http://blog.mises.org/15272/mises-org-is-the-10-in-a-most-influential-study/We are getting there. Slowly. Accumulating people. Accumulating influence. All thanks to Lou and crew at Mises.org. If we become influential does that mean that we’re mainstream? And if we’re mainstream does that mean that we’re no longer radicals? “Let Us Rid Economics Of The Ludic Fallacy.” Probabilism in economics is a failure.
Source date (UTC): 2011-01-10 12:14:00 UTC
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/09/gabrielle-giffords-shooting-rightwing-rhetoricThe problem with the guardian’s position, is that Gifford’s attacker is a radical LEFTIST. He wasn’t agitated about anything ‘right wing’. He was angry that the congresswoman wasn’t LEFT WING ENOUGH. (Yet another example of the vast delta between the urgency of news reporting and the accuracy of what’s reported.)
Source date (UTC): 2011-01-10 10:34:00 UTC
From Thinkmarkets: Scientism in the way of science by Gene Callahan. Gene takes critics of economics to task. I misunderstand it at first, (as does Ebeling), and the ensuing commentary is worth reading. (Originally posted there. Posted here for documentary purposes. -A nod to the few sites like Econlib that seem to think documenting one’s work this way is bad for some reason.)
I repeatedly find attacks on positions in the social sciences made based on extremely limited and, frankly, antiquated views of how the physical sciences proceed. I will give one example from a rightist criticism of a leftist view, and one that is a leftist criticism of a rightist view, to illustrate that my point has nothing to do with ideology — or perhaps, that it has to do with the way ideology can lead one to embrace flimsy criticisms of other’s positions. The first excerpt is from Hunter Lewis’s book, Where Keynes Went Wrong: “In chapter 15, we saw how Keynes wrote N = F(D), which means that employment, denoted N, is a function of demand. Demand however is defined as expected sales, not actual sales. We noted that expectations are not a measurable quantity and thus do not belong in an equation.” Well, one way to measure these expectations would be to walk around and ask the entrepreneurs “How much do you expect to sell this year?” then total up those amounts. Why in the world this would not be a fine measurable quantity is unclear. But perhaps even worse is Lewis’s contention that only a “measurable quantity” belongs in a mathematical equation. So, let us strike pi from all of our equations, and e, and, most certainly, i! All complex numbers must be banished, and negative numbers are fairly suspect as well. Furthermore, most of the entities dealt with by modern physics are not directly measurable. Instead, what we measure is a dial reading or a trail on a photographic plate, things which require a great deal of theory to connect them to entities like electrical fields or positrons. As the philosopher Susanne Langer wrote:
The sense-data on which the propositions of modern science rest are, for the most part, little photographic spots and blurs, or inky curved lines on paper. These data are empirical enough, but of course they are not themselves the phenomena in question; the actual phenomena stand behind them as their supposed causes… we see only the fluctuations of a tiny arrow, the trailing path of a stylus, or the appearance of a speck of light, and calculate to the “facts” of our science. What is directly observable is only a sign of the “physical fact”; it requires interpretation to yield scientific propositions… and [realizing this,] all at once, the edifice of human knowledge stands before us, not as a vast collection of sense reports, but as a structure of facts that are symbols and laws that are their meanings.
(Philosophy in a New Key) And surely this was what Keynes thought: aggregate demand may not be directly observable, but we can formulate laws by which itseffects are observable, for instance, in a recession. Now, whether he was correct or not is not my topic, but there is certainly nothing unscientific about his hypothesis. The second excerpt is from a history of marginalism at The New School for Social Research: “However, [marginalism’s] Achilles’ heel was the very notion of ‘marginal utility’. Marginal utility, let us be frank, is hardly a scientific concept: unobservable, unmeasurable and untestable, marginal utility is a notion with very dubious scientific standing.” Unobservable, unmeasurable and untestable — like, say, infinitesimals in calculus! (And people like Berkeley directed just such criticism at infinitesimals and other mathematical notions.) Once again, we have some unfounded belief that scientific entities must be directly observable, rather than observed by their hypothesized effects. (And certainly the theory of marginal utility predicts many observable phenomena, such as the lack of a price for air in normal circumstances.)
