A Parable
Posted by
tgirsch
Scenario #1: Last month, I got a letter from the cable company, announcing that my rates were going up by $5 a month. I’m not at all happy about this, but I’m not going to cancel my cable because I can’t get satellite where I live, or because I’m just too lazy to switch, or whatever other reason you can think of for not canceling cable, so I’m just going to have to suck up and deal with the new pricing.
Scenario #2: I never even read the notice announcing the rate change, and only found out when this month’s bill came and was $5 higher.
Starting from either scenario, pick up here:
Seeing that I’m upset, my wife asks, “What’s wrong, honey?” And I respond, “I’ve just reached an agreement with the cable company that we will pay $5 more per month.”
Now, you might think that this is a mind bogglingly stupid way for me to describe what just happened. But apparently, lots of self-described “free market” types disagree. That’s not only a perfectly fair way to describe what happened, apparently, but just how people talk. So we should find nothing the least bit awkward, inaccurate, or unusual about my hypothetical response to my wife.
Cable is a classic example of an industry where free market solutions are less than optimal (cost of redundant distributed systems). The result is typically a regulated monopoly, although in some areas there are now multiple vendors to choose from and thus competition sets the price. Even then, since the marginal cost to deliver product to an incremental viewer is zero (ignoring rental fees for converter boxes), there can be substantial price volatility. That and the fact that the major operating cost for a cable company is content, which they have little control over.
Comment 3/22/2008
You can still choose not to pay and cancel service. By not doing that, you’ve agreed.
Comment 3/22/2008
Ted:
I’m pretty sure you missed the point. The sole point of the hypothetical is to illustrate what one would or would not typically describe as “reaching an agreement.”
Uncle:
So, you see absolutely no difference whatsoever between “agreeing” and “reaching an agreement?” Shit, by that standard, every time I walk past someone on the street, that person and I “reach an agreement” not to kill each other. And by the way, thanks for reaching an agreement with me to send me $1.
Comment 3/22/2008
Zeno’s Paradox still buggin’ ya, tgirsch? How do you “agree” without having “reached an agreement?”
If you take the deal, you and the other party have reached an agreement; if you ring up cablevison an’ say, “Oh hells no, come rip this wire out asap!” you’ve reached one, too, in which you don’t pay them and they agree in return to not shove TV signals down a wire into your home.
You are straining at semantic gnats. There is no coercion; nobody is making you take cable. Better you should read anyway. Might wanna swap that gas-guzzler for a bicycle or something fuel-efficient on two wheels, too. I’m just sayin’.
Comment 3/22/2008
I didn’t miss your point, well maybe I did - I still don’t know what your point is. You signed up for a service and the terms of that service include the possibility of price changes in the future.
I was just commenting on the cable industry in general. It is not a well-functioning free market industry.
Comment 3/22/2008
Roberta X:
I’m not the only one swatting at semantic gnats here.
Apparently, I’m all alone in the world in believing that the phrase “reached an agreement” has a strong implication of iterative process associated with it. If party A proposes something, and party B accepts, I’d say they “agreed,” I wouldn’t say they “reached an agreement” or “came to an agreement.” But when two parties who initially did not agree later got to a point where they did agree, then and only then would I say they “reached an agreement.” Hence my original comment, way the hell back when, on Uncle’s site, about a “negotiation,” which everyone and their brother (uncle?) just plum didn’t get.
Why did I even bring it up in the first place? Because when I read Uncle’s original post, based on what he wrote, I was expecting something a lot more substantial than “someone made a retail purchase and later complained about the price they paid.” In my mind (and, apparently, only in my mind), “two parties reach an agreement on a price in exchange for goods and services” is significantly overstating what actually happened in the underlying case. (As was the allegation of “communism,” but that’s another matter.)
More specific examples of what I mean: John Q. Customer agreed to pay ACME Gas, Inc. $4 for a gallon of gas. The UAW and GM reached an agreement that avoided a strike. The latter implies a substantially more involved process than the former, in my estimation. Prior to yesterday, I would have suggested that this understanding of “reached an agreement” was wholly consistent with the commonly understood colloquial meaning of that phrase, and that the people who disagreed with me on that count were the ones “swatting at semantic gnats.” Obviously, I was woefully mistaken, at least in blog-land.
