Quotulatiousness

April 29, 2020

“The war on ultraviolet radiation because it might help Trump is an educational moment”

Filed under: Health, Liberty, Media, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Arthur Chrenkoff on the sudden decision that the World Health Organization is the ultimate arbiter of what we’re allowed to say on social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube:

There is of course no evidence that the video represents any disinformation. It relates to legitimate scientific research by a medical company conducted in association with a respected hospital to develop a novel treatment of possibly crucial importance in the current conditions and into the future. The only problem with the video is that is indirectly supports Trump’s flight of fancy speculation about using light and chemicals to “disinfect” the body. Ergo, according to a NYT journalist it represents a problem and YouTube agrees. YouTube now has a standing policy of removing COVID information that goes against the World Health Organisation’s guidelines. Putting aside the question of the WHO’s credibility in the wake of the pandemic, we are not talking here about some guy in a tinfoil hat talking about 5G towers spreading the virus; this is a video relating to ongoing, respectable scientific research. Will it work? Probably not. But perhaps neither will any of the 150 or so COVID-19 vaccines being currently developed around the world. We won’t know until we know. But in the meantime, scientific news should not be censored, period.

[…]

Goldsmith and Woods are correct in pointing out not only the greater role that governments have been playing in regulating speech but more importantly how much of that effort has been embraced and driven by the big tech — and by the private individuals enabled and encouraged by the big tech — what I have previously called the “democratised censorship”. The difference is that people like Goldsmith and Woods think that’s a good thing.

The dirty little secret is that a great number of leftists, progressives and even centrist technocrats and activists look at China, with its authoritarian government, social credit score system, ubiquitous surveillance, and the ability to “get things done” and done quickly and supposedly efficiently (in China, bullet trains run on time, I hear), and pine for such a system to be applied in their own countries — as long as, of course, they are the ones in power and decide what is right, important and valuable. The left’s objections are rarely against authoritarianism and its means and methods per se, just with the possibility that someone else — like Trump — is the one behind the wheel, implementing their, not the left’s, agenda.

The war on ultraviolet radiation because it might help Trump is an educational moment. One could say, first they came for crazy conspiracy theorists and I said nothing because I’m not an anti-vaxxer or anti-5G activist — and so on. The problem with censorship is that it keeps creeping up on everyone else. And those who do the censoring — who decide what the ignorant masses should and shouldn’t be allowed to read — are not some detached and impartial spiritual beings but people with political agendas. People who think that ideas and beliefs of one half of the society are harmful and offensive. People who will censor news that doesn’t fit the agenda and support the narrative.

And then they came for ultraviolet radiation… You have been warned.

QotD: “Ethical” ways to prevent scientific progress

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Health, Politics, Quotations, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The stigmatization of science is also jeopardizing the progress of science itself. Today anyone who wants to do research on human beings, even an interview on political opinions or a questionnaire about irregular verbs, must prove to a committee that he or she is not Josef Mengele. Though research subjects obviously must be protected from exploitation and harm, the institutional-review bureaucracy has swollen far beyond this mission. Its critics have pointed out that it has become a menace to free speech, a weapon that fanatics can use to shut up people whose opinions they don’t like, and a red-tape dispenser that bogs down research while failing to protect, and sometimes harming, patients and research subjects. Jonathan Moss, a medical researcher who had developed a new class of drugs and was drafted into chairing the research-review board at the University of Chicago, said in a convocation address, “I ask you to consider three medical miracles we take for granted: X-rays, cardiac catheterization, and general anesthesia. I contend all three would be stillborn if we tried to deliver them in 2005.” The same observation has been made about insulin, burn treatments, and other lifesavers.