[callout] … probabilism in the social sciences as we understand it … is unscientific. Not simply beause the methods are logically false and because the predictive capacity of our methods are false, but because NOT USING THEM appears to produce better results than using them.[/callout]
I think that Gene’s argument is a bit clearer now that I have read comments by others. And perhaps I’m adding additional vectors of inquiry rather than debating his position. Gene’s argument is that people from the physical sciences argue that economics is not a science and counters the grounds on which their criticisms are based. I interpreted his posting that people from the psychological school were forming the criticism against positivism in economics. Gene’s criticisms are correct, in that mathematics relies upon incomplete approximations that are convenient contrivances, and that economic science relies upon similar assumptions, so he is attacking the physical sciences on their methods – saying their criticisms of social sciences are hypocritical. I would argue that since the velocity of the transfer and transformation of energy in time and space is knowable, and that the same velocity of knowledge is not yet knowable, that probabilism in the social sciences as we understand it – and as I have stated below, is unscientific. Not simply beause the methods are logically false, and because the predictive capacity of our methods are false, but because NOT USING THEM appears to produce better results than using them. And that while results in the physical sciences have neutral consequences (or perhaps do not have moral consequences – those that affect others without their consent) that consequences of failure necessary for testing in the physical sciences creates negative externalities, as well as being simply counter-productive in the social sciences. (I believe I understand how to discover the formula for that velocity, and how to know it, but not what it is, and that someone more intelligent, and most likely younger than I am will be required to solve it. But at least google is accumulating the data needed to determine it.)
Gene, Well, I think the argument against the use of models is different from that which you’re stating. There are three or four major lines of argument in your posting all making assumptions about ‘science’ and the scientific method. Marginal utility is an expression of the relativity and subjectivity of value, and the plasticity of utility, and the dynamic variability of value in real time. This creates a set of variables that lead to the effective uniqueness of each object in time for many (if not all) objects, which in turn leads to the categorical error of aggregation when applied to quantities, each of which includes necessary errors due to aggregation. And this error of aggregation is the reason for non-prediction. And therefore non-prediction is caused by the very reasons austrians stated. That in the aggregate much of this can be modeled, is true, at least for many commodities. Objects in physical space have a prior course. So do human events. We can measure the delta in the course of physical events, but CANNOT measure the delta in the course of social events. That is the simplest statement of the problem. It is that social events CANNOT be measured because they are temporally unique. And further, Marginal utility is absolutely testable (and has been.) So I don’t understand, or rather, you could be making any number of points, and its unclear which. Marginal utility is a categorical description of a visible, measurable process, whenever that process results in an exchange (at least.) True, we cannot know the opportunity costs paid by individuals, but we can measure whenever they do act to exchange goods or services. Instead, the criticism of models is not on grounds of material measurement of transactions, but that :
a) empirical models in the social sciences are not predictive and are even inversely predictive in relation to their utility in time.
b) that they are consistently not predictive (although they are descriptive of the past) and therefore false, and
c) that as demonstrably false, they are unscientific. That due to subjectivity and innovation, plasticity of utility, and the resulting heterogeneity of capital, and asymmetry of information, shocks and the vicissitudes of time, they are logically destined to be false. (ie: it is not the use of measurement, it is the use of measurement to determine causality – not correlation but causality – that is scientific.)
d) that the use of false, non-predictive, arguments are used to justify implementing dangerous risk-accelerating unscientific policy.
e) that we cannot model what might have been, had we not used false models to enact policy, and therefore calculate the real cost of policy. (ie: we cannot compare what might have been with what has come to pass, and sum our costs plus our profits.)
f) that by implementing such policies we expose ourselves to and indeed, encourage greater risk. Ie: the austrian business cycle of booms and busts.
