It was a French economist and political thinker who came up with a little anecdote he called the “Miracle of Paris.”
The gist of the morality tale was that everyone in Paris jumped out of bed in the morning, raced off to do whatever they chose, be it work or play or something in between — and by the end of the day, everyone in Paris had been fed.
No grand plan. No government intervention. No mandate to do unto others …
It was sort of an old Libertarian sermon. Many decades later, economist and Nobel Lauriat Milton Friedman elaborated a bit, with a controversial and much-discussed notion that corporations had a duty only to their shareholders; that is, to make a profit — whether or not the business enterprises were warm and fuzzy or volunteered to sustain the United Way.
Another version of this kind of stuff is the story of the Texas cowboy. He is motivated to wake up early, bruise his spine riding a horse all day, step through cow poop, and have little in the way of conversation beyond moooooo — not because he likes us, not because he really wants us to have a juicy steak dinner, but because he’ll get paid for babysitting the cows.
He’s happy. We’re happy. The cows? Not so happy.
This kind of wisdom sustains itself at Libertarian summer camp, or perhaps, a macroeconomic theory classroom, but in the current nanny-state environment, we are all one big, happy social service agency — more inclined to be victims than self-sufficient cowboys.
The tension between free-market blood-and-guts and bleeding-heart street theater is playing out quite nicely in Connecticut, with United Technologies’ Pratt & Whitney division caste as the villain (hiss, booooo); and organized labor and various politicians saddled up on white horses to save the labor-union victims from being tied down on the railroad tracks. Here comes the train.
To the mock surprise of everyone, and to the real surprise of no one at all, Pratt announced that it was primed for a round of plant-closing and job-slashing — prompting union anguish and political posturing.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell reached into her purse and, even though it was empty, she found millions of dollars to keep the Pratt boys happy, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
Law, regulation and contract language required Pratt to pretend to make every effort, turn every leaf, express all manner of regret — and then when all that nonsense was over, move all the jobs to places warm and sunny, with low taxes, weak unions, and legal cock fights.
Now, of course, Pratt is in court, where some poor judge can pretend to decide whether the jet-engine maker bargained in “good faith” before deciding that in a cost-competitive, international industrial environment, no one would be sufficiently demented to bang metal or turn screws in Connecticut.
In the background, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and state Treasurer Denise Nappier have formed a lovely duet, signing in two-part harmony about how Pratt and Satan are one in the same.
It’s easy enough to forget that Danbury doesn’t make hats any more and Waterbury doesn’t process brass and Manchester doesn’t play with silk and Hartford doesn’t crank out typewriters.
Instead of being civil and engaging the state’s leading industrial tenant (and soft-touch charity benefactor) in a reasoned conversation about how to prolong the miracle of UTC manufacturing anything here at all, we’ll pout.
DISCLOSURE: I’m a former director of editorial services at UTC. I wasn’t there because they were nice guys. I did it for the money.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