The hobbling of research is not just a symptom of bureaucratic mission creep. It is actually rationalized by many bioethicists. These theoreticians think up reasons that informed and consenting adults should be forbidden to take part in treatments that help them and others while harming no one. They use nebulous rubrics like “dignity,” “sacredness,” and “social justice.” They try to sow panic about advances in biomedical research with far-fetched analogies to nuclear weapons and Nazi atrocities, science-fiction dystopias like Brave New World and Gattaca, and freak-show scenarios like armies of cloned Hitlers, people selling their eyeballs on eBay, and warehouses of zombies to supply people with spare organs. The University of Oxford philosopher Julian Savulescu has exposed the low standards of reasoning behind these arguments and has pointed out why “bioethical” obstructionism can be unethical: “To delay by 1 year the development of a treatment that cures a lethal disease that kills 100,000 people per year is to be responsible for the deaths of those 100,000 people, even if you never see them.”

Steven Pinker, “The Intellectual War on Science”, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018-02-13.

April 28, 2020

Robber Barons and the Battle of the Tunnel

Filed under: Business, Government, History, Law, Politics, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published 1 Feb 2019

During the gilded age ruthless businessmen fought for control of railway lines. The Albany and Susquehanna railroad was another battlefield in the “Railroad wars.” In this episode, The History Guy remembers “the Battle of the Tunnel”.

This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As images of actual events are sometimes not available, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.

All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. No images or content are primarily intended to shock and disgust. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Non censuram.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheHistoryGuy

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered is the place to find short snippets of forgotten history from five to fifteen minutes long. If you like history too, this is the channel for you.

Awesome The History Guy merchandise is available at:
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Script by THG

#newyork #thehistoryguy #ushistory

April 27, 2020

QotD: H.L. Mencken’s literary theory

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

As for me, my literary theory, like my politics, is based chiefly upon one main idea, to wit, the idea of freedom. I am, in brief, a libertarian of the most extreme variety, and know of no human right that is one-tenth as valuable as the simple right to utter what seems (at the moment) to be the truth. Take away this right, and none other is worth a hoot; nor, indeed, can any other long exist. Debauched by that notion, it follows necessarily that I can be only an indifferent citizen of a democratic state, for democracy is grounded upon the instinct of inferior men to herd themselves in large masses, and its principal manifestation is their bitter opposition to all free thought. In the United States, in fact, I am commonly regarded as a violent anti-patriot. But this is simply because most of the ideas upon which American patriotism bases itself seem to me to be obviously sentimental and nonsensical — that is, they have, for me at least, no intelligible relation to the visible facts. I do not object to patriotism when it is logically defensible. On the contrary, I respect it as a necessary corollary to the undeniable inequality of races and people. Its converse, internationalism, appears to me to be almost insane. What an internationalist says, stripping it of rhetoric, is simply that a lion is no more than a large rat.

H.L. Mencken, “Private Reflections”, The Smart Set, 1922-12.

April 25, 2020

QotD: The entitlement mindset of intellectuals

Filed under: Education, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The intellectual wants the whole society to be a school writ large, to be like the environment where he did so well and was so well appreciated. By incorporating standards of reward that are different from the wider society, the schools guarantee that some will experience downward mobility later. Those at the top of the school’s hierarchy will feel entitled to a top position, not only in that micro-society but in the wider one, a society whose system they will resent when it fails to treat them according to their self-prescribed wants and entitlements. The school system thereby produces anti-capitalist feeling among intellectuals. Rather, it produces anti-capitalist feeling among verbal intellectuals. Why do the numbersmiths not develop the same attitudes as these wordsmiths? I conjecture that these quantitatively bright children, although they get good grades on the relevant examinations, do not receive the same face-to-face attention and approval from the teachers as do the verbally bright children. It is the verbal skills that bring these personal rewards from the teacher, and apparently it is these rewards that especially shape the sense of entitlement.

Robert Nozick, “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?”, Cato Policy Report, 1998-01-01.

April 23, 2020

QotD: Idiotarianism

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Way back when the term “idiotarian” was coined, it was quite explicitly aimed at the idiots of the Left and Right equally. The idiots of the Right have been somewhat quieter lately, but they’re no less idiots for that.

Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, 2005-01-31.

