Why the Left Thinks We’re Evil

 

I think that it’s easier for people on the right to understand that leftists mean well than it is for leftists to understand that people on the right also mean well. In his book, Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt wrote:

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

In Thomas Sowell’s phrase, a good economist must go beyond “stage one” thinking.

Unfortunately, people on the left tend to get stuck at stage one. They see, for example, that a high minimum wage will make minimum-wage workers better off. Additional thought is needed to understand that increasing the cost of low-skilled labor will reduce the demand for that labor.

Even more thought is required to see that the people helped by the increase – those who keep their jobs or can still find jobs after the increase – are likely to be the most employable. That is, they have the most knowledge and experience and they are the least discriminated against. Those hurt by the laws will be the least employable – the least educated, least skilled, and the most discriminated against. In other words, minimum wages help those who need help the least and hurt those who need help the most.

To someone who can’t, or won’t, go beyond stage one thinking, it’s so blindingly obvious that an increased minimum wage will help the poor that they believe that anyone who disagrees must hate poor people – that is, they must be evil. Someone who can see to stage two or three also understands stage one and is unlikely to believe that someone who can’t get beyond stage one is evil.

Moreover, people who truly believe that an election brought evil people into power are more likely to take to the streets than are those who believe that an election merely put stage one thinkers in office.

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  1. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):
    So I am not really of a mind to argue this in a pure theoretical framework without empirical influences and effects.

    I don’t understand what “arguing this in a pure theoretical framework without empirical influences and effects” means. Could you give a simple example?

    Mark Camp (View Comment):
    Any coercive measure (including a law) forbidding any voluntary exchange denies the two people who would have made it exactly the benefit that they would have received from it, had they been free to make it.

    This. You describe something that looks like an exchange that only involves the interests of two parties to the exchange. I view exchanges involving parties who reside in the United States as affecting the interests of others as well. Benefits and detriments get shared beyond the exchanging parties, otherwise why would those provisions exist in the US Constitution? And we are living through a great example that illustrates this today.

    • #61
  2. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):
    Sure it is. Profits are a measure of how much benefit it is providing to its customers.

    Does this apply to monopolies?

    Yes, absolutely. How could anyone question that?

    Those who structured American society in the 1800’s would have disagreed with you. When someone through their work, timing, masses of capital not only captures an industry, but the entire surrounding networks, there is a huge danger to the society as a whole. That is how those people who were society structuring people came up with the idea of AntiTrust.

    From time to time, some writers on ricochet state how this President or that one, say Teddy Roosevelt or Wilson, gave in to the crass and terrorist threats of the Wobblies or others, only they miss the point. If the economic system becomes too heavily weighted in favor of the top one percent of one percent, class revolt will happen. Then our nation would end up like Russia did in 1917.

    An economic philosophy must never be so sacrosanct that the society which gives birth to it is destroyed by it.

    You might be interested in reading, The Progressive Era.  It tells the story of how, after the Civil War, different industries tried again and again to create cartels to fix prices.  Each time the cartels failed.  The incentive to “cheat” and drop prices to gain market share at the expense of the other cartel members was just too great.  

    The problem was solved during the Progressive Era (roughly 1890 to 1920) by creating government-enforced cartels such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the Federal Trade Commission. Naturally, this was all done in the name of protecting the public.

    FDR’s New Deal extended cartels to agriculture and to the automotive and airline industries, while LBJ’s Great Society Medicare and Medicaid programs extended them to healthcare.

    Monopolies don’t last without government sponsorship. 

    • #62
  3. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    Those who structured American society in the 1800’s would have disagreed with you.

    @CarolJoy,

    Do you?

    Cheers,
    Camp

    There were attempts in the 1880’s to avoid monopolies. And I agree with those attempts.

    We are in the middle of a world wide crisis, which is rapidly turning into an economic crisis. All roads of that crisis’ start point do lead back to Mr Gates.

    His proxy in the Imperial College was Neil Ferguson. Ferguson should have been disappeared from the academic reality after his disastrous setting in motion of the Great Britain cattle slaughter of the 1990’s. But his patron was a major donor of the Imperial College, so he rtained his position.

