Capitalism and Railroads

I am thinking that capitalism and railroads go hand in hand. Capitalism builds them.

Some will argue not so, pointing to the state owned railways throughout Europe and Asia. For instance, they will continue, look at China where it has been the state that's been responsible for building and running its railway network, which is the envy of the world. Capitalism didn't build that. Furthermore, look at the railway system the Japanese state built before that, starting the high-speed passenger train revolution that is occurring around the world.

True, true I'll say. But, I'll add, these state systems were built with an eye on facilitating capitalism. And in the long it is capitalism that will sustain them. Moreover, capitalism has been behind the scenes in building them. The spirit of capitalism and its free markets is what made possible the ingenuity and production that made railways possible. For instance, the first railway wasn't built by the state. It was conceived and built by a collection of entrepreneurs. It was later, in many cases, that the state took them over in order to make the railway networks more cohesive and less chaotic. The state also got involved because often railway companies overbuilt and went bankrupt, creating unruly situations.

It is in America where capitalism and railroading were really joined at the hip. It was capital and the free market system that built the railroads that connected America. But even there, some will argue, the transcontinental railroad couldn't have been built without government help. The government facilitated the building of the railroad. It assembled the land the railroads build on. Nevertheless, it was the railroad companies in the first place that gathered the resources and knowhow to build and manage them.

The capital and financing to built the high-speed railway network in authoritarian China came from the exploitation of capitalism, from China selling manufactured goods to the rest of the world and profiting from it. With the surplus capital China made from exploiting capitalism it was able to afford a fantastic high-speed railway system. And in order to sustain and maintain it China will have to continue to expand on capitalistism, an economic system it once reviled.

"Bullshit"

I am writing this in reaction to a caption I read the other day, “The Ever Expanding Kingdom Of Bull”, bull meaning bullshit. 

There are all kinds of bullshit. Most of it is harmless but useful. Most so-called bullshitting is done innocently, just to convey ideas, albeit exaggerated. But it is done unintentionally, without malice. Some declarations may seem like bullshit because they sound over the top, like the embellishments made about the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in the press, like the whole world is interested in them, like we are all hanging on their every move. But for the most part it is just entertaining. For others, though, it is an affront to their intelligence, hence the reason why it's viewed as bullshit.

Speaking of embellishments, I am just reading a novel and the writer has used many embellishments to describe things, like the appearance of a room or a feeling. Some might consider such gilding as bullshit. But without such gilding a text can be dry and boring. Writers embellish and readers soak it up. This kind of bullshit keeps things interesting. 

In His book "On Bullshit" Harry Frankfurt discusses several kinds of bullshit. One involves a great philosopher. He talks about Wittgenstein's reaction to a friend, Fania Pascal, who characterized herself as feeling 'like a dog that was run over by a car' after she had an operation. Wittgenstein took exception to that statement, thinking it was nonsense, a kind of bullshit, because she couldn't have known how a dog feels like after being run over by a car. It sounds as though Wittgenstein overreacted to her innocent, exaggerated statement. It was just a metaphorical statement of conveyance, to give an idea of how bad a feeling can be. Perhaps, though, Wittgenstein took exception to the use of a dog in such a disparaging manor.

Pascal had made a metaphoric statement to describe how she felt after her operation — sick as a dog. For her there probably was no other way of conveying the idea. (Instead she could have said she felt like a pipe had been rammed down her but Wittgenstein would have found something wrong with that too.) Perhaps all metaphoric references should be view as bullshit, a la  Wittgenstein, because they don't exactly and perfectly describe what is being meant. If that is the case, almost everything we say is bullshit because everything is a metaphor; nothing is exactly what it is. So if that is the case, Shakespeare's writings should be consider bullshit, writ large, because they are full of metaphorical ideas.

Essential Wittgenstein was a nit picker, always examining the meaning and truth of things. So it’s not surprising that he pounced on Pascal and her idea of being sick as a dog because to him it was nonsense, bull, because she had never been a dog. But dogs and humans have similarities. They both belong to the animal kingdom and have similar innards. Ironically, humans relating to animals in this way has helped instill in us an empathy towards them, that they also have feelings and should also be treated humanely. And that's no bull.

Personally I think Wittgenstein’s ideas are bull, his ideas about language and meaning. Mainly, though, that’s because I am not interested in his ideas. I find them difficult to understand. But that's only my opinion. Others don’t think so. Thus, the idea of what constitutes bullshit is for the most part, arbitrary. One person's bullshit might be other person's treasure, so to speak.

Philosophy and its abstractions are often consider bullshit, especially by lay people. But, then, there are philosophers who disagree with other philosophers and call their works and ideas bullshit. So the expression of bullshit doesn’t necessarily mean it is but instead is just a term of disagreement.

I was just recalling a time when I said bullshit to an employ of mine. He told me what I though was a ‘tall story’. I call it a tall story because it seemed like Pinocchio’s nose on stilts. It didn’t make sense for his age of 19. If it was all true, what he told me, about all his experiences, he would have been much much older than he was. I told him that here was only one person I met that bullshitted more than he did and that was his father. Perhaps they did so to draw attention to themselves or had to embellish their lives because they felt worthless or insecure.