g) that it appears, that in history, whenever the commercial sector grows faster than the state can regulate it or redistribute the capital from it, and form a predatory bureaucracy upon it, the results for the entire society, at least narratively if not certainly empirically, seem to be better than those where state intervention has occurred. Meaning that the Austrian criticism is that the use of the calculus of measurement in heuristic social processes will result in non-prediction and exacerbation of risk — or at least, such models will be limited to prediction based on the asymmetry of information discovered by the act of building the model, but not of the asymmetry of information yet to be developed by innovation or shocks, and therefore undiscoverable by the process of building a model. I would argue that Keynes covered these problems in A.T.O.P. Although I am not a scholar of his work. And that austrians agreed with him on many of those positions. But the PRACTICAL matter is that the profession is heavily invested in a technology that demonstrably does not work, yet is relied upon for policy decisions every day. Models are a superior means of describing causal processes where language and human limits to conception fail. However, tehy rely upon a mathematics derived from the much more simplistic physical sciences. And until we can measure the ‘natural forces’ of men’s mental capacity, which are largely the properties of memory in time when in the presence of vast information, we have no formulae by which we can call our efforts sufficiently scientific rather than simply a convenient means of toying with economies against the will of those struggling with knowledge and capital to avoid and circumvent all that toying. So either I don’t understand, or I do not think your criticism is founded. The people that criticize empiricism may not be using a substantive foundation either, and may justify sentiments and intuitions with false appeals to reason that they do not fully understand. But I do not see how your criticism is logical in the context. Looking forward, solving the problem of induction instead of relying on (false) equilibria relies that we understand, and develop a formulae what might best be called ‘velocity’, which is the rate of innovation given the limited ability of the human mind to make ‘jumps’. Therein is a formula of greater importance than E=mC^2. And because that velocity can be known, probabilism will have a rational boundary, rather than the irrational boundary we have conveniently constructed out of historicist necessity. I hope I have been sufficiently cogent on a subject of complexity that has admittedly exhausted many of our best minds. And apologize in advance for my failures. Cheers.
http://www.capitalismv3.com/index.php/2010/12/a-response-to-gene-callahan-scientism-in-the-way-of-science/An interesting conversation on the current state of criticism of mathematics in the social sciences.
Source date (UTC): 2010-12-05 17:53:00 UTC
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20101202_geopolitical_journey_part_7_polandBrilliant, insightful, and possibly profound advice. As always.
OTOH, I do not think it is a forgone conclusion that a German-Russian Entent is bad for europe or the world. In fact, I think such a relationship is economically, and socially useful for both germany and russia. Such an alliance mat be a necessity that the anglo world should see as a useful and necessary one — largely because ours is fragmenting.
Be
Source date (UTC): 2010-12-03 14:55:00 UTC
Mr. Galdel, of Time Magazine, asks readers what questions he should put before Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, and implies, without understanding his own cognitive bias, that the liberal belief in our own wisdom and control of our own destiny is unquestionable. http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2010/11/23/whats-wrong-with-bernanke-and-qe2-ask-nissam-taleb/
Taleb has recently been bashing Bernanke saying he doesn’t know what he is doing because he didn’t see the financial crisis coming. But Taleb has also said that the financial crisis was a Black Swan. But isn’t the definition of a black swan something that people don’t see coming. Yes, we should be ready for unusual events. But don’t think you can criticize someone for not see(ing) something that by definition was unpredictable, or at least very, very unlikely. What say you Taleb?
Mr. Gandel, “not see(ing) something that by definition was unpredictable, or at least very, very unlikely.” That’s the whole point. That statement expresses the entire difference between left and right political philosophies, and between quantitative economists, and the austrian school: namely, that the unforeseen is unpredictable because: 1) The foreseen is unquantifiable (this is the entire issue in economics) 2) the unquantifiable is unpredictable 3) the scale of the impact of unforeseen, unquantifiable, unpredictable events is likewise unquantifiable. Therefore risk is there for not probabilistically measurable by mathematical means. Therefore risk measurement, and quantitative probability as used in financial speculation is FRAUD if committed by those who understand these principles, and ERROR if used by those who do not. Since these ideas are hard to grasp, a few people commit fraud, and a very large number of people commit error. Taleb’s indictment of the Nobel Committee is the most serious because it was their awarding of prizes to econometricians that allowed those who wished to commit FRAUD, to convince a lot of people to commit error, and in doing so create this catastrophe. Taleb’s proposition is that we are applying the mathematics of closed, permutable systems (probability) to the open, innovative, dynamic system of human interaction. In effect this is the warning given by the Austrian school to all political economists: we know how to enable the greatest amount of creative innovation in a marketplace, and in doing so create the greatest competitive advantage and the lowest prices, for the benefit of all. But political systems must aim at enabling that process, not achieving any particular end, while assuming that that innovative process will tolerate infinite manipulation. Taleb’s recommendation in The Black Swan, is that we must build our nations such that we recognize the COMMON-NESS of disruptive, unforeseen events. Therefore we should seek stability, security, and safety, and not expose ourselves to risks. We should never have assumed that such a thing as complex derivatives would provide risk mitigation — regardless of corrupt rating companies and bankers. We should build policy that expects the unforeseen. We should avoid policy that invites fragility from the impact of the unforeseen. This is probably an anathema to Time’s editorial staff. Because Taleb’s premise is core of Conservative political philosophy: take small risks, work through the market, and do not empower politicians to expose us to risks: Maintain strength and capital, both human and material, so that we can survive the inevitable shocks to our system. Of course, if we just read Aesop’s Fables we can learn the single lesson that Aesop attempted to teach us: avoiding the error of hubris – overestimating our knowledge and understanding.
