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Only the Experts Can Save Us
One of the most pompous, elitist concoctions ever produced is now available at The Lancet titled “The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change: The Lancet Commission Report.” Instances of not enough food, too much food, or the wrong food combined with climate change means that we must surrender almost every consumption choice to the planners lest we all die. Highly credentialed dung beetles have rolled it all into a single giant threat ball.
All eating habits and choices, the production and distribution of all food items, all energy use, and any other product or choice related to such must henceforth spring from the foreheads of our betters. The very existence of market choices of unhealthy foodstuffs, market-driven decisions regarding food production, and energy-consuming vehicles used for unapproved economic purchases must be banned.
If you have an agribusiness-related occupation or work in a bakery and you have ever driven an SUV to McDonald’s they are coming for you.
One expects our betters to exaggerate various risks and problems in order to sell us some statist solution but the scope of this project is breathtaking. Everything we grow, eat, make or buy must be planned by internationally sanctioned technocrats lest we all die. They call it a “syndemic” so it has to be true on account of #Science.
What is wrong with our educational systems such that we crank out bright, technically qualified people with advanced degrees who have complete amnesia about the planet’s political and ideological history, total ignorance of economics, amnesia about their own class’ mistakes and policy choices (anybody remember how we were already doomed 40 years ago by overpopulation), and a total lack of humility or self-examination.
Oddly enough, the millions of people who actually make our lives better, who produce, innovate, serve, and provide never ask us to surrender political power in exchange for what we receive. The apparent invisibility of the happy realities of free markets is a stunning intellectual defect. How well-educated does one have to be miss both the trees and the forest?
Published in General
The day they try to take away my chocolate chip cookies, it will be war. Never mind the thin mint GS cookies I just bought.
This kind of writing should be criminal!
Since Global Warming scare is a hoax, shall we assume the entire article is a hoax? People, be more skeptical! When in doubt assume you are being lied to.
There is no amnesia. There is only political indoctrination.
They have no amnesia of their own class’ mistakes. They simply do not count them as mistakes – it will eventually come true. Their timetable may have been slightly askew, don’t ya know.
And humility? Self-examination? Really, you are asking too much.
-Edward Lear
#EatTheLancetCommission
They’ve been told, their whole short lives, that they’re the “gifted and talented,” the brightest lights, etc. Why should they doubt their own superiority?
I’m upvoting this for the sentence “Highly credentialed dung beetles have rolled it all into a single giant threat ball.”
I laughed, as I highlit this text and right-clicked to copy, when the context menu invited me to “Search the web for” or “Ask Bing about” it. I should!
I’ll bet their dinner parties are a lot of fun…
This is becoming a diagnosable cognitive disorder. Peak Oil, Overpopulation, Global Warming… First assume that all currently known resources are fixed (barrels of oil, bushels per acre…) and ignore the fact that past innovations have made those resources valuable and future innovations will change that value (think whale oil). Second, assume that everybody on the planet is stupid and will proceed lemming-like at the same pace until the moment the last resource is consumed. Third, assume that no one is brighter than you as evidenced in large measure by the fact that you are woke to the crisis the masses have missed. Fourth demand political power to save us on account of your enlightenment.
It is so hackneyed, so deeply pathetic.
Been reading Jürgen?
Who?
James Branch Cabell’s Jürgen. After the book-banning brouhaha, he added in a chapter with a dung-beetle prosecuting the book for obscenity. I figured you must have been familiar with it and a true literate given your metaphor. Perhaps not. 😁
Summary here.
It was “the experts” who thought a Land War in Asia was a good idea. Result: Thousands of Americans dead, almost $2 Trillion spent and nothing to show for it.
It was “the experts” who thought forcing banks to give mortgages out to people with bad credit and no financial responsibility was a good idea. Result: The 2008 Financial Crash.
It was “the experts” who came up with the idea that a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet was the optimal nutritional standard. Result: And epidemic of obesity and diabetes.