By the way, Ted, Uncle, Tam, and Roberta all agreed to pay me $1, per the terms of use.
Comment 3/22/2008
I’d just ‘agree’ to call you the greatest blogger in the world, although you seem to consider that a significantly better compliment than I do if you consider it worth more than a dollar.
Course, half the web browsers I run don’t even render title tags.
Come on, tgirsch. Law of the excluded middle — either P or not-P must be true (on scales larger than the atomic). Either you reached an agreement or you didn’t. You really want to claim that you didn’t reach an agreement because you didn’t spend hours negotiating?
As an aside, Ted, the point of the free market is neither an ‘optimal’ result, nor an ‘efficient’ one, especially given that there’s absolutely no universal definition of what is optimal for a given scenario. Having doubled infrastructure is more expensive than only having the basic necessary stuff with a better economy of scale, but that doesn’t make it suboptimal if you consider additional redundancy useful.
The point isn’t money-optimal results alone, although ‘free market’ systems tend to do pretty well (although I doubt even their strongest advocates call them perfectly money-optimal) on those attributes. If that were the only goal, a giant, government-controlled, centrally planned system could work better, albeit I’ve yet to see many well-run ones. You wouldn’t get most other nice attributes like the direct punishments for poor choices or the strong drive to innovate, though (the latter was specifically noticed by Marx).
Speaking as someone who was trained to deal with the concepts and mechanics used to broadcast television, at least in a Cisco environment, I think you’re understating the costs per user. Having to run fiber deeper into a neighborhood and either dedicating more hardware to a site (or, more commonly today, having to maintain more complicated WDM throughout your backbone systems) can add some pretty non-trivial prices. Content prices almost certainly weigh more heavily on the minds of the money-watchers, but they’re not the only prices even after you’ve set up the initial wiring.
Comment 3/22/2008
Either you reached an agreement or you didn’t.
Again, before yesterday, I would have argued that this was true only if one went with a hyper-technical definition of “reached an agreement” that absolutely nobody uses in colloquial speech.
And since you bring it up, and since you’ve ruled out most of the explanations I’ve heard, what exactly is the point of the free market?
Comment 3/22/2008
Gatt, historically, cable companies (and their close cousin telcos) have been treated as regulated utilities. That is clear evidence they do not behave well in a free market environment. Which was my point. They are not “typical” free market enterprises.
Also, I am sure you understand the difference between operating costs and capital costs. Investments in a distribution system would be categorized as capital costs, yes? My comment concerned operating costs.
Comment 3/22/2008
I’m not particularly good with colloquial speech. Does it tend to ignore the law of the excluded middle?
Least bad option.
The problem with improperly run controlled markets, such as were and are common under a lot of communist and socialist governments, are pretty well known at this point. Mass murder, mass starvation, corruption, lack of technological innovation, treating average folk like prisoners and criminals like animals, lotsa fun stuff. Controlled markets tend to be run by folk I wouldn’t trust with a lemonade stand, which doesn’t help things. You can even plot these issues in line with the level of government control of production. It’s only correlation and has a few outliers like Sweden, but a hundred million dead people or two worth of correlation alone is a bit worrying.
That alone really should be a good reason to go with the free market as the least bad option; even if more controlled systems can be successful, the batting average just doesn’t make me want to be with ya’.
But you could imagine a controlled market that wasn’t corrupt and was fairly quick to respond to changes. I do network administration IRL. I’ll try to avoid getting too far into the details, but the long and short of it is that network administration is socialist — we’ve got a limited supply (bandwidth, drive space, licenses) and one or two people actually controlling what goes where, with the actual packets having very little choice. There’s a set cost for every decision — a slightly racist one, as I tend to favor 25s, 5060s, and the RTPs they call while being bigoted against 80s and refusing to even let 21s mill around — that helps make sure everything takes the most efficient choices.
It works, relatively well if I say so myself. That said, I still do a hell of a lot of work to get it that way, some of which isn’t fully above-the-water-level, and the very best I can do doesn’t distinguish between the month’s tax receipt and a well-written bit of spam detailing how to improve your assets when it comes to dropping a packet from a class-based WFQ buffer — the system cares only about what I tell it to. There also added overhead, specifically me, but also the ‘cost’ of routing updates and some of the equipment itself. Here’s a ‘good’ unfree market, and it’s still never going to really be capable of really dealing with emergencies or solving true issues of supply : when you’re selling everything at an ‘acceptable’ static price, the only way to respond to increased demand is increased supply, and that can’t occur without making money from nothing.