From http://dmarron.com/2010/10/31/how-corrupt-is-the-united-states/
“According to a recent study, the United States has more public sector corruption than do many other developed economies.”
“Perception” is only a measure of popularity. It is not a fact of relative corruption. The problem faced by the USA is that it is too large, and our political system is insufficient for a democratic republic of this size and complexity. The vast progress that has been made by human beings has largely been due to the invention of technologies, namely the scientific method, mathematics and in particular probability, but including laws, regulations, accounting, banking and interest – technologies that improve our fairly limited if not entirely incompetent perceptions. Our perceptions are notoriously faulty. So what instead are meaningful measures of corruption. Corruption defined as the privatization of public office for personal benefit? Most people confuse corruption with immorality or incompetence. And those three artifacts of human behavior each have different causes. The vast majority of the references that people actually refer to are the result of natural bureaucratic incompetence when bureaucrats are isolated from the market process of competition. The rest are either the natural side effect of the democratic process which all but requires deception, or the difference between an individual’s perception of the real world, and the actions that are possible under this form of government given the size and diversity of classes, races cultures and economic interests that exist in the polity. As such the rating is nonsensical. It is trivial for Denmark to have lower perceived corruption than the USA. However, it is in fact, far harder to to create lower perceived corruption in the vast bureaucracy of an international empire like the USA. Because perceptible corruption is largely the result of whether you agree or disagree with what you perceive. People in government are rarely evil. They are more likely lazy, ignorant, incompetent, or simply happy to profit from their isolation from the market process and their ability to dodge the delivery of customer service we experience in the rest of our lives.
From The Left’s Unlikely Alliance with Islam By Robert Eugene Simmons Jr.
[callout]First we encounter Marxism, which is a religion masquerading as a political movement. When we finally defeat Marxism the void is almost immediately filled by Islam, which is a political movement masquerading as a religion.[/callout]
Most fair-minded Americans have no problem with people who wish to practice their religion. In addition, most fair-minded Americans know of the difficult pasts of Christianity and Judaism and would demand of Islam what has been demanded of other religions. Americans don’t tolerate inquisitions anymore than they do Sharia courts. Americans realize that religious freedom is inherent in the melting pot that is America, but they also understand that all religions must exist under an umbrella of mutual respect and within the boundaries of common law. Americans would no more accept honor killings than they would accept a Catholic man killing atheists for the sake of his religion. The freedom of religion, in the end, is not a carte blanche to do whatever you wish and then yell “first amendment,” but rather a constraint to prevent the government from imposing a single religion, as Islamic governments do.
I would add, that any religion that seeks dominion over temporal matters (to establish laws) is not a religion, but a political movement masquerading as a religion. And any religion that encourages its people to lie about their convictions, is incompatible with democratic government. Even worse, it’s incompatible with the western way of life. First we encounter Marxism, which is a religion masquerading as a political movement. When we finally defeat Marxism the void is almost immediately filled by Islam, which is a political movement masquerading as a religion. Islam and Marxism are the same. They are the totalitarianism of equality in ignorance and poverty. (In retrospect, Christianity wasn’t much better when it was brought into the empire. )
In William Easterly’s post “Why can’t leading conservative magazine understand freedom?” he refers to a National Review article “China Teaches US Lessons About Economic Freedom“. I replied in the comments: William, I’ve read this post four times, and it’s still not very clear what you’re arguing for and against. I think you’re reading far too much into a what are simple, broad analogies that express a sentiment not a formula. All he’s saying is that small increases in freedom produced a great impact on china. And he’s implying that small decreases in freedom here in the USA, will have as grand a set of effects. I think you’re both confused and you both overrate government, overrate individuals, and underrate demographic migration and change. Growth was easy for the USA during the 1800’s: buy half a continent from Napoleon and import millions of Europeans into it. Sell them all sorts of consumer goods so that they fill up the territory, and so that you can collect profit and create capitalist barons doing so. Use the cheap land and labor to produce commodity goods and sell them to europe. Cause a price catastrophe in europe. Let them have a horrendous civil war and inherit their intellectuals and england’s naval empire. Now, take a country like china, forcibly held back in ignorance and poverty by Mao who decided it was better to have everyone poor and suffering than a wealthy south and a poor north and west — fragmenting the chinese empire. Now, import vast amounts of western technology, western banking and accounting technology in particular, and use your inexpensive labor to produce goods based on that technology cheaply and sell back to the westerners. China’s growth is largely in the form of construction: moving people from hovels in the rural areas, to apartments in urban areas. The country is vastly poor. And it’s per-capita GDP is horrid. They used totalitarianism and capitalism to manage their expansion, we used republicanism and capitalism to do the same thing. There is nothing interesting about china. Nothing. There is nothing interesting about america, either, which is why you’re both confused. What’s interesting is how Europe in general, and England in particular, created so much innovation, how Americans capitalized on it, and how we can use that tradition and culture of innovation to compete in a world where we are no longer the one making money from a huge demographic change. Once cheap labor stops, and marginal differences in knowledge are exhausted, what remains is a nation’s ability to dynamically reorganize production in real time, and to competitively innovate in real time. The question is, whether Americans will maintain their innovative risk taking speculative culture without the military and economic dominance they possessed in the last century, and the resulting control over the international banking and trade system.