    So Ferguson then comes up with his 2020 forecast of a major 3.4% mortality rate of COVID. Now it is clear he used shabby modeling; but although he is no longer going to be part of any British advisory group, he still will hold on to his position at Imperial.

    Meanwhile if you examine Fauci, you find out that over the years, he has held two separate positions on Board of Directors of entities headed by none other than Bill Gates. Originally Fauci was part of our government agency due to Poppy Bush getting word it was important to have Fauci aboard.

    Although the common perception among the members of the public was that young President Clinton was the polar opposite of Poppy Bush, in many ways he was a dopple ganger. Clinton maintained the same “forward” thinking aspect of oversight of health, medical and food issues as Poppy Bush did. Science – real science involving 5 or 6 years of study and done independently –  was no longer needed: simply have an industry insider positioned in the pertinent government agency. Then have that insider proclaim the safety and health needs of this or that were met.

    The most famous example of this was Mike Taylor, the Monsanto insider, getting via Clinton a seat at a top division inside the FDA to proclaim that Gm foods seeds and crops were nutritionally equivalent of the conventional crops. (Which has really proved too bad for the millions of Americans who now cannot eat a croissant without needing Previcet or some other prescription med for their now chronic stomach problems.)

    End of Part One

    • #63
  4. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    Noting that something – trade or railroads – is good does not prove that government must subsidize it. Nor does opposing government subsidies imply opposition to the good. Noting that something – monopoly or pollution – is bad does not prove that government must ban it. Nor does opposing government bans imply approval of the bad.

    Opposing government interference may simply mean recognition that Adam Smith was right when he said, “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”

    • #64
  5. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    Monopoly is the left’s eternal boogeyman. To counter this imaginary demon, they demand granting ever more power to the uncontestable and heavily-armed monopoly that is the state.

    • #65
  6. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Richard Fulmer (View Comment):
    Monopolies don’t last without government sponsorship. 

    So we can expect the social media and other platforms (facebook, google, youtube, twitter) situation to change or not? I don’t know if they have a sponsor or not.

    • #66
  7. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Part Two:

    When one untangles the web woven by Bill Gates, you see he has used his donations to hold sway over the American educational system; over the American system of journalism and “free press”, over the American health system; over the research done in college and universities across the world, especially regarding more GM foods. Also he is seeking to “dim the sun” thru promoting distributing millions of tons supposedly of iron in the skies over our heads, he has pushed vast vaccination campaigns in third world nations where  impoverished babies and children are experimented with as many as 50 vaccines for polio before their fifth birthdays, likewise his monies are instrumental in the set up of women’s reproductive centers in third world nations, where abortions are performed.

    So you have a man who has supplied a lot of money for many questionable activities, and who has  helped enshrine these things into everyday consciousness. He is on the side of “Global Climate Change” except when it suits him to not be. He is on the side of abortion. He is on the side of abortion, although his wife Melinda only speaks of condoms being distributed; never abortion.

    He has helped keep hidden the negative aspects of vaccines. All medicines ought to be considered from the aspect of risk vs benefit. The polio vaccine was an illness that affected children and adults with a life altering illness that its victims could suffer and die from. Polio’s survivors ended up in wheelchairs and in iron lungs. So a vaccine to be jabbed into a three year old’s arm might make sense. There was a risk. The vaccine could provide a benefit.

    But now we have evolved into a situation where day old babies are given the hep B vaccine, which is one of the riskiest vaccines on the market regardless of your  age. Hep B is a disease that is rampant among that group of people who have multiple sex partners and share needles,something no babies I have ever heard of end up doing. Michael Belkin lost his five week old daughter to that vaccine. Belkin was a world class statistician. He ran the numbers to then find out that the risk to benefit was nil – there was no risk of the actual disease, so no benefit would be had even if its vax was totally safe. But hep B vax is dangerous. So it compounds the risk to benefit even more against this vaccine.

    We who have tried to get this thrown out of the vaccine schedule know  the numbers of babies who are affected are played with – just as the public is finding out about COVID deaths.

    So now we have COVID, whose solution might be as simple as an available 20 buck a month medicine which lupus and malarial and chronic arthritis patients have used for years. But is it wrong of me to suspect Mr Gates is behind the suppression of this medicine?

     

    • #67
  8. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):
    This. You describe something that looks like an exchange that only involves the interests of two parties to the exchange. I view exchanges involving parties who reside in the United States as affecting the interests of others as well. Benefits and detriments get shared beyond the exchanging parties, otherwise why would those provisions exist in the US Constitution? And we are living through a great example that illustrates this today.

    What is the limiting principle?  If my every action or inaction affects every other human being, must the government regulate my every action and prevent my inaction?  Must we live in absolute tyranny before we can satisfy your demands for safety from your fellow Americans?

    • #68
  9. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Richard Fulmer (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):
    This. You describe something that looks like an exchange that only involves the interests of two parties to the exchange. I view exchanges involving parties who reside in the United States as affecting the interests of others as well. Benefits and detriments get shared beyond the exchanging parties, otherwise why would those provisions exist in the US Constitution? And we are living through a great example that illustrates this today.

    What is the limiting principle? If my every action or inaction affects every other human being, then the government must regulate my every action and prevent my inaction. Must we live in absolute tyranny before we can satisfy your demands for safety from your fellow Americans?

    The limiting principle I would address at this stage would be what it takes in foreign trade policy for the United States to remain a country that is self-sustaining.

    • #69
  10. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Just this examination of the pain and suffering that has occurred thru COVID shows the harm that is done when capitalism is allowed unfettered reign. We have a one man pony show whose various strategies have now sheltered the world in place – with the exception of Sweden. The economic ramifications are enormous and will prove far more catastrophic than the disease.

    The idea that one man, Bill Gates and his network of proxies, his vast system of interlocking donations, especially the 100 million bucks to WHO that seems to allowed WHO official Tedros to condemn COVID as pandemic, does paint modern day “vulture capitalism” as something that needs re-consideration. Fauci sat on his Board of Directors in two of his business ventures, while Birx sat in similar fashion inside Bloomberg’s business empire.

    We had a popular, productive and profitable version of “family capitalism” in the late 1940’s and 1950’s, under Truman and Eisenhower. Our Congress critters rode coach on the airplanes – they did not have private jets shuttling them  around. No business people owned entire stables of Senators. What have we allowed to go on that now we have this destructive form of capitalism? If the coming economic collapse is as serious as I suspect it will be, I am not sure we will be able to do anything as a nation  but sink into a new Californian version of Mao-ist China. 

    • #70
  11. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    Fauci sat on his Board of Directors in two of his business ventures, while Birx sat in similar fashion inside Bloomberg’s business empire.

    I didn’t know that.

    • #71
  12. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    If the coming economic collapse is as serious as I suspect it will be, I am not sure we will be able to do anything as a nation but sink into a new Californian version of Mao-ist China. 

    I think to insure this direction has a lot to do with why the Obama team effort tried to keep Russia in the limelight rather than China. It is almost unbelievable to any average citizen who looks at the international scene that our government would consider Russia a more formidable foe than China, unless they don’t even want to view China as a foe. And that’s why Trump’s view of China drives them nuts.

    • #72
  13. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):
    The limiting principle I would address at this stage would be what it takes in foreign trade policy for the United States to remain a country that is self-sustaining.

    Autarky is a recipe for poverty.  Moreover, China isn’t the world.  We don’t need to punish Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, and Europe because of what China has done or may do.  We’re also going to need those countries as allies as China’s threat grows.

    • #73
  14. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Richard Fulmer (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):
    The limiting principle I would address at this stage would be what it takes in foreign trade policy for the United States to remain a country that is self-sustaining.

    Autarky is a recipe for poverty. Moreover, China isn’t the world. We don’t need to punish Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, and Europe because of what China has done or may do. We’re also going to need those countries as allies as China’s threat grows.

