[sustran] Etymological evolutions

[Eric Britton]

I am interested in the evolution of English-language words,
particularly when that evolution is related to political agendas.

George Orwell said that he developed *1984* by simply extending
trends to their logical extreme. With regard to language, he wrote,

     The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of
     expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the
     devotees..., but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It
     was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted..., a heretical
     thought... should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought
     is dependent on words. This was done... chiefly by eliminating
     undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of
     unorthodox meanings....

Economics, particularly, suffers from an ambiguity of terms that other
sciences do not allow. Economists sometimes take pains to qualify
their use of these terms for greater precision, but politicians glom onto
the results while substituting misleading definitions. Some of the
substitutions are as follows.

* "Invest" for "acquire" or "control." Encouraging investment is seen
as a good thing, but this is in the sense of "putting something into," as
distinct from "acquiring" or "controlling." A clear example of this
usage is the parent who "invests in his child's education." In many
cases, investment and control or acquisition go hand-in-hand, as when
a person invests in his own business, etc. However, acquisition can
occur without investment, as when one purchases stock without
transferring money into the company purchased or property without
making improvements to that property.

* "Income" for "earnings." "Income" used to mean "that which comes
in," especially of its own accord -- what we now call "passive
income." When people in the 18th and 19th century debated the
merits of income tax, passive income is what they had in mind. Today
we speak of the "earnings of stock" and the "income of labor,"
completely reversing the original definitions and thereby clouding the
issue. Today's so-called income taxes are actually earnings taxes, and
are to a significant degree payroll taxes.

* "Wealth" for "obligations." When Adam Smith wrote *Wealth of
Nations*, he was careful to distinguish between actual wealth that
made the entire nation more prosperous and obligations between one
citizen and another that had no effect on wealth. Today we encourage
"savings" of money in banks at the expense of inventory in
warehouses. As some deposit money and others borrow it, we are
increasing obligations, not wealth.

* "Value" for "utility." Smith was also careful to distinguish "value in
exchange," or what we now call market value, from "value in use," or
utility. Popular arguments that "all value is subjective" stem from
confounding market value with utility.

* "Capital" for "assets." This is similar to the confounding of wealth
and obligations. Economics is predicated on three factors of
production, land, labor and capital. For capital to be intelligently
discussed as a factor of production, its definition must, at the very
least, distinguish it from other factors. Yet we frequently see all
assets, including land and debt obligations, described as capital.

* "Human capital" for "labor." This is just an extension of the
previously described ambiguity.

* "Labor" for "unions." As a factor of production, labor must include
all people whose input, whether physical or mental, contributes to the
productive process. However, both the supporters and detractors of
labor unions use the term "labor" to mean "unionized labor," or, at
least, "wage labor."

* "Spending" for "exchanging" or "rendering"

When a candle is spent, the candle no longer exists, but when money
is spent, it is merely in someone else's hands. While increasing the
circulation of money is considered to be good for the economy,
spending money, which means exactly the same thing, is treated as
bad for the economy. While wasteful government spending can
indeed be bad for the economy, the presumption that spending money
is a negative unto itself comes from this confounding of meanings.

* "Savings" for "loans." This is an offshoot of confounding money
with wealth. Putting money in a bank is not saving wealth, but is
making a loan to a borrower with the bank as an intermediary.

* "Rights" for "privileges." Rights in the sense of free speech,
universal suffrage, due process, etc., are fundamentally different from
privileges that are conferred, such as "the 'right' to operate a taxi, etc.
Terms like patent rights, broadcast rights, contractual rights, property
rights, etc., are given weight and sanctity by their sharing a term that
also applies to universal human rights.

* "Privatization" for "patronage." Privatization is one of the more
recent euphemisms. It rarely means government stepping out of the
picture or even giving up control. More often, it means government
hiring a company to provide a service instead of hiring individuals
directly. Tammany Hall, the most notorious patronage machine in
American history, was based almost entirely on contract patronage.
The switch to direct employment and civil service was one of the
great reforms of the progressive era.

* "Common" for "government" or "collective." Prior to Marx,
"common rights" were individual inalienable rights that each person
held as a human being and a member of a society that respected those
rights. Both the left and the right are quick to confound the two. (I
wrote an essay on this at:

http://geolib.com/sullivan.dan/commonrights.html

* "Free market" for "status quo." The left and the right both refer to
the status quo of business relationships as the free market -- one in
attacking it and the other in defending it. One libertarian wag even
argued that the emancipation of slaves was an interference in the free
market, which would have solved the slavery problem on its own. The
absurdity of a free market in slaves was lost on him, and less obvious
ways in which the status quo cannot be called a free market are lost on
many people from across the political spectrum.

* "Capitalist" for "landlord." An owner of a $9 million apartment
building on a $1 million dollar lot is referred to as a landlord, even
though his asset is 90% capital and only 10% land. Yet an oil
company is referred to as capitalist even if its assets are 90% land and
natural resources and only 10% capital.

* "Single owner" for "monopoly." The term "monopoly" used to refer
to any asset that was controlled by a subset of the population to the
detriment of the rest of the population. Thus, import tariffs gave
domestic producers the ability to charge a monopoly premium, etc.
Neoclassical economists deflected anti-monopoly sentiments by
simply redefining the term. However, the original term is still
understood in common speech, as when women complain that the
louder, more aggressive men tend to monopolize the conversation.

This evolution of terms has a variety of causes, I think. In some cases,
mere self-image concerns are sufficient to cause the substitution of a
more flattering term. Certainly a person would rather describe himself
as "an investor" than "an acquisitor." Other times it is common usage
spilling into usage as an economics term, as when an apartment owner
is referred to as a landlord. Sometimes it is ad-hominem analysis
substituting for process analysis. Is a capitalist someone who owns
capital or someone who believes in capitalism, and why is analyzing
that person a substitute for analyzing the process in the first place?
And, sometimes it is part of an intentional effort to deceive, as when
the neoclassical school of economics was founded by people who had
explicitly stated their interests in changing the debate from being pro
or anti monopoly to being pro or anti socialist.

In any case, I am looking to trace these etymological changes back to
their roots. Some words go back even farther, and are quite
interesting:

"Mail," "impost" and "tax" were close synonyms. (The tax collector
used to supplement his income by carrying letters and goods from one
taxpayer to another, which is how the tradition of government
employees carrying the mail began.) Those who could pay their taxes
in silver were paying "white mail." As poorer people who had no
money were taxed by portions of their goods being taken, it was
called "black mail."

The OED says that "real," as in "real property" or "real estate" comes
from the latin "res," and is unrelated to "royal." Yet the word arose
when real property was distinguished from the commons as "property
held by the Crown" (or held by a landlord under the auspices of the
Crown) at a time when "royal" was indeed spelled "real." It therefore
seems odd that the obvious connection to royal property is not the
recognized connection.

Similarly, the title to land originated as part of the royal title. For
example, the lands of Sussex went to the Earl of Sussex, and when the
king granted the one title, he automatically granted the other. My
understanding is that the official ceremony, wherein the king laid his
sword on the shoulders of the person being titled was called the
"deed," from which the term of title deed arises.

These etymological evolutions and etymologies have a great deal to
do with the fuzzy thinking that dominates economics and politics. If
anyone has other examples, I would like to add them to this list. If
anyone has ideas on how to further research the evolution of these
terms, I would also be interested in that.

Sincerely,
Dan Sullivan

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