William Easterly wrote: Curt and Sam, thanks for your comment. I was making a simple point: the article had a double standard for the Negative Changes in Economic Freedom in China and the US. And, 2nd, in giving so much general credit to Deng Xiao Ping vs. America’s leaders, it ignored Deng’s despicable actions against individual freedom in Tien An Men Square, and continued violence against and imprisonment of dissidents in China.
William, thank you for replying. Let’s define Freedom. Because unless we define it, I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Let’s see: Freedom: absence of external constraint.
The only form of ‘freedom’ you can have, that is non-contradictory (you can equally grant it to others and they to you) is personal, individual freedom. And even then, the only form of political freedom you can have is to DENY others the right to their political freedom. And at that point you are stuck with the problem of either getting to the point where you can convert the barbarians into paying the opportunity cost of becoming property holders in the first place, (establishing the system of property definitions) and without that need for coercion, you’re stuck in poverty even if you want to change the established order. But the only freedom you can have is individual freedom – the freedom of constraint. We can grant it to others equally. The rest of the freedoms are not ‘freedom’. They’re rights to take from others. All political freedoms are rights to take from others. They are rights of coercion, oppression. But then one cannot have a division of labor, a complex society, economic calculation, and the incentive to participate in productive activities unless you apply the ‘coercion’ of private property – at least to some degree. Confucianism is a high-opporunity-cost social order. It is very conservative. It requires respect for hierarchy and authority (opportunity costs). It requires consensus (opportunity costs but with risk reduction). It is an almost entirely shareholder-property society with low rates of creativity, low risk, slow moving social and economic model. But if it is BIG enough that people cannot sense external competition from OTHER social orders then internal status symbols can be preserved by way of nationalism or culturalism and the social order can work. (it doesn’t: the south is a competitor with the north of china, which is their whole cultural problem – that’s what Mao did. He destroyed the country economically to keep the south from outpacing the north.) This is not necessarily ‘bad’ in Confucian society. It may bear understanding that Confucius failed to solve the political problem (it is somewhat evident that he understands this) and directed everyone to hierarchy and family. So the Confucian model is not republican at it’s base. It is not tribal. It is hierarchical, and familial. The entire nation operates as a family. This is not a bad strategy unless you are competing with a group of high-risk, highly-innovative, fast moving westerners, for whom individual heroism, innovation and achievement are viewed as ‘keeping the group strong’. Competition and individualism are a ‘group good’ in the west. They are not in the asian societies. we are free to copy the innovators, and in doing so, everyone has the opportunity to be ‘better’. The west is an innovation and adaptation society. Freedom as we understand it, is not possible, and probably not necessary under Confucianism. Economically speaking, a nation that does NOT participate in heavy research and development will eventually fall behind, and governments can concentrate more wealth than the private sector on Research and Development. (What would the impact be of 200 new nuclear power plants in the USA? We have people feeling good about not wasting energy but manufacturing is the greatest energy consumer, and we need more manufacturing. Economizing is a spiritual act, not a material one.) China is making productive investments. We are making redistributive expenses, and spending trillions defending oil and trade routes, and our primary export – the dollar. And we will not get anywhere thinking that some very small minority of a Confucian population, or our odd obsession with the religion of Universal Democratic Secular Humanism will have any long term effect on the Sinic culture. The rest of the world is clearly condemning it. There isn’t even any evidence yet that our UDSH values will persist in the west without the Militial and Commercial balance to it, that is the foundation of western civilization. The calculative institutions of capitalism, which provide incentives in the form of pricing, sensory information in the form of objects defined as property, expressed and manipulated quantitatively, and the technologies of intertemporal collaboration and coordination in the form of money, interest, banking, fiat money and the technologies of dispute resolution in the form of contract and law, have little or nothing to do with the technologies of redistribution, and