There has recently been some heated discussion on dailykos whether there is more than one acceptable way to feel about the price of tea in China. This diary is an attempt to clarify this question through the application of logic on the facts in evidence. The analysis will take a tone of objective transcendence the better with which to thoroughly discredit those with whom I disagree (or find loathsome for whimsical reasons perversely springing from my own damaged psyche).
First, let’s glance at the history of this question. The gauntlet was first thrown down in 1846, as quoted in Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary papers, House of Commons and Command, Volume 44, page 259a6:
... taking, therefore, the average price of Tea in China at 24 taels per picul, the result would be, 157,500 piculs, at 24 taels, is 3,780,000 L., or an increase of 1,150,250 L. of exports to China.
ONE MILLION TWO HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY, UM, . . . L’S!!! Looks like something we could all agree on, right?
Wouldn’t you know, there are always a few naysayers. Take this person I don’t know at all whose words I lifted out of context from the web in order to make a dishonest point:
As a GA researcher I use my financial rewards to send the Cutty Sark
tea clipper on a perilous voyage round the world to China. The captain
then dashes into the nearest supermarket and purchases a packet of tea
and returns as fast as possible. Providing no mishaps occur, it will
be cheaper to buy tea in China than here in the UK. I can now sit
down for my afternoon tea happy in the knowledge that I have had one
over on Tesco?s and Sainsburys? supermarkets. In my view, knowing the
price of tea in China is very important and should be referred to in
any discussion or argument.
GA researcher, my ass. How is one to respond to such hatred? No problem, really. I’ll start by invoking the Law of Expanded Insistence which states:
Treat any logical statement as equivalent to the claim that every other logical statement is false if your goal is to confuse the hell out everyone while you sneak out the back door.
Specifically:
What the hell have you been smoking? (2+ / 0-)
How do expect the world ever to function if, as you claim in your despicable ignorance, no discussion should ever be about anything other than the price of tea in China?
Sirrah, your black and white thinking leads me to guffaw.
Intelligent manipulation of the masses is the invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country. - U.S. propagandist Edward Bernays
by geomoo on Sun May 08, 2011 at 03:18:18 PM EDT
Turning back the clock to four years earlier, we find that the figure of 1,150,250 L. is not mentioned anywhere, and therefore our argument holds in the way we prefer, by encountering no challenge:
In 1841, the two big issues in the United States of America were the price of tea in China and jazz. William Henry Harrison had revolutionary views on these topics.
snip of information which might encourage inappropriately aligned attitudes
China had already agreed to sell the United States tea, but a treaty setting tea prices needed to be made. There was much disagreement over what quality of tea was wanted and what price should be paid. Harrison had the idea that everyone in the United States who drank tea would sample every available type of Chinese tea and vote on their favorite. The two governments would then work out a price for the 2 most popular teas.
I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong about that. In fact, you’re a traitor even to entertain the notion. But let’s move on.
Returning again to logic, as it were, we find this proposal:
Absolute proof that there is only one way to feel about the price of tea in China:
The generalization, that storms (S) occur when the barometer
reading (B) falls, is invariant under:
Changes in the position of Mars.
Changes in the price of tea in China.
Changes in atmospheric pressure.
It is not stable under:
Interventions on B with respect to S.
Interventions on S with respect to B.
I all I have to say to that is “Fucking A.” First of all, Mars is not the United States. It’s not even on our beloved planet earth. And second, I’d like to get my hands on the SOB who would still claim that some interventions are unstable with respect to US.
For those who think I'm a war monger, I'd like to beat your ass
But we needn’t rely on brute force. As our society has turned increasingly to science, and to reliance on methods that use “numbers” in order to make hopelessly humanistic disciplines look like science (and increase the pay grade of their practitioners), we find the naysayers thoroughly humiliated by their support of authoritarian systems of family planning:
PDF Missing Women and the Price of Tea in China: The Effect of Sex-Specific Earnings on Sex Imbalance
It is important to note that the empirical strategy of this study relies on the effect of planting tea immediately after the first wave of post-Mao reforms (1978/1980)….
snip
China’s stringent enforcement of family planning policies, namely the One Child Policy was introduced first in urban areas, beginning with Shanghai in 1979. Enforcement in rural areas were phased in during the early 1980s. Qian (2005) shows that for rural areas, the four-year birth spacing law initiated in the early 1970s meant that the unanticipated One Child Policy was, in reality, binding for cohorts born in 1976 and later. Hence, the effective date of the One Child Policy does not coincide with the increase in the price of tea in 1979.
Let me repeat that: the effective date of the One Child Policy does not coincide with the increase in the price of tea in 1979. Does there remain any decent Democrat or even American so ideologically pure as to question the 1,150,250 L. figure? If so, I invite them to take a slow boat to China with their Tea Bagger friends.
And by the way, THE UNITED STATES IS A GREAT COUNTRY THAT CAN BE TRUSTED TO MAKE THINGS UP AS SHE GOES ALONG.