    We have some acting as if China is the world. I didn’t say we need to stop dealing with countries that share our values.

    • #74
  15. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    I think the limiting principle has a lot to do with trust which is an important element in free markets. Doesn’t exist with China.

    • #75
  16. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    As a Christian, I believe that luring a person into temptation is not benefiting him, but harming him. Here I am using the word “benefit”as Christ did. I am making a moral judgement.

    When I speak of “benefit” as a economic scientist, I mean something very different. I am necessarily eschewing moral judgement, which is by definition unscientific. A scientist can never discover any moral truth. Morality is completely outside of the domain of a scientist.

    Does the same schism hold true for politics?

    No. Morality is completely inside the domain of politics.

    Scientists are moral creatures…

    I didn’t write clearly. A scientist as such never asserts any moral truth. When a person is curious about a scientific question, he is never curious about a moral question. When he proposes an answer, it is never a moral assertion.

    That means that a scientific question is, by definition, a question about how things are, not how they ought to be. A moral question is, by definition, a question about how things ought to be, regardless of how they are.

    “What is the mass of this sample?” is not a moral question. The sample has no ability to have a mass that is morally good, nor a mass that is morally wrong. That is a scientific question. You are right that every person acts sometimes as a scientist and sometimes as a moral creature, but you are missing my point.

     

    Yes, perhaps I am splitting hairs here, but there is a moral difference between the weatherman who gives a daily forecast and the climate scientist who predicts the end of the world as we know it — both are statistically based, but one is much broader and intricate and requires greater presuppositions than the other. Economics is more like the climate than the weather, and the amount of faith it takes to make predictions is greater.

    I completely disagree. In my view, there is not moral difference between any two statements about facts about physical reality. There is no moral difference between the statement of the weatherman, “I think that the high today will be 60 degrees” and a statement of a climate scientist “I think that the average temperature in 100 years will be 15 degrees higher than today.”

    You are confusing science with morality.

     

    Are you saying that all science, and specifically economics, takes place in a moral vacuum?

    • #76
  17. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    As a Christian, I believe that luring a person into temptation is not benefiting him, but harming him. Here I am using the word “benefit”as Christ did. I am making a moral judgement.

    When I speak of “benefit” as a economic scientist, I mean something very different. I am necessarily eschewing moral judgement, which is by definition unscientific. A scientist can never discover any moral truth. Morality is completely outside of the domain of a scientist.

    Does the same schism hold true for politics?

    No. Morality is completely inside the domain of politics.

    Scientists are moral creatures…

    I didn’t write clearly. A scientist as such never asserts any moral truth. When a person is curious about a scientific question, he is never curious about a moral question. When he proposes an answer, it is never a moral assertion.

    That means that a scientific question is, by definition, a question about how things are, not how they ought to be. A moral question is, by definition, a question about how things ought to be, regardless of how they are.

    “What is the mass of this sample?” is not a moral question. The sample has no ability to have a mass that is morally good, nor a mass that is morally wrong. That is a scientific question. You are right that every person acts sometimes as a scientist and sometimes as a moral creature, but you are missing my point.

    Yes, perhaps I am splitting hairs here, but there is a moral difference between the weatherman who gives a daily forecast and the climate scientist who predicts the end of the world as we know it — both are statistically based, but one is much broader and intricate and requires greater presuppositions than the other. Economics is more like the climate than the weather, and the amount of faith it takes to make predictions is greater.

    I completely disagree. In my view, there is not moral difference between any two statements about facts about physical reality. There is no moral difference between the statement of the weatherman, “I think that the high today will be 60 degrees” and a statement of a climate scientist “I think that the average temperature in 100 years will be 15 degrees higher than today.”

    You are confusing science with morality.

    Are you saying that all science, and specifically economics, takes place in a moral vacuum?

    Wait a minute, who said economics is a science? I don’t subscribe to human behaviors being sciences.

    • #77
  18. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    Just this examination of the pain and suffering that has occurred thru COVID shows the harm that is done when capitalism is allowed unfettered reign.

