Tag: government creates problems to solve

Culturalism · Economic History · Self-Improvement

The Trouble With Experts

economiccommander3 Comments

About a week ago some cable network marionettes carted out a few professors to provide “robust analysis” on the new presidential rankings list. To nobody’s surprise, the top spots included figures like George Washington, Abe Lincoln, FDR, and Teddy Roosevelt. At the bottom (counting up), we have James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, and of course Donald Trump. Hilariously, William Henry Harrison, who occupied the White House for a few months before passing away, was ranked higher than Donald, along with Millard Fillmore and Warren G. Harding. The experts proceeded to note that Andrew Jackson lost ground in the rankings, speculating that this was on account of Trump being a fan of Old Hickory. Finally, the empowered and oppressed female professor expressed dismay that slave-holding presidents would still rank high on the list.

Leaving aside the amusing dynamics of FDR being in the top five immediately after the “Stop Asian hate” campaign, and Teddy Roosevelt, who complained about “race suicide,” I was struck by the shallowness of it all. These are after all learned individuals with countless papers, books, and at least one dissertation under their belts, yet the behavior is unchanged. Still we can expect the aggressive public shilling for mainstream narratives, regardless of their cost to history and truth. Anything to avoid getting targeted by a rage pill mob, I suppose.

The broader problem of “listen to the experts” was highlighted by the U.S. experience with COVID-19. As we all know, the government’s response was a hodgepodge of finger-pointing, political hedging, and flat-out delusion. When lockdowns were first proposed, no one could agree with a broad strategy, leading to a patchwork quilt response by the so-called intellectual class. A most vivid instance of this disconnect came when health experts condemned protestors who opposed the lockdowns while shortly thereafter approving demonstrations against police practices. Were the eggheads really motivated by research, or a profound desire to not be tarred and feathered on social media for their consistency?

This raises a bigger question about who one can trust to give good advice. If doctors are “afraid of the backlash” caused by advising against say, the annual flu vaccine, then how can they be relied upon to make proper calls in other areas? As far as many of us know, the man in the white coat could be prescribing indirect poison simply to keep his public image intact. It’s a total minefield, yet even bringing up the issue smarts of being a heretic under the religious purges of olden times. Difference is, they didn’t have social media and Google reputations to worry about.

I suppose it renders my soapbox rather past expiration, but I have to stress the importance of performing due diligence in all aspects of life affecting your health, emotional well-being, and finances. I don’t care if the speaker has a PhD, or indeed rails against higher education every single day to get views. The moment you permit your mind to be outsourced is the start of a long (and potentially hazardous) decline. Steel your brains, and look past the welcoming glow. Experts or not, they’re only human.   

Culturalism

Napoleon’s Wolves

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As part of my research into an upcoming book project, I stumbled upon the Principles of Syndicalism by Tom Brown. Though written from an admittedly leftist perspective, it contains a number of interesting observations on the post-war labor economy, especially in the UK. Brown also dedicates a considerable amount of time outlining the specifics of a proposed syndicalist revolution, down to the merits of a standing police force used to detain counterrevolutionaries. It is here that matters become quite interesting, because he unleashes Napoleon’s wolves:

“Let us recall the story of Napoleon’s wolves. It is said that while Napoleon was Emperor the number of wolves increased in France, so Napoleon offered a large reward for each wolf’s head brought to the local authority. Wolf hunting became a lucrative profession until the wolves began to disappear. Fortunately for the hunters the decline in the wolf population was mysteriously checked and their numbers began to increase. Upon investigation the authorities discovered that, rather than lose their jobs, the hunters were breeding wolves and even shepherds had turned from their flocks for the more remunerative work of wolf breeding and hunting”

Brown employs the story to illustrate the problem of organized police attempting to protect their jobs after the revolution by generating culprits to pursue, but his approach is applicable to most institutions. How many times do we see government agencies (or their corporate cousins), actively generating self-justifying missions and spotlight vignettes in order to remain relevant? The most obvious federal example would be the FBI, as Glenn Greenwald notes:

 “The known facts from this latest case seem to fit well within a now-familiar FBI pattern whereby the agency does not disrupt planned domestic terror attacks but rather creates them, then publicly praises itself for stopping its own plots.
Once they finally get the target to agree, the FBI swoops in at the last minute, arrests the target, issues a press release praising themselves for disrupting a dangerous attack (which it conceived of, funded, and recruited the operatives for), and the DOJ and federal judges send their target to prison for years or even decades (where they are kept in special GITMO-like units). Subservient U.S. courts uphold the charges by applying such a broad and permissive interpretation of “entrapment” that it could almost never be successfully invoked.”

The strategy is terribly convenient. People want to feel like the government is doing something, so the feds gladly oblige, even if the cost is someone who might well be innocent. It would seem logical for such agencies to direct folks towards appropriate care or attempt to talk them down, not actively encourage terrorism for the cameras. Skepticism has gotten so bad on the matter that even radical leftists are calling the government out.

But doing so, and nipping any hostile activity in the bud, is poor content for the television cameras. They would not be able to agitate for more funding using the moralistic line of “inadequate resources,” while appealing to all the children who might be harmed otherwise. Even worse, their jobs might feel pointless, and in the loving culture of the State, that’s bad news.