April 21, 2020

Homeschooling is bad and should be tightly regulated or banned, says Harvard Professor of Karenism

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

An article in Harvard Magazine draws heavy fire from people who do not automatically demand to speak to the manager:

Illustration from Harvard Magazine via Twitter.

Harvard Magazine decided that this moment was the PERFECT time to take a gigantic shit on homeschooling parents. Author Erin O’Donnell decided write a piece on Elizabeth Bartholet, a “professor” who knows the best way to handle child education, and that is to turn them over to the State, immediately. Her rationale? Parents are simply too stupid to educate children without the state looking over their shoulder.

    Yet Elizabeth Bartholet, Wasserstein public interest professor of law and faculty director of the Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, sees risks for children — and society — in homeschooling, and recommends a presumptive ban on the practice. Homeschooling, she says, not only violates children’s right to a “meaningful education” and their right to be protected from potential child abuse, but may keep them from contributing positively to a democratic society.”

    “We have an essentially unregulated regime in the area of homeschooling,” Bartholet asserts. All 50 states have laws that make education compulsory, and state constitutions ensure a right to education, “but if you look at the legal regime governing homeschooling, there are very few requirements that parents do anything.” Even apparent requirements such as submitting curricula, or providing evidence that teaching and learning are taking place, she says, aren’t necessarily enforced. Only about a dozen states have rules about the level of education needed by parents who homeschool, she adds. “That means, effectively, that people can homeschool who’ve never gone to school themselves, who don’t read or write themselves.” In another handful of states, parents are not required to register their children as homeschooled; they can simply keep their kids at home.”

    This practice, Bartholet says, can isolate children. She argues that one benefit of sending children to school at age four or five is that teachers are “mandated reporters,” required to alert authorities to evidence of child abuse or neglect. “Teachers and other school personnel constitute the largest percentage of people who report to Child Protective Services,” she explains, whereas not one of the 50 states requires that homeschooling parents be checked for prior reports of child abuse. Even those convicted of child abuse, she adds, could “still just decide, ‘I’m going to take my kids out of school and keep them at home.'”

Bartholet goes on to cite an example of one woman, who was raised by “Idaho survivalists” and was working in the family business instead of getting an education. Conveniently, while lauding “teachers and other school personnel” as mandated reporters, Bartholet fails to cite or even acknowledge that there is plenty of child abuse that happens on school property, by school employees, and maybe there are just evil people who do evil things to children because they have the opportunity to do so. Giving someone the title of “mandated reporter” does not magically make them into an upstanding citizen and defender of children.

Bartholet – and by extension, O’Donnell – makes no rational argument against homeschooling. It’s only her gut feeling that if the nanny state isn’t over the shoulder, trying to mold “young skulls full of mush” (as Rush Limbaugh has said more than once) into educated and functional adults, then there could be shenanigans afoot! Why, these children might end up RELIGIOUS. *GASP!*

Shruti Rajagopalan noted that the original illustration (which appears to have been corrected since the image at the top of this post was published) included the word “ARITHMATIC” on the spine of one of the books.

April 20, 2020

“New York City subways were ‘a major disseminator — if not the principal transmission vehicle — of coronavirus infection'”

Filed under: Government, Health, Politics, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Randal O’Toole wonders why the lone sacred cow of mass transit is still running, despite its potential role in spreading disease:

MTA NYC Subway 1 trains at 125th St., 14 May, 2018.
Photo by Mtattrain via Wikimedia Commons.

Sit‐​down restaurants and bars have been shut down. Public officials are discouraging or even forbidding people from doing “unnecessary travel,” even if it is to visit a second home where they might be able to socially distance themselves better than in their first, more urban home. All sorts of other rules are being passed, all supposedly for our own good.

So why are urban transit systems still running? A 2018 study found that “mass transportation systems offer an effective way of accelerating the spread of infectious diseases.” A 2011 study found that people who use mass transit were nearly six times more likely to have acute respiratory infections than those who don’t. Not surprisingly, a study published a few days ago found that New York City subways were “a major disseminator — if not the principal transmission vehicle — of coronavirus infection.”