    You think our economic system in any way resembles “unfettered Capitalism”?

    It is to laugh.

    • #78
  19. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    Just this examination of the pain and suffering that has occurred thru COVID shows the harm that is done when capitalism is allowed unfettered reign.

    You think our economic system in any way resembles “unfettered Capitalism”?

    It is to laugh.

    I don’t think @caroljoy said ‘unfettered Capitalism’ but unfetter reign without any specificity on Capitalism.

    • #79
  20. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    As a Christian, I believe that luring a person into temptation is not benefiting him, but harming him. Here I am using the word “benefit”as Christ did. I am making a moral judgement.

    When I speak of “benefit” as a economic scientist, I mean something very different. I am necessarily eschewing moral judgement, which is by definition unscientific. A scientist can never discover any moral truth. Morality is completely outside of the domain of a scientist.

    Does the same schism hold true for politics?

    No. Morality is completely inside the domain of politics.

    Scientists are moral creatures…

    I didn’t write clearly. A scientist as such never asserts any moral truth. When a person is curious about a scientific question, he is never curious about a moral question. When he proposes an answer, it is never a moral assertion.

    That means that a scientific question is, by definition, a question about how things are, not how they ought to be. A moral question is, by definition, a question about how things ought to be, regardless of how they are.

    “What is the mass of this sample?” is not a moral question. The sample has no ability to have a mass that is morally good, nor a mass that is morally wrong. That is a scientific question. You are right that every person acts sometimes as a scientist and sometimes as a moral creature, but you are missing my point.

    Yes, perhaps I am splitting hairs here, but there is a moral difference between the weatherman who gives a daily forecast and the climate scientist who predicts the end of the world as we know it — both are statistically based, but one is much broader and intricate and requires greater presuppositions than the other. Economics is more like the climate than the weather, and the amount of faith it takes to make predictions is greater.

    I completely disagree. In my view, there is not moral difference between any two statements about facts about physical reality. There is no moral difference between the statement of the weatherman, “I think that the high today will be 60 degrees” and a statement of a climate scientist “I think that the average temperature in 100 years will be 15 degrees higher than today.”

    You are confusing science with morality.

    Are you saying that all science, and specifically economics, takes place in a moral vacuum?

    Wait a minute, who said economics is a science? I don’t subscribe to human behaviors being sciences.

    I let that slide.

    • #80
  21. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Does the left think the right is evil? I’ve not been comfortable with the saying: “The Right thinks the Left are people with bad ideas, and the Left thinks the Right are bad people… with ideas.” I think that’s too generous to the Left.

    As a Christian, I think – and more and more it’s true – that there is a strict and ineluctable separation between the Right and the Left in the West. We know that the Left is trying to build a (largely godless) eutopia. We know that gaia/mother earth is a de facto religion to the left. We know that Biblical morality is frowned upon by many vocal leaders. We know that sin and morality have been substituted with situation ethics. We know that there are those that say there is no divine Judgment. We know that self-defense and defending one’s family and neighbors is being taken away from individuals and taken over (fecklessly) by the government. We know that the right to life, only extends to certain class of people: those that have already been born. And we see that in society life has been cheapened. And we see power corrupting.

    “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” I believe that’s what we are seeing today.

    Godless Communism, and secular Socialism, has taken a foothold in Western culture and is deliberately tearing it apart.

    But isn’t that all just their “Stage One Thinking?”

    • #81
  22. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Richard Fulmer (View Comment):
    The free market qualification is important since it excludes the possibility that my profits come from rent seeking. Also, in a free market, government enforces property rights, so if my factory pollutes the air or water, I will be held liable for damages, so my incentive is to minimize environmental damage.

    Or, your incentive is to somehow escape responsibility through bribes, etc. if necessary, or maybe just compliant politicians if possible.

    • #82
  23. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Franco (View Comment):
    I think the basic difference is beyond economics. The world envisioned by the left requires full cooperation from the populace in order to work. Theoretically, ( since it’s impossible) once everyone acts in concert for the greater good, give up their individual goals, and ultimately their individuality, their vision can be enacted.