the methods of capital concentration, as well as the ‘forgone opportunity costs’ which citizens pay for participation in society and market’. Political freedom is not economic freedom. Political freedom exists either to defend ones self against a predatory state, or to use the violence of the state to put extra-market pressure on competing groups with competing interests. The reason for the western matrix of freedoms is to promote innovation, competition and wealth, so that the nobility, the upper middle class, and therefore prosperity will be maintained, and management elites, will rotate keeping the society competitive. At least, that’s the implied theory: meritocratic rotation of the elites – a thematic value system inherited from western heroic competitive militarism. ie: it’s a knowledge production engine. China values stability and security, not change and innovation. It is a culture where conflict is a sin. Where the individual is subordinate to the state. Where virtue is not heroic excellence, but duty. (At least, until the middle class is large enough.) Conservatives are in large part, whether knowingly or not, subscribers to ‘natural law’ theory, which states that human behavior is what it is, always has been and always will be. They do not subscribe to the philosophy that all men would work happily for the common good, nor, if given the opportunity, that they would do some common good in political power, or even know what such a good would be, simply because of the number of trade offs and secondary causes. Nor, that we are capable of implementing any designed change in our social orders without horrific consequences. And under that view, they would say that you are making a moral equivalency where there is none. Moral statements are economic actions, and either economic payments or theft. Ethical statements are economic actions, and either economic payments or theft. Manners are economic demonstrations, contributions, and payments. But these payments are made against a vast, habitual, rather than written set of legal, cultural and class body of accounts – and vastly different concepts of property definition, and they exist largely to ‘pay for the social order’ by reducing opportunity for friction and conflict. In the west, we have a very different payment system. We are all trying to be noblemen or priests. In the east, they are all trying to be Confucian – to hold their place. More like the German model prior to ww1. Our anglo model, is very rare. And it may simply be the artifact of a thousand years of wealth generated by expansion under the reformation. So before I get too far into this (I already have gotten way too far into it) I think you are being literal with conservative (allegorical) language. Conservative language is allegorical because conservatives have failed (especially during the 1870’s and 1930’s) to articulate a causally sufficient social science. (Myself and two or three rather off the wall libertarians, excluded perhaps.) Where the social democratic method can rely on the coincidence and correlation between easily collected monetary transaction information the Dynamic Stochastic Equilibrium model, and christian egalitarian sentiments, and Jewish anti-western-militial sentiments. But that does not mean that conservatives sentiments, expressed in allegorical language are false. It means they are insufficiently articulated. (and worse -foolishly wrong as in the case of many libertarians.) It simply means that they don’t yet know how to do otherwise. I think furthermore, that a) China is simply importing knowledge at very low cost. It is not producing it. Wealth may make knowledge production possible. But we have seen the Asian model is great for incremental improvement and the western model is better for radical innovation. b) cultures do not change. There is a high cost of changing norms. And Sinic civilization is very resistant to change. It is highly racist and highly culturist. (And it has a huge chip on it’s shoulder.) c) Their entire obligation structure (morals, ethics, property rights, manners) is a set of established costs. Our values are antithetical to them. d) their identity ( the means by which they judge the world) and their status signals (the human natural intuitive economy of events and consequences) will continue to force them in their native direction. And lastly, (why am I just getting to this now?) all the conservative writer was saying is that ‘a little momentum made a big difference’, and that ‘even if we make a little momentum in the wrong direction it will make as big a difference’. He is not comparing statements, he is comparing trajectories in time. And that’s what it means to be conservative: taking the long view.
Paul writes:
Predictions I Wish Had Been Wrong Looking for some other stuff, I found this post from October 2008 in which I predicted a level of right-wing craziness about Obama similar to that facing Bill Clinton, but worse. I really, really wish I had been wrong about that.