It’s not the worst option when it comes to packets. They’re not really capable of their own choices, the costs and potential lost information tends to be minimal compared to the results of increased inefficiency or short-term random action on device change, and we’re not exactly expecting a lot of spare technological innovation to be created from nothingness.
But you wouldn’t want that set up running human interactions. It’s merely irritating at worst when you lose a packet to a WAN connection with 0 ’supply’ left. It’s not so trivial when you need copper and the local supply’s at 0 and moving the amount you want would cost too much for the “acceptable prices” committee will allow. If you trundle into a gas station at empty, I’d personally rather pay the extra seven bucks a gallon than have it be seventy cents cheaper 99% of the time and not for sale 1%. My job or an emergency
The long and short of it is that, under a free market, everything that should be for sale, is for sale. A controlled market only reduces the options; you can order people to sell stuff at at X price, but unless you can read minds or don’t care about limiting those you’re ‘protecting’, you can’t keep demand and supply adjusted to that price. Neither I nor Dijkstra can do it in a situation with as close to perfect information as possible, so I don’t see why folk expect a governmental group to do better with significantly imperfect.
Free markets suck, but more controlled ones just manage to concentrated the suckage for short periods. The former means you end up finding a lot of stuff that you want but aren’t worth the price, the latter means that there are things you need that you can’t purchase.
Comment 3/22/2008
There has always been status X on group Y, therefore they would not operate acceptably without status X? The demand for cable itself was started due to slow licensing of stations and the eventual freeze, and within a year of the system’s development it was put under FCC jurisdiction the same as every other common carrier.
Sorry, thought you were talking more about marginal costs than just operating costs.
Comment 3/22/2008
I’m not particularly good with colloquial speech. Does it tend to ignore the law of the excluded middle?
It tends not to follow such rules, no. Instead the emphasis goes on what sounds good, what’s simple to say, and what’s most likely to convey your meaning most effectively.
Basically, nobody says “I reached an agreement to fill my tank for $4.50 a gallon.” They say, “I filled my tank for $4.50 a gallon,” or just “I bought gas for $4.50 a gallon.” In large part because that’s the way people would normally say it, when someone says “reach an agreement,” I would expect (apparently wrongly) most people to assume that means a more detailed negotiation took place.
I am noticing a disconnect here, however, between what I’m arguing, and what people seem to think I’m arguing. I’m not saying that buying something at the advertised priced doesn’t qualify as an implicit agreement of sorts. I’m saying that normal people don’t talk about it that in terms of reaching an agreement. In other words, everyone seems to be focusing on the word “agreement,” when I’m actually focusing on “reached.” To “reach” something implies (to me, and apparently only me) that the process to get there was non-trivial.
Comment 3/22/2008
Tgirsch, I think you are “reaching” here.
Comment 3/22/2008
Ted, I think you owe TG an extra dollar or two for that.
(And, actually, I’m entirely in agreement w/ TG here. You’re not the only one.)
Comment 3/23/2008
Thine thing about a free market is that it is free. C’mon, how difficult is that?
Anything that can be (not “should be,” which implies Big Daddy deciding what ought not be on the market) bought and sold, will be; civilizations can either go along with that or beat themselves into a frenzy trying to control what cannot be controlled.
Interestingly, controlled markets and oppresive, invasive governments are inextricably linked. War on drugs, war on gun, Soviet Union, Red China, Fascist Italy, etc. If you have one, the other follows. This is sub-optimal.
Comment 3/23/2008
PS: It is an iterative process, this pulling in and buying gas; between you and that vendor, there is usually only the single iteration (You got? I want. Here is payment of your asking price), though you might have considered other vendors on the basis of price, convenience, past performance, etc., which would also be iterative
Comment 3/23/2008
Ted:
I think that may have actually made my point exponentially more succinctly than I ever could have. Thanks!
Roberta:
That’s a nice list of cherry-picked examples, but there pretty extreme examples of “controlled markets.” The world is not black and white, you know. Unfettered capitalism leads to societies that are every bit as oppressive as unfettered socialism.
The “free market” loves things like child labor, unsafe working conditions, cheating, fraud, air and water pollution, kiddie porn, indentured servitude, etc., and you’d be hard pressed to find too many people who think that the government should “keep its damn nose” out of those areas. (Hell, the textile markets of the South thrived under slavery, so from a purely free market perspective, slavery’s great!)
The problem with you libertarian types is that you correctly identify that too much regulation is bad, but then go all absolutist with it and decide that all regulation is bad, and that we should never regulate anything, which is just plain silly. It’s like looking at Iraq and Viet Nam and concluding that since those wars were stupid, unnecessary, unjust, and ultimately accomplished nothing except get a bunch of people killed, then all wars must be that way, so we must never, under any circumstances, go to war. Which is just silly.
Or, for an example that’s sure to hit closer to home for you, it’d be like saying “most gun use bad, therefore all gun use bad, let’s get rid of guns.”
So at the end of the day, I just don’t buy the “government regulation of markets inevitably leads to oppressive government” argument.
Comment 3/23/2008
PS: It is an iterative process
And I’m the one picking nits?!
Comment 3/23/2008
Gatt, let me try another approach. A prerequisite for a free market is low barriers to entry, yes? This is economics 101. It is clear the cable industry does not meet this criterion due to the huge capital investment required before customer one can be captured. Thus, the cable market does not represent a free market. Thus, it is not a good market to reference when discussing free market issues. That is really all I am saying - make that trying to say.
Comment 3/23/2008
Tgirsch -
For what it’s worth, I get your point and it pisses me off, too. We get “take it or leave it” choices thrown at us by corporate America and if we “take it” they come on like it was the result of some sort of detailed prior negotiations between equals.
I get the same feeling every time I see a software end-user agreement with the choice of “accept our designed-to-be-to-our-advantage terms without change or go suck an egg.”
My first taste of this came some years ago when I did some photography for a company. I was to be paid in two installments: one upon delivery of the proofs, the other upon delivery of the final prints. I got my installment after the proofs - but on the back of the check there was a printed notice that by depositing this check I was agreeing that it was payment in full for the contract!
When I complained about it, I was told that the company still expected the job to be completed and if I was going to “decline payment” by refusing the check, that was my business. It was only after some very pointed references to lawyers, suits, and breach of contract and my refusal to accept their very kind suggestion that I go ahead and deposit the check based on their very kind verbal assurance that they wouldn’t hold me to it that they grumblingly agreed to reissue the check sans notice.
The fact is, language, phrasing, framing if you will, is important and how we describe things can affect how we perceive them. For one example, that is precisely why at so many businesses these days there are no “bosses” to be found, only “team leaders.” Neither are there “employees” or even “workers,” but “team members” or even “partners.” And they’re all part of one “family.” Which makes unions “outsiders” trying to disrupt the “family.”
Comment 3/23/2008
For the record, walking peacefully past somebody on the street doesn’t mean that I agreed not to kill that person, just that I agreed not to kill that person then and there.
Just trying to leave my options open, ya know…
Comment 3/24/2008
That’s really the core of it, Larry. The issue at hand is not the action, it’s the language used to describe the action. Self determination, in general, begins with the reclamation of the terms you use to describe the ongoings of your life and the world. It is so striking to me, when people dismiss arguments as quibbling over semantics. That’s not the ancillary argument - often, the semantics IS the argument; it is here.
By controling the way we refer to entities and activities, you can shape the overall view of those activities. “Reaching an agreement” in this case, is technically, logically, defensible, but it is, connotatively, a misrepresentation of the event in question.
The law of the excluded middle is a euphemism for the abortion of context. The law of the excluded middle states that some guy agreed to give me all the money he had in his pocket, the physical form of middle that was excluded was a ski mask and Heckler & Koch…
Comment 3/24/2008
the semantics IS the argument
Wouldn’t it be “the semantics ARE the argument?”
*ducks*
“Reaching an agreement” in this case, is technically, logically,[sic] defensible, but it is, connotatively, a misrepresentation of the event in question.
That’s precisely my point, which has been lost on so many.