    That seems like about the dictionary definition/example of Stage One Thinking.

    • #83
  24. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    As a Christian, I believe that luring a person into temptation is not benefiting him, but harming him. Here I am using the word “benefit”as Christ did. I am making a moral judgement.

    When I speak of “benefit” as a economic scientist, I mean something very different. I am necessarily eschewing moral judgement, which is by definition unscientific. A scientist can never discover any moral truth. Morality is completely outside of the domain of a scientist.

    Does the same schism hold true for politics?

    No. Morality is completely inside the domain of politics.

    Scientists are moral creatures…

    I didn’t write clearly. A scientist as such never asserts any moral truth. When a person is curious about a scientific question, he is never curious about a moral question. When he proposes an answer, it is never a moral assertion.

    That means that a scientific question is, by definition, a question about how things are, not how they ought to be. A moral question is, by definition, a question about how things ought to be, regardless of how they are.

    “What is the mass of this sample?” is not a moral question. The sample has no ability to have a mass that is morally good, nor a mass that is morally wrong. That is a scientific question. You are right that every person acts sometimes as a scientist and sometimes as a moral creature,SNIP

     

    SNIP but there is a moral difference between the weatherman who gives a daily forecast and the climate scientist who predicts the end of the world as we know it — both are statistically based, but one is much broader and intricate and requires greater presuppositions than the other. Economics is more like the climate than the weather, and the amount of faith it takes to make predictions is greater.

    SNIP  there is not moral difference between any two statements about facts about physical reality. There is no moral difference between the statement of the weatherman, “I think that the high today will be 60 degrees” and a statement of a climate scientist “I think that the average temperature in 100 years will be 15 degrees higher than today.”

    You are confusing science with morality.

     

    Are you saying that all science, and specifically economics, takes place in a moral vacuum?

    I wonder how Mark will respond. I see that theoretically a scientist is neither moral or immoral, but simply heeding the principles of his or her craft: observation, selecting of a hypothesis, determining the method of examination, and also methods of data collection and how to determine the conclusion. Then risk vs benefit when dealing with the conclusion’s solution (if any).

    But these days scientists allow  themselves to say what they’ re told to say – regardless if it is true or not, and regardless if their lie could imperil all  of humanity or not.

    • #84
  25. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    But these days scientists allow themselves to say what they’ re told to say – regardless if it is true or not, and regardless if their lie could imperil all of humanity or not.

    What are you talking about? 

    • #85
  26. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Richard Fulmer (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):
    Sure it is. Profits are a measure of how much benefit it is providing to its customers.

    Does this apply to monopolies?

    Yes, absolutely. How could anyone question that?

    Those who structured American society in the 1800’s would have disagreed with you. When someone through their work, timing, masses of capital not only captures an industry, but the entire surrounding networks, there is a huge danger to the society as a whole. That is how those people who were society structuring people came up with the idea of AntiTrust.

    From time to time, some writers on ricochet state how this President or that one, say Teddy Roosevelt or Wilson, gave in to the crass and terrorist threats of the Wobblies or others, only they miss the point. If the economic system becomes too heavily weighted in favor of the top one percent of one percent, class revolt will happen. Then our nation would end up like Russia did in 1917.

    An economic philosophy must never be so sacrosanct that the society which gives birth to it is destroyed by it.

    You might be interested in reading, The Progressive Era. It tells the story of how, after the Civil War, different industries tried again and again to create cartels to fix prices. Each time the cartels failed. The incentive to “cheat” and drop prices to gain market share at the expense of the other cartel members was just too great.

    The problem was solved during the Progressive Era (roughly 1890 to 1920) by creating government-enforced cartels such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the Federal Trade Commission. Naturally, this was all done in the name of protecting the public.

    FDR’s New Deal extended cartels to agriculture and to the automotive and airline industries, while LBJ’s Great Society Medicare and Medicaid programs extended them to healthcare.