But this is followed by interesting comments. All from liberals. Like these:
Palin makes and breaks candidates in the GOP now — she’s far and away the most powerful person in the party. Fox News is #1, and they’re basically a beacon of disinformation. When a paper like the WSJ joins in, it makes a lot of people think that what’s being said is legitimate. I try to challenge this stuff each and every time I encounter it, but the truth is that I’m never able to persuade anyone who believes it that they’re wrong. It’s as if the whole country has gone insane, and no one is ashamed to lie or hate people any more.
and
You certainly weren’t Professor Krugman. If they gain enough credibility to have a substantial influence on the electorate, then the whole country is in peril.
And this:
The Right has to act crazy, for one thing they are; for another, the Right knows that if the Left takes control of the government, hunting will be outlawed. The Spanish must have their barbaric, anachronistic bullfight/torture ceremony and the gun-lovers must be allowed to shoot Bambi throught the heart. This is a culture war plain and simple. It is not a civil war, but a highly dangerous and uncivil one. I hope the Right loses, but they have the guns, so I’m doubtful. (Un)civil wars are usually costly in terms of lives lost and sheer destructiveness. I can refer you to the Spanish Civil war to give you an idea. Remember, the Fascists won that one, after something like a million people died.
And this:
There was something about Obama’s can’t-we-all-get-along rhetoric, and then confirmed by a first year of making nice with a bunch of thugs who’d as soon lynch him as have lunch with him (with no result, I must add), that showed this is a man who cannot wield power.
Interesting comments. I think they miss the point though. The country is demographically center-right. Liberals, comprising no more that 1/5 of the population are a minority compared to independents and conservatives. People seek status more than they seek money. Cultural dominance in each class determines status signals. People will surrender money unto Caesar, but they will never surrender their social position willingly. As Paul has stated before, the left and right are committed. The independents are the only people who determine elections. They are don’t play the great game except at election time, are disinterested, pragmatic, and swayed by whatever emerges as deciding key issues and the personalities of the candidates. The purpose of both parties is to establish simple sentimental memes that can help frame the candidates currently up for election. Amidst a long term downturn, and faced with a government that passes a law that affects their health care, over the will of the majority, and the country’s only remaining competitive technology, deprived of their cultural status, it’s only rational that they rebel. White guilt was easy to sway when they were an entrenched majority, and especially when suffrage, then feminism, both the result of mechanization of the household tasks, could be brought against the christian sentiments of the dominant male fraternity. But as a minority that is embattled and demonized, as a cult of family and freedom, they see their status under direct threat, their values and way of life under threat, and they are beginning to act like a minority whose status and way of life is threatened. They no longer see room for compromise. They no longer feel guilt. They are angry. It certainly looks like in the long term, the cyclic historians are right, and that the political system no longer works as designed – which is the assumed binding mythology of our country. Despite having certain cooperative and organizational technologies unavailable to the ancients, our government no longer works because it is a system of empire over people with dissimilar cultural-status-political and economic-financial-organizational ambitions. And both the domestic and foreign nations are beginning to revolt – because they can sense that both domestically and internationally, the government is no longer legitimate. A government over people with dissimilar interests must of necessity oppress all. The current political status holders will not easily surrender their positions. The bureaucracy is enormous, in government, unions, academia, education, the vast white collar clerical system, the media and the arts – all the people who do not participate in the market process, but are intentionally insulated from it as intentionally protected classes. The decline of the centralized media has been instrumental in assisting in the change, and major media will continue to decline, as each subsector of society increasingly seeks confirmation bias for its fantasies, and each race, culture and class will seek confirmation of its underlying assumptions leading to increasing fictionalization. This election cycle, and this economy, is simply part of this broader change in the distribution of world economic and political power, and the decline of the international attractiveness of, and personal ambitions of, the western secular humanists — a class whose only strategic option now is to ally with the numeric superiority of Islam as a replacement for Marxism, in order to maintain their control and isolation from market participation. That is my prediction to equal Paul’s. Without cultural cohesion permitted by the wealth generated by selling off the north american continent to immigrants, the unnatural dominance of the dollar, and military control of world trade routes, trade and money, the coalition of DC (violence), NY (Money) and LA (Propaganda) cannot hold. And as Paul senses, and as most synthetic historians have stated for a century or more, a long term economic stagnation or decline will accentuate inter-group differences, as people rely on intra-group status symbols and traditional alliances for support. Egalitarianism is a convenience of a debtor economy.