Comment 3/24/2008
Yeah, TG, honestly, I’m not really sure if “semantics” is singular or plural. I went with singular, I’ve never heard anybody refer to one semantic - “semantic” is an adjective. I figured it was like “metaphysics” of “linguistics” or some shit.
Perhaps we can contact Korzybsky through a rocket seance…
Comment 3/24/2008
You may well be right, of course. I just wanted to mess with you.
Since I’m not sure either, I would have avoided the confusion entirely by saying that “the argument IS about semantics” or something.
A quick dictionary search shows some disagreement here. M-W says it can be “singular or plural,” while others say it should be used with a singular noun. In either case, it looks like what you wrote is actually technically correct. But now we’re just arguing semantics.
(Actually, we’re arguing grammar…)
Comment 3/24/2008
Okay so the gas people didn’t reach an agreement, however they still agreed to pay 4 bucks for gas. How is Uncles initial argument really altered by this wonderful revelation?
Comment 3/24/2008
Matt:
All along, I’ve been trying to make two points, and only two:
#1, Uncle’s use of the
termphrase “reach[ed] and agreement on price” grossly overstates what actually happened, at least connotatively.#2, No matter what you think about what the government actually did in the case, no matter how stupid or unjustified you might think it is, it doesn’t amount to “Communism,” which is the term he used.
Admittedly, in both cases, I’m arguing semantics, but as digglahhh points out, it’s an important argument to make.
Bottom line, though: Uncle’s setup was misleading and his conclusion was false. Those were my original points, and I still stand by them.
If you want to make the argument that consumer protection — even heavy-handed or overreaching consumer protection — amounts to communism, go right ahead.
Comment 3/24/2008
I’m not saying that what happened is communism, however, I think what Uncle was trying to point out is that the consumer protection measures taken were ridiculous and unnecessary, because those people agreed to pay for $4 gas. IMO the equation with communism was an exaggeration to draw attention to the situation and also to be humorous.
Those people were not forced into the transaction and with little effort (like going to the station across the street, for example) they could have paid a more reasonable price for the same product. Instead they ripped themselves off and then whined to the government to fix the issue created by their own stupidity/laziness. However, since this seems to work, you should complain to your local government and see if you can get your cable bill lowered.
Comment 3/24/2008
Right, Matt. I think we’re pretty much in agreement here.
The problem was, when confronted, Unk and the posse actually attempted to advance the literal interpretation that what happened was, in fact, communism. Had they just admitted that it was hyperbole for the sake of humor, that would have been the end of it.
Comment 3/24/2008
well, I was going to let this slide, but since there has been a surge in activity on the subject, since semantics are so important, why is there no objection to LarryE’s opening statement:
“We get “take it or leave it” choices thrown at us by corporate America and if we “take it” they come on like it was the result of some sort of detailed prior negotiations between equals.”
Are the choices “thrown” at us? In the case of gas stations, 60% are operated by single station owners. If you own a single gas station, are you part of “corporate America”? If not, is there a different experience visiting a station owned by a corporation and one owned by an individual? Has anyone had a company come on to them as if detailed prior negotiations between equals had occurred? What would even be the context for that to happen?
Or this:
“For one example, that is precisely why at so many businesses these days there are no “bosses” to be found, only “team leaders.”
Really? No President, VP, Director, Manager or Supervisor to be found? Only Team Leader? Anybody else work for or know of a single company that only has “team leaders” in management positions?
Comment 3/24/2008
Matt:
Right. The comparison to communism was an exaggeration. Along the same lines, Biltmore is a “cottage.”
Ted:
Actually, I wasn’t going to bring it up either, but my problem with LarryE’s comment wasn’t either of the things you pointed out, but instead the fact that he said that he “get[s] my point” but then proceeds to comment on stuff that was not, in fact, my point.
My point was intended to be nothing beyond what I summarized in comment #27 here.
Comment 3/24/2008
Hey dude, I’m just trying to drum up business for you in this thread, hoping I can get a discount on your Terms of Use.
Comment 3/24/2008
Ted,
1. I took Larry’s opening comment to pertain to general consumer/corporation dynamics in American society, not to how those dynamics relate, specifically, to gas stations. The scope of the discussion had expanded past gas stations at that point, and I saw his comment as relating to what it means to make an “agreement” in a such a marketplace.