    Monopolies don’t last without government sponsorship.

    I was trying to think if my example of Mr Bill Gates would fit into your explanation. He was able to steal the basic idea of Apple computer away from Jobs and Wozniak, and not only thru his dad’ s initial investment of 50K, but also his dad’s tremendous connections to the Defense Industry, a cartel buffed up by lavish  amounts of government spending by both parties’ approval, then begin his path to super ultra billionaire status that he holds now. With this COVID crisis, he is  about to be crowned The Emperor of the World. The Dems promise at least three more Stimulus packages, all of which will benefit Bill Gates in some way. So I agree – government sponsorship is key.

    • #86
  27. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    But these days scientists allow themselves to say what they’ re told to say – regardless if it is true or not, and regardless if their lie could imperil all of humanity or not.

    What are you talking about?

    Where have you been? Do you really think all the many scientists who have signed on to the concept of Catastrophic Global Change believe what they say they believe? Many of them do not. But they have witnessed their more forthright colleagues being booted out of prestigious governmental and academic positions, and losing not only their  jobs but the pensions that go with the jobs. So they go along for the sake of having a roof over their head.

    When I was part of the anti-pesticide movement, I mentioned what a shame it was that men and women valued the money over the truth. One scientist I respected a lot immediately said: “It is not just the money. A scientist loves being in the laboratory working on an assignment, the way a golfer loves being on the links or a baseball pitcher loves being on the mound.” I had never realized that before, but it makes sense. Top notch scientists really need the outlet of being inside a lab. When a scientist is fired and then blacklisted for not doing as they are told to do by industry, they lose part of their soul. Because they will never be inside a well equipped laboratory again.

    • #87
  28. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    But these days scientists allow themselves to say what they’ re told to say – regardless if it is true or not, and regardless if their lie could imperil all of humanity or not.

    What are you talking about?

    Where have you been? Do you really think all the many scientists who have signed on to the concept of Catastrophic Global Change believe what they say they believe? Many of them do not. But they have witnessed their more forthright colleagues being booted out of prestigious governmental and academic positions, and losing not only their jobs but the pensions that go with the jobs. So they go along for the sake of having a roof over their head.

    When I was part of the anti-pesticide movement, I mentioned what a shame it was that men and women valued the money over the truth. One scientist I respected a lot immediately said: “It is not just the money. A scientist loves being in the laboratory working on an assignment, the way a golfer loves being on the links or a baseball pitcher loves being on the mound.” I had never realized that before, but it makes sense. Top notch scientists really need the outlet of being inside a lab. When a scientist is fired and then blacklisted for not doing as they are told to do by industry, they lose part of their soul. Because they will never be inside a well equipped laboratory again.

    It would be nice if you had proof. Stories of this nature don’t mean anything without stories. 

    • #88
  29. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    You are confusing science with morality.

     

    Are you saying that all science, and specifically economics, takes place in a moral vacuum?

    I wonder how Mark will respond. I see that theoretically a scientist is neither moral or immoral, but simply heeding the principles of his or her craft: observation, selecting of a hypothesis, determining the method of examination, and also methods of data collection and how to determine the conclusion. Then risk vs benefit when dealing with the conclusion’s solution (if any).

    But these days scientists allow themselves to say what they’ re told to say – regardless if it is true or not, and regardless if their lie could imperil all of humanity or not.

    Yes, two points I have omitted are that economics is not a real science: it is not subject to controlled experimentation, and its findings are not reproducible.  The best we can do is to study how things went in the past, in a penetrating but anecdotal manner.

    And secondly, science isn’t what is was in the sixties, say.  Today article after article is written exposing the fraudulence or the incompetency of scientific papers and the fraudulence of the peer review process.

    And also I would add that science cannot empirically answer many questions, such as the cause or nature of the Big Bang, the cause or process of evolution, or speak definitively on the centuries-long or millennia-long forces that affect earth’s climate.

    • #89
  30. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    @caroljoy, here are fact checks on some of your conspiracy theories:

    • #90
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