...An exchange with one of the teachers immediately followed by an 11-hour automobile drive led me to the conclusion that CET (Critical Economic Theory) should replace CRT (Critical Race Theory) in America’s K-12 classrooms.
Two of the two dozen or so teachers in attendance admitted that they had not realized that trade is a positive sum game, i.e., that everyone can gain and that one person’s gain is not necessarily another’s loss. That breakthrough alone made the trip worth it all, but it was a later exchange with one of those teachers that brought me to the need for CET.
I remarked that cultural appropriation really isn’t a thing, that no one owns, or could own, general cultural attributes like a musical style or a type of cuisine and that the real value added is in the creation of actual marketable products, so not “rap” but “Hypnotize Me” and not “burgers” but an actual “garbage plate.” Intellectual and physical property rights protect the creators of such products but no law could protect general cultural genres and that even if they could, figuring out who should get paid for products arising from the general genre would soon turn into a quagmire....
I also pulled some pages from Tyler Cowen’s brilliant 2004 book, Creative Destruction, to note that many iconic cultural productions, like island steel drum music, are actually syncretic, i.e., combinations of different cultures. Cowen also showed how globalization leads to heterogeneity when viewed from the standpoint of individuals....
In other words, what is sometimes deprecated as cultural appropriation increases the sale of actual marketable products....
But the teacher in question was having none of my dismissal of cultural appropriation because she “knows” that non-black people make money selling hair care products designed for African-American women. Well it just so happens that over a century ago an African-American woman named Madam C.J. Walker, the daughter of Louisiana slaves, became a millionaire by manufacturing and selling just such products....
I then pointed out that the real problem, as described in my 2019 AIER book Financial Exclusion, was not with cultural appropriation. It was, and to some extent remains, with barriers to entry; all the institutions, laws, and systems that prevent entrepreneurs from testing their products in the market, and that racial/ethnic/gender and class barriers to entry were especially pernicious and should be rooted out and extirpated ASAP. The teacher seemed to understand that, filling me with hope that maybe progress could be made, not by so-called progressives but by earnest Americans eager to actually help people facing real obstacles to human flourishing....