2. I doubt Larry E was committing to absolutism with his statement about the way position titles, relationships to fellow employees and the employer as an institution, etc. have been changed to mask a power structure and warm one to it. But, I don’t think one can deny the trend.
But, don’t throw choices, my grandmother warned me they can put out an eye…
Comment 3/24/2008
Ted -
I won’t bother going around and around on this, so consider this a final clarification.
First, semantics have to do with clarity of meaning, not nitpicking. I believe my meaning was quite clear.
Second, after the first time you go into a gas station and negotiate the price for the gasoline you buy, you can come back and tell me you didn’t get a “take it or leave it” choice. And not before.
Shop around? Sure. But no matter where you go, find the cheapest place you can, at that station you’re still going to be told “This is the price. Pay it or do without.” So when you find that station that will negotiate the price, that is also the time at which you can tell me you and others similarly situated “agreed” to that price rather than “submitted” to it. And not before.
Third, when it’s said that we “agreed” to a price but never that we “submitted” to it, the sense of there having been “detailed prior negotiations between equals” is exactly what is trying to be created. “Oh, you can’t complain, it was all entirely willing on your part. We agreed.”
And I’ll note that my earliest overt experience with this that I can recall was with a sole proprietorship which informed me that it was changing its billing practices. When a question later arose, I was told, and this is a quote, “As we agreed….” (And no, I couldn’t take my business elsewhere because this had to do with payment for services already rendered.)
(Parenthetical note to head off more nitpicking: This does not mean you can’t be willing to pay the price for whatever it is; you may regard the price as fair or even a real steal. It has to do with the attempt to psychologically define all such transactions as entirely willing ones between two parties with equal power.)
Regarding “bosses,” it appears the term has almost vanished from use. I frankly can’t remember the last time I heard someone (other than me) refer to “my boss at work.” Even the relatively innocuous term “supervisor” appears to be dwindling: The textbooks for the degree in management courses my wife is taking specifically refer to using terms like “team leaders” and “coordinators” rather than “supervisors.”
The point is, again, the use of language to affect (and effect) perceptions: It’s not bosses and workers (and the very fact that the phrasing seems dated only proves the point) or even management and employees - oh no, we’re all part of the team!
The specific intent was undermine unions and unionization by redefining the terms of labor relations from “upper and lower,” in which those “lower” could feel more of a connection with other “lowers” outside the company, to “insider and outsider,” in which the (still) “lowers” feel more of a connection to the (still) “uppers” within the company than with the other (still) “lowers” without it - thus defining unions as “outsiders.”
Tgirsch -
The “point” I was saying I got was the misuse of the concept of “agreement” in describing what happened. The rest of my comment was an expansion on similar misuses of “agreed” and the relevance of the terms we use to our understanding of a situation.
Comment 3/24/2008
Digg -
Thanks, and right on both points. I guess I should have specified in both my comments that gas stations were the illustration, not the complete context, but I suppose that was something else I thought was clear. Perhaps not.
Comment 3/24/2008
LarryE:
Oh, I know. I was just messing with you and Ted.
Comment 3/24/2008
LarryE, OK, but you are mostly addressing points I did not make.
One question. Objecting to the phrase “a price was agreed to” is valid based on semantics, and objecting to “choices thrown at us” is nitpicking? Just want to be sure I have it straight.
Comment 3/24/2008
Objecting to the phrase “a price was agreed to” is valid based on semantics, and objecting to “choices thrown at us” is nitpicking?
Semantics, again, has to do with clarity. “A price was agreed to” creates a misleading impression of what actually occurred in that it suggests a reached arrangement.
“Choices thrown at us” would be understood by anyone familiar with conversational English to be hyperbole.
So the answer to your question is yes.
Comment 3/24/2008
I see. So your contention is that someone reading the original post might actually be mislead into believing a price was negotiated? If not, if the intent of the post was clear (the customer sees the price and then decides to buy the gasoline), then that would seem to be nitpicking based on your explanation above.
As for “choices thrown at us”, that really means… what? That was your description of the supply side of our economic system, so surely there is some underlying intent there. You are trying to create an impression by choosing those words. Having something thrown at you is typically not a pleasurable experience (unless you happen to be a catcher and the pitcher has good stuff that day).