Transit agencies say they are helping “essential workers” go about their business. But if they are so essential, isn’t it important to find them a safe way of getting to work? If we truly cared about people’s safety, then transit services should have shut down at the same time we closed other non‐​essential businesses and asked people to stay at home.

[…]

Unfortunately, the transit lobby has successfully turned government‐​subsidized transit into a sacred cow. Transit is supposedly greener than driving when in fact it’s an energy hog. Transit is supposedly needed to help poor people get to work when in fact the people most likely to commute by transit are those earning more than $75,000 a year.

When the pandemic took away most of transit’s customers, instead of shutting down, which would have been the responsible thing to do, transit agencies demanded that Congress give them $25 billion, tripling federal support to transit this year. Thanks to transit’s sacred cow status, Congress agreed without any serious debate.

Effectively, Congress rewarded the agencies for spreading disease. It would have been better to use that money to help transit‐​dependent essential workers buy a car so they could have a safe way of getting to work.

New York City subway system.
Image by Jake Berman (maps.complutense.org) based on information from the MTA, via Wikimedia Commons.

Understanding the Lost Cause Myth

Filed under: History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Cynical Historian
Published 16 Apr 2020

The Lost Cause Myth has changed American history. Though it is a hateful ideology today, to ignore it is to give it power. We must understand the myth in order to defeat it.
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Wiki: The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, or simply the Lost Cause, is an American pseudo-historical, negationist ideology which holds the view that the cause of the Confederacy during the American Civil War was a just and heroic one. The ideology endorses the supposed virtues of the antebellum South, viewing the war as a struggle which was primarily waged in order to save the Southern way of life, or to defend “states’ rights”, in the face of overwhelming “Northern aggression.” At the same time, the Lost Cause minimizes or completely denies the central role of slavery in the buildup to and outbreak of the war.

Particularly intense periods of Lost Cause activity occurred around the time of World War I, as the last Confederate veterans began to die out and a push was made to preserve their memories, and they also occurred during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, in reaction to growing public support for racial equality. Through activities such as building prominent Confederate monuments and writing school history textbooks, they sought to ensure that future generations of Southern whites would know about the South’s “true” reasons for fighting the war, and support white supremacist policies, such as Jim Crow laws. In this manner, white supremacy is a characteristic of the Lost Cause narrative.

The Lost Cause narratives typically portray the Confederacy’s cause as a noble one and they also portray its leaders as exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry, who were defeated by the Union armies through numerical and industrial force that overwhelmed the South’s superior military skill and courage. Proponents of the Lost Cause movement also condemned the Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, claiming that it had been a deliberate attempt by Northern politicians and speculators to keep the South down. The Lost Cause theme has also evolved into a major element in defining gender roles in the white South, in terms of preserving family honor and chivalrous traditions. The Lost Cause has inspired numerous Southern memorials and religious attitudes.
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Hashtags: #history #LostCause #Mythology

April 18, 2020

Chairman Xi, the Wuhan Coronavirus, and the “Mandate of Heaven”

Filed under: China, Government, Health, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

David Warren:

It is a little-known fact that no government can do anything, without the cooperation of its victims. Of course that cooperation may be obtained by force and falsehood, but there will always be a few people who won’t play along. This creates a “technical problem” for the tyrant, which can also be solved by violence and deceit, but in the heart of every dictatorship there must be calculations. At what point do so many people want us dead, that they will actually kill us?

This is a political calculation, and it can turn even a genocidal maniac into a thoughtful politician. A monstrously evil country, such as Red China, can be moderated in this way. Superficially, it may sometimes come to resemble a bourgeois, Westernized, rule-of-law state, like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea. It may, indeed must in its own interest, pretend to be benign. But under sufficient pressure it has only two choices. One is to be openly monstrous, with all the risks that entails; and the other is to disintegrate.

