writes:

         “It is in the interests of the market to promote emancipation, but in order to do so effectively, it cannot rely only on itself, because it is not able to produce by itself something that lies outside its competence. It must draw its moral energies from other subjects that are capable of generating them.” Chapter III. Caritas en Veritate.
         This is one of those statements which seems to say that the the market cannot regulate itself because such regulation “lies outside its competence.” I don't think this is an easy stance to take when you look at how human beings function on a daily basis. I believe the market is able to rely on itself for regulation. It is able to do so because it is not an it. That is to say the free market is comprised of people who, as it happens, are brilliant problem solvers.

         So as to your statement about the definition of capitalism, You’re correct. Laissez Faire Capitalism is a market free of any rules imposed by elected officials. It is not, however, free of any rules. As you commented, “You can’t have a free market unless you have things such as contract enforcement, prosecution of fraud, fair weights and measures, a medium of exchange, secure property you can use as an asset to borrow against, or an independent judiciary,” you are absolutely right.” However, when you say “These are things the market cannot produce by itself,” I believe human action proves the opposite. The free market is perfectly capable of providing for these needs on its own, and the Austrian school of economics shows how these things arise in a depth of detail that would put a crackhead to sleep of boredom.

         The rules that govern a free market are not forced from without, but instead arise from people, who encountering an obstacle, will find a way over, around, under, or through it. To be sure, not having a way to enforce contract is a problem. Problem solving also happens to be very economically lucrative. I think here, it is important to instead of thinking about an economy as a whole, think about human action on a more individual level. 

         So let’s say it’s Europe in the renaissance. You are a Florentine cloth merchant, and someone in Munich wants to buy a very large order of cloth. Knowing that you aren’t protected by any rule of law, as a border is crossed, what do you do? You might ask the other merchants around for references. Has anyone else heard of this guy? Is he reputable? Does he have any record of previous business transactions? Finding out that this man has no record, you might have a limit for how much cloth you are willing to sell him. If he is reputable, then you wouldn’t be afraid of trading with him. This is the market providing governance from within, and it is actually how commerce worked during much of the renaissance. Merchants kept a record between them of who had traded with whom. If someone was not on the list, you would not be unable to trade with them, but you might, for instance, require payment in advance, or a deposit of some sort, or you might limit the amount you are willing to trade until he has gain more repute. Because people do want to engage in commerce, they naturally and organically find ways of managing risk. Look at the internet, for instance. For the most part, no country has been governing internet commerce. If you get taken by someone on Ebay, it’s pretty hard to track them down and prosecute them. But when you look at their reputation, for instance, you can see if people have been unhappy with the service provided to them or if they were pleased. So you give someone reputable your credit card information, trusting that this person would rather not ruin their reputation by stealing from you. This protection naturally rises from within.
         Ebay itself has a natural desire to keep business, so it works to ensure that sellers cannot simply give themselves reputation points. Ebay knows that if people don’t trust that system, then they won’t shop there. So Ebay has entire departments constantly working on trying to safeguard the public from conmen. They are always figuring it out. Why? Because they have financial incentive to do so. The state, on the other hand, has no monetary intensive to be excellent. There are no alternative states from which you may chose your allegiance. The state has no economic incentive to be effective as it has no competition. It simply says, “if you do not think we did a good job, too bad.” So the state does not need to be effective to remain in power. Moreover, the state can only make laws, which are cumbersome, bludgeoning things that cannot keep up with the speed at which the markets change. For instance, with the example of the merchants, a state might say, depending on the political mood of the time: “You must trade with anyone who wants you to.” In which case, trade would shut down completely. Or “You cannot trade with anyone unless you have a license.” Why shouldn't I be able to trade with an unlicensed person if I want to? I'm the one assuming the risk here! Such a policy would put barriers on trade as opposed to encouraging it. The free market's solutions to this issue, by which I mean, people's own problem solving prowess, does, in fact, produce organic safeguards. Not only does regulation arise from within the market, but these regulations are far more effective protections for the individual than state laws.