My conclusion is in both cases, the writer’s bias colored his choice of words. The difference is yours was more blatant. I’m unconvinced that makes it more acceptable.
Comment 3/24/2008
As for some anecdata about bosses:
In my current job, I have a manager and a supervisor. I would call both bosses, and I think I would not be looked at askance, except that I sometimes need to distinguish which I mean. The official title of my manager is “manager”. The official title of my supervisor is “techincal lead (which he is) of my team (there are three of us and we are similar in rank and responsibility, once adjusted for experience)”.
In my previous job, I had four idiots who might assign me tasks, all of whom I considered my boss and only one of whom accepted that label. He was also my manager.
Comment 3/24/2008
So your contention
You actually weren’t looking for an answer to your previous question, were you? It was just something you wrongly imagined to be clever snark.
So okay, I let myself get sucked into this, but this is the final chapter.
My contention, as I believe is quite clear to anyone not being willfully obtuse, is that the phrase “reached an agreement,” which is what was used in the original post here, is in a context such as this inherently misleading in that it creates the sense of an entirely willing exchange between parties with equal power when in fact it is most commonly a “pay up or do without” proposition for the consumer - something even SayUncle freely admits at the linked post. It is accurate only in that sense that it could be said that I “agreed” to give the mugger my wallet in preference to the “or else.”
As for “choices thrown at us,” your inability to deal with hyperbole (as shown by your insistence on interpreting it literally) is not my problem to solve.
I’m outta here.
Comment 3/24/2008
I suggest that “choices thrown at us” would better be described as “metaphoric” than as “hyperbolic”.
Comment 3/24/2008
If I had a nickel for every one of LarryE’s “last” comments on this subject or that, I could buy a lot of Bazooka gum.
But on the matter of the “agreement” phrase, I have to say I’m in complete agreement with him. On the boss/team stuff, not so much. But I will say, in response to this:
I think that’s a bit of a stretch to say that. While the buy gas example isn’t as much of a choice as the Uncles of the world like to pretend, it’s not something done under duress, either. But I do understand that your example does not concern the degree of choice but the degree to which the term “agree” strikes the correct connotation of what’s going on.
Ted:
Having something thrown at you is typically not a pleasurable experience (unless you happen to be a catcher and the pitcher has good stuff that day).
While we’re picking semantic nits, that pitcher isn’t throwing at the catcher, he’s throwing to him.
Comment 3/24/2008
LarryE, yes, you said all that already (minus the snottiness). See my previous comment for response.
Dan M, your experience with titles pretty much mirrors mine. And that of most others I would bet.
Comment 3/24/2008
Note, Ted, that our data actually matches LarryE’s thesis about the use of the word ‘boss’, except inasmuch as ‘boss’ is only extinct in some domains.
Comment 3/25/2008
Dan M, LarryE’s claim was the term has “almost vanished”. While technically true that falls under the category of “extinct in some domains”, I think a clearer categorization of the remark would be “untrue”.
TGirsch, I’m going to have to disagree with you re the catcher. I would say the pitcher throws (or pitches if he has more than just raw stuff) to the hitter. And in the case of a hit or a foul ball, the ball never even reaches the catcher, so clearly the ball was not thrown to him in those instances. I stand by “at” as the better descriptor. And I will note we have probably reached a new benchmark in triviality. But all for a good cause given your term of use on this thread.
Comment 3/25/2008
I would say the pitcher throws (or pitches if he has more than just raw stuff) to the hitter.
I can see why you’d say that, but I still disagree. After all, ideally the hitter will miss the pitch, but the catcher will catch it. As such, the pitcher is trying to throw by the hitter. A BP pitcher, on the other hand, throws to the hitter.
Comment 3/25/2008
Well, I may still call my boss my boss, but that’s a lexical artifact. The word is hardly used within the office setting - and as for corporate/professional culture, which is what the original point pertained to, I think that’s all that is necessary for it to be a valid. Larry wasn’t talking about whether you refer to your “team leader” as your “boss” when you are telling your wife about what a prick he/she may or may not be.