I have lost my faith in “the experts.”
Looks like fun. I downloaded it to my Kindle app. Thanks.
I just read that some Democrat senators want to do an assessment of the banks to see if they have planned appropriately for climate change. Help!
Indeed.
Maybe I can finally get loans and investors for my planned Baffin Bay tropical resort for when N. Canada and Greenland go all palm trees and pina coladas any day now on account of Climate Change and Trump and Exxon. I can threaten to call my Senators if the bank does not accept the fundamental climate assumptions in my business plan. Deniers!
Well dontcha know that Maxine is going to go hogwild now that she heads some committee and plans to go after those nasty banks who were responsible for the 2008 crash. And don’t try to tell me that it was the fault of Congress, uh-uh, it was those greedy banks that were at fault. Maybe you could get her to push on some senators to help you out. Sounds like a plan!
Cows produce methane, and the experts remind us of that continually here in Global Climate Change Aware and Very Much Woke California.
So the dairies that allow us to have milk and other dairy products as well as meat, will soon be a thing of the past.
It’s probably a good idea to learn to like soy milk.
And let’s all hope for the best: that there is no dystopian future in which the experts realize humans produce methane too.
Meaning we won’t if we do? What is they say “Big, if true!”
Yeah, me too. It really is an excellent line.
Can I get fries with that?
Nicely put.
Also assume that you and those like you are—today and for the duration—-omniscient, impeccably moral, infallible, indefatigable and also incorruptible.
Historian Friedrich Meinecke, who lived through the Nazi era in Germany, cited an interesting remark by an acquaintance:
It often happens nowdays…that young technicians, engineers, and so forth, who have enjoyed an excellent university training as specialists, will completely devote themselves to their calling for ten or fifteen years and without looking either to the right or to the left will try only to be first-rate specialists. But then, in their middle or late thirties, something they have never felt before awakens in them, something that was never really brought to their attention in their education–something that we would call a suppressed metaphysical desire. Then they rashly seize upon any sort of ideas and activities, anything that is fashionable at the moment and seems to them important for the welfare of individuals–whether it be anti-alcoholism, agricultural reform, eugenics, or the occult sciences. The former first-rate specialist changes into a kind of prophet, into an enthusiast, perhaps even into a fanatic and monomaniac. Thus arises the type of man who wants to reform the world.
Enthusiast was not considered a good thing back then.
I read it only in English, not sure about the flavorings in the original German….maybe “enthusiast” is actually something closer to “fanatic.”
It was in English back then.
As cynical as I am, I don’t think this dystopian future will come to pass. Why? Because people are recognizing that the “experts” themselves are already producing too much methane.
<sarcasm off>
<cynicism always on >
Parphrasing David Stove; there are a relatively very tiny number of people that have made our lives better as far as intellectual and innovative discoveries are concerned; like electricity, chemistry, etc. Also paraphrasing his Columbus Argument, the intellectual social engineer never mentions the failures of the 20th century of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, etc. when pushing for organizing society by new ideas. There are chances if you don’t have enough information, you will make something worse rather than better.
But it is millions that work in those everyday mundane fields that implement, refine and have used those discoveries and ideas to make life better. They are William Grahm Sumners “forgotten man.”
What intellectuals forget is that while they may individually be smart (sometimes questionable) compared to the average, they are not as smart as the combination of millions of people who engage in others on a daily basis multiple times. And they also overestimate intelligence that is measured in school with the intelligence of experience.
Taleb’s IYI (intellectual yet idiot) is a very apt description. When one smart guy makes decisions for everyone without the threat of loss to himself, he is not careful, everyone he makes decisions for is a guinea pig. We have a lot of intellectuals and others that have insulated themselves from risk, and thus unable to actually understand what people need.
“Highly credentialed dung beetles have rolled it all into a single giant threat ball.”
Best. Line. Ever.
I did a literal spit take.