My interest has been piqued as a China-watcher. Recent events have been bringing that kettle back to the boil. That the Peking politburo has been making serious mistakes, we may observe. It could not possibly have intended the Batflu crisis, which its own malign incompetence brought about. But as it tries to manage the crisis, for its own purposes, the mistakes multiply. Even the people it had diligently bought — such as our progressive journalists, politicians, and businessmen — are turning against it.

Within China itself, the unthinking default loyalty of the masses, has been disturbed. “Narratives” which conflict with the official ones are circulating, along with the virus — and even among those who “test negative,” as it were. These are people who would never rebel, but they become sympathetic to rebels. Moreover, the state’s image of invincibility — the Mao/Xi portrait, a hundred feet tall — is cracking. Imagined lines of contempt appear in the plaster. Chairman Mao, of course, is dead, but Chairman Xi must be sensing his mortality.

As the Soviet Union was collapsing from within, progressive Westerners tried to ignore it. This wasn’t something they wanted to look at, which is why they were all taken by surprise. The fall of the Berlin Wall inwardly distressed everyone on the Left. For a few years their confidence was shaken, slowing their efforts to regroup around “environmentalism,” or some alternative leftwing cause, that wasn’t in shambles like socialism. But eventually their smugness recovered, and those revealed to have been absolutely wrong about everything they had ever told us, were able to resume their status as “experts.”

From Wikipedia‘s entry on the Mandate of Heaven:

The Mandate of Heaven (Chinese: 天命; pinyin: Tiānmìng; Wade–Giles: T’ien-ming, literally “Heaven’s will”) is a Chinese political and religious teaching used since ancient times to justify the rule of the King or Emperor of China. According to this belief, Heaven (天, Tian) — which embodies the natural order and will of the universe — bestows the mandate on a just ruler of China, the “Son of Heaven” of the “Celestial Empire”. If a ruler was overthrown, this was interpreted as an indication that the ruler was unworthy, and had lost the mandate. It was also a common belief that natural disasters such as famine and flood were divine retributions bearing signs of Heaven’s displeasure with the ruler, so there would often be revolts following major disasters as the people saw these calamities as signs that the Mandate of Heaven had been withdrawn.

[…] The Mandate of Heaven was often invoked by philosophers and scholars in China as a way to curtail the abuse of power by the ruler, in a system that had few other checks. Chinese historians interpreted a successful revolt as evidence that Heaven had withdrawn its mandate from the ruler. Throughout Chinese history, times of poverty and natural disasters were often taken as signs that heaven considered the incumbent ruler unjust and thus in need of replacement.

April 15, 2020

“Experts” and their “models”

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest Libertarian Enterprise, after offering us his current favourite mixed drink recipe, L. Neil Smith gets around to discussing our modern dependence on “experts” wielding their intricate and convoluted computer models to guide our lives:

My preferred variant of Mott’s Clamato … I’ll have to try it with tequila as Neil suggests.

Start with a tall glass of Mott’s Clamato over ice. Many people can’t stand the idea of tomato juice enhanced with sweet clam juice (and some spices), and I won’t try to sell you on it, here. But if you relish it the way I do (I used to buy it by the gallon), then bon appetit! Throw in a healthy shot of tequila — mine is Cuervo Gold, but your mileage may vary. Add a fat slice of lime on the edge of the glass, a slice of lemon, and a slice of orange. The citrus really dresses it up. These are all ingredients I like very much, and together, they take the edge off a day I spent writing 1000 or 2000 words (my record so far is 3200) and let me relax.

At the end of that day, when my lovely and talented wife quits work and comes home — from the dining room, these days — we have a nice, comfortable cocktail hour (she drinks Cuba Libras) and watch Tucker Carlson. Ordinarily, three giant cans of the Budweiser concoction (which is also made with Clamato) will make me the tiniest bit silly. This drink, the Bloody Mermaid (ick) is surprisingly gentle and I have had two and a half so far without embarrassing myself. I love the taste of tequila neat (many don’t), and I would still be doing shooters, except that my loving bride of 36 years won’t let me eat that much salt.

Please enjoy this silly little drink if you can until we’re all free again.

Oh yeah — I couldn’t resist after all. There’s something I need to get off my chest. I’m sure you remember the way “experts” with computer models warned us all about Y2K, and the way it meant the end of Civilization-As-We-Knew-It. Then there was Global Warming — more experts, more computer models — there are still gullible morons out there who believe it’s not an obvious hoax. Now experts and their — increasingly failing — computer models are all telling us we are in the middle of the worst health crisis since the Black Death.

I happen to be, as you know, a lifelong libertarian and the most fervid advocate of the First Amendment that you will ever read. Therefore, I cannot endorse the suggestion I’ve heard that whenever an “expert” testifies about anything before any legislative body anywhere, and the words “computer model” come out of his mouth, the Sergeant-at-Arms should smash his face in, drag him out into the street, and shoot him him the back of the head. Perhaps millions of lives could be saved that way, but, as a lifelong libertarian and the most fervid advocate of the First Amendment you will ever read, I cannot endorse that position.

So drink up, my dear friends and readers and have the best time — under house arrest — that you possibly can!

QotD: The limited utility of the “left-right” scale in political debate

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Categorizing a political position according to some simple left-right scale of values leaves something to be desired. Political views cover such a wide variety of issues that it is impossible to describe adequately any one person merely by identifying where he sits on a lone horizontal line.

Use of the single left-right scale makes impossible a satisfactory description of libertarian (and classical-liberal) attitudes toward government. Libertarians oppose not only government direction of economic affairs, but also government meddling in the personal lives of peaceful people. Does this opposition make libertarians “rightists” (because they promote free enterprise) or “leftists” (because they oppose government meddling in people’s private affairs)? As a communications tool, the left-right distinction suffers acute anemia.

Nevertheless, despite widespread dissatisfaction with the familiar left-right — “liberal-conservative” — lingo, such use continues. One reason for its durability is convenience. Never mind that all-important nuances are ignored when describing someone as being, say, “to the right of Richard Nixon” or “to the left of Lyndon Johnson”. The description takes only seconds and doesn’t tax the attention of nightly news audiences.

Don Boudreaux, “Coercivists and Voluntarists”, The Freeman, 1997-08-01.

April 12, 2020

Self-interest in the clothing of idealism

Filed under: Economics, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Last week, Esteban wrote at the Continental Telegraph:

Much has been made over the past year of the fact that young people in America approve of Socialism in rather large numbers, and quite a lot more than their elders. Some explain that this is because they are more idealistic than the older crowd, who have become corrupted and “sold out” now that they have a mortgage and expensive lifestyle. Others argue that this supposed idealism is actually naivete.

It seems fair to point out that if you are 24 with negative net worth, a modest paying job and no reasonable expectation on the horizon to make serious cash, it isn’t idealistic to support redistribution, it’s self-interest. And you don’t change this fact by saying “Well, if I made that much money, I’d be happy to pay a lot in taxes”. If you ever get to that point we’ll see, until then this statement doesn’t fly.

Likewise, if you’re 55 with a couple of million dollars in your 401(k), a big home and an income well into six figures your view may be biased against “sharing the wealth” based on your wallet, not principles.

QotD: The Gini coefficient

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

At least for now, most progressives acknowledge that markets and economic growth are necessary. But progressives in academia contend that growth has proved itself secondary to equality efforts — something to be exploited, rather than appreciated. Not just nationally, but worldwide, policymakers and the press regard the subordination of growth to equality to be a benign practice, as in the recent line in the Indian periodical Mint: a policy aimed at “reducing inequality need not hurt growth.”

The redistributionist impulse has brought to the fore metrics such as the Gini coefficient, named after the ur-redistributor, Corrado Gini, an Italian social scientist who developed an early statistical measure of income distribution a century ago. A society where a single plutocrat earns all the income ranks a pure “1” on the Gini scale; one in which all earnings are perfectly equally distributed, the old Scandinavian ideal, scores a “0” by the Gini test. The Gini Index has been renamed or updated numerous times, but the principle remains the same. Income distribution and redistribution seem so crucial to progressives that French economist Thomas Piketty built an international bestseller around it, the wildly lauded Capital.

Through Gini’s lens, we now rank past eras. Decades in which policy endeavored or managed to even out and equalize earnings — the 1930s under Franklin Roosevelt, the 1960s under Lyndon Johnson — score high. Decades where policymakers focused on growth before equality, such as the 1920s, fare poorly. Decades about which social-justice advocates aren’t sure what to say — the 1970s, say — simply drop from the discussion. In the same hierarchy, federal debt moves down as a concern because austerity to reduce debt could hinder redistribution. Lately, advocates of economically progressive history have made taking any position other than theirs a dangerous practice. Academic culture longs to topple the idols of markets, just as it longs to topple statutes of Robert E. Lee.

But progressives have their metrics wrong and their story backward. The geeky Gini metric fails to capture the American economic dynamic: in our country, innovative bursts lead to great wealth, which then moves to the rest of the population. Equality campaigns don’t lead automatically to prosperity; instead, prosperity leads to a higher standard of living and, eventually, in democracies, to greater equality. The late Simon Kuznets, who posited that societies that grow economically eventually become more equal, was right: growth cannot be assumed. Prioritizing equality over markets and growth hurts markets and growth and, most important, the low earners for whom social-justice advocates claim to fight. Government debt matters as well. Those who ring the equality theme so loudly deprive their own constituents, whose goals are usually much more concrete: educational opportunity, homes, better electronics, and, most of all, jobs. Translated into policy, the equality impulse takes our future hostage.

Amity Shlaes, “Growth, Not Equality”, City Journal, 2018-01-21.

April 9, 2020

QotD: Collective narcissism

Filed under: Health, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[P]eople who score high on the collective narcissism scale are particularly sensitive to even the smallest offences to their group’s image. As opposed to individuals with narcissistic personality, who maintain inflated views of themselves, collective narcissists exaggerate offences to their group‘s image, and respond to them aggressively. Collective narcissists believe that their group’s importance and worth are not sufficiently recognised by others. They feel that their group merits special treatment, and insist that it gets the recognition and respect it deserves. In other words, collective narcissism amounts to a belief in the exaggerated greatness of one’s group, and demands external validation.

Collective narcissists are not simply content to be members of a valuable group. They don’t devote their energy to contributing to the group’s betterment and value. Rather, they engage in monitoring whether everybody around, particularly other groups, recognise and acknowledge the great value and special worth of their group. To be sure, collective narcissists demand privileged treatment, not equal rights. And the need for continuous external validation of the group’s inflated image (a negative attribute) is what differentiates collective narcissists from those who simply hold positive feelings about their group.

[…]

When their own group is involved, collective narcissists have no sense of humour. They are disproportionately punitive in responding to what they perceive as an insult to their group, even when the insult is debatable, not perceived by others, or not intended by the other group. Unlike individual narcissists, collective narcissists cannot dissociate themselves from an unpopular or criticised group. Once their self-worth is invested in the greatness of their group, collective narcissists are motivated by enhancing their group rather than themselves.

My team researched collective narcissism as a characteristic that pertains to an individual. We believe that there will always be a proportion of people in any given population who meet the criteria. But collective narcissism can also seize an entire group, resulting in seemingly sudden and unprovoked outbursts of intergroup rage or prejudiced reactions towards minority groups. We believe that collective narcissism is most dangerous as a group syndrome – when the belief that the righteous group is not given its due acknowledgement becomes shared by the majority of group members and becomes a dominant narrative about the group’s past and present.

Agnieszka Golec de Zavala, “Why collective narcissists are so politically volatile”, Aeon, 2018-01-18.

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