Pitcher throws ball TO catcher. He throws “to,” as opposed to “at” because it is his intention that the catcher catch the ball. He throws “at” a batter if he’s trying to bean him. When an outfielder makes a relay throw, he throws to the cut off man, why would it be different for the catcher. A pitcher may throw TO a batter, but that means he’s throwing batting practice. In this respect, to and at seem to connote cooperation and antagonism respectively. That’s my interpretation. It’s kinda that way across all sports - pass TO, shoot AT.
Now new grounds in triviality will be reached without me!
Comment 3/25/2008
Well, how about that, TG - down to the BP thing…
Comment 3/25/2008
Well, at least we’re all honest about devolving to absurd pedantry.
Not that I’m against that.
Comment 3/25/2008
So Digg, you are telling me you don’t hear the phrase “Beckett is now pitching to Jeter”, like, all the time? And Tgirsch, your claim is you actually hear announcers say “Wang is now pitching by Lowell?” How about this: “I can’t believe it, they are not going to walk Bonds in this situation - Peavy is going to pitch to him!” Doesn’t sound familiar? You guys must listen to baseball on a different planet than I do.
Here’s an article in THT where variations on the phrase “pitch to the batter” are repeatedly used.
I was just screwing around re the catcher having pitches thrown at him, but I am serious that in the lexicon of the game, pitchers pitch to batters. (And if you are bothered by the substitution of pitch for throw, note that I previously pointed out that a pitcher “throws” when he only has raw stuff. “That guy can really throw the ball, but he still has to learn how to pitch.”)
Comment 3/25/2008
Ted:
I think the difference between “pitch” and “throw” is more significant than you’re making it out to be, as it pertains to the use of the word “to.” A pitcher does, in fact, pitch to a batter, but he does not throw to him.
Comment 3/26/2008
I agree with TG in the above comment. Whether the common usage reflects some grammatical rule or it just has become ingrained through repetition, you don’t hear people referring to throwing at a batter, and if you do, it invokes an entirely different perception of what happened than “pitching to.”
Throwing at a batter is (attempted) beaning.
Throwing to a batter is tossing BP.
Pitching to a batter is pitching, like we normally see it done - unless it’s by Byung Yung Kim, Syndney Ponson or Eric Milton, in which case it is synonymous with tossing BP.
Pitching at a batter is a phrasing I don’t recall hearing.
It may just be grammatically inconsistent and not subject to the sort of “rules” we’ve by hypothesizing, but I think the statements and their meanings as I listed above are just about universally understood, no?
Comment 3/26/2008
You forgot to mention Eric Gagne.
Comment 3/26/2008
We are in in agreement here, with the possible exception of throw and pitch. Again, in the lexicon of baseball, a pitcher is described as “throwing” when he does not exhibit any mastery of the art of pitching. Which is why, for example, guys throw batting practice; they don’t pitch it.
Comment 3/26/2008
Yes, “he’s a thrower” has a negative connotation.
Greg Maddux is a pitcher. Steve Dalkowski was a thrower!
Comment 3/27/2008
Digg, now that we have resolved that, I’m going to question something else. You said a fielder makes a relay throw to a cutoff man. I would say he throws to a relay man and at a cutoff man. In the case of a relay play, there is no question but that the relay man will catch the ball. On a cutoff play, the outfielder does not know if the cutoff man will intercede, and he (outfielder) is primarily trying to make a play beyond the cutoff man while secondarily keeping alive the threat that his throw will be cut off, thus freezing all but the lead base runner.
I mention this mainly to show Dan M that we have not yet even begun to plumb the depths to which we can devolve if the topic is baseball.
Comment 3/27/2008
In that case, I don’t think the outfielder is throwing to or at the cutoff man. He’s throwing to a particular base (or the plate), on the assumption that the cutoff man might not, in fact, cut it off.
Comment 3/27/2008
Yes and no. He is throwing to the base, but doing so by throwing at the cutoff man - as opposed to over his head (ie airmailing him).
With opening day (the real one, not the Asian one) a couple of days away, we should be able to satisfy the baseball jones in a more traditional way.
Comment 3/28/2008
To me, if he’s throwing at the cutoff man, he has to be aiming for him. It’s not enough just to be throwing in the general direction of the cutoff man (”toward” the cutoff man). He’s not throwing at the cutoff man unless hitting the cutoff man is his objective.
Comment 3/29/2008