{"id":35562,"date":"2018-05-14T01:00:29","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T05:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35562"},"modified":"2018-04-24T09:38:52","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T13:38:52","slug":"qotd-words-and-ideas-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/05\/14\/qotd-words-and-ideas-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Words and ideas matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

The way we talk and write \u2013 the words we use \u2013 what we say and what we don\u2019t say \u2013 matter. Of course, the process of articulating thoughts helps each of us who articulates (and that is every human being) to better form thoughts that are otherwise fuzzy and amorphous. More importantly, what we express to others not only informs others of facts, instructions, and perspectives that they would not learn were we not to express our thoughts to them, our talking also expresses and, in doing so, reinforces specific ethical values.<\/p>\n

Each and every time you say with a smile \u201cthank you\u201d to the supermarket cashier who tallies your order you add a little more dignity to that person\u2019s life and occupation \u2013 and to the social estimation of that and related occupations. Each and every time you tell a homophobic or anti-immigrant joke, you detract from the social valuation of homosexuals or of immigrants. Through our talk we humans are constantly raising the social valuation of some peoples and things and lowering the social valuation of other peoples and things. Your words, individually, might have no detectable impact, but by signaling to your hearers or readers what you regard to be acceptable and unacceptable \u2013 honorable and dishonorable \u2013 important and insignificant \u2013 productive and unproductive \u2013 polite and crude \u2013 true and false \u2013 good and bad \u2013 you influence their perceptions and evaluations, if only ever so slightly. If, for example, you express admiration for a hard-working entrepreneur and do so with no trace of envy of that entrepreneur\u2019s monetary success, your audience (be it one person or a million people) becomes a bit more inclined to regard entrepreneurs favorably and to not suppose that successful entrepreneurs\u2019 profits are to be envied.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the relation of the speaker to the audience matters. The effect of a mother\u2019s words on the attitudes of her young child is greater than the effect of those same words, spoken by the same woman, to some other-woman\u2019s child. The effect of words about widgets spoken by someone publicly regarded to be an expert in widgetry is greater than is the effect of words about widgets spoken by someone who is not regarded as having expertise in widgetry.<\/p>\n

Ideas and attitudes matter. They matter greatly. And ideas and attitudes are transmitted chiefly by words. It is this reality above all that causes me distress when I hear or read someone with a degree in economics (or who is otherwise regarded to be expert in economics) get fundamental economics wrong. When some economist asserts that a country\u2019s growing trade deficit destroys jobs<\/a>, that\u2019s simply wrong \u2013 but the expression of that false notion, especially by an \u201ceconomist,\u201d contributes to the public\u2019s fear of international trade. When some other economist says that \u201c[t]here\u2019s just no evidence that raising the minimum wage costs jobs<\/a>,\u201d that, in this case, is not only indisputably wrong but is almost certainly an outright lie \u2013 but this economist\u2019s lie contributes to the public\u2019s false belief that hikes in minimum wages are all gain with no risk of loss for low-skilled workers. When economists talk and write, as they too often do<\/a>, as if government officials possess superhuman capacities to care about strangers and to know enough to intervene productively into those strangers\u2019 affairs, that\u2019s wrong \u2013 but such talking and writing gives more phoolish credence to the false notion that state power is an especially trustworthy cure for life\u2019s ailments, large and small.<\/p>\n

Don Boudreaux, “Quotation of the Day\u2026”, Caf\u00e9 Hayek<\/em><\/a>, 2016-08-01.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The way we talk and write \u2013 the words we use \u2013 what we say and what we don\u2019t say \u2013 matter. Of course, the process of articulating thoughts helps each of us who articulates (and that is every human being) to better form thoughts that are otherwise fuzzy and amorphous. More importantly, what we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,41],"tags":[400,1026],"class_list":["post-35562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-quotations","tag-language","tag-microeconomics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9fA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35563,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35562\/revisions\/35563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}