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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.
Published in General
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.
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.
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
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.”
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
I didn’t know that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I let that slide.
But isn’t that all just their “Stage One Thinking?”
Or, your incentive is to somehow escape responsibility through bribes, etc. if necessary, or maybe just compliant politicians if possible.
That seems like about the dictionary definition/example of Stage One Thinking.
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.
What are you talking about?
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.
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.
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.
@caroljoy, here are fact checks on some of your conspiracy theories: