The energy sector might be the best current example of your phenomenon. Laypeople simply have no understanding of where their electricity comes from. They turn on a lightswitch, the light comes on. They plug in their phone, it charges. What makes the electricity? Dunno. May as well be magic.
So what starts as "coal fired power plants create a lot of pollution, we should do something about that" leads to "shut down ALL coal power plants and replace them with windmills!" If one has any understanding about how an electrical grid functions, and has to continue functioning, you recognize this as laughable on its face (include nuclear & solar here for more examples). Yet western governments are falling all over themselves trying to do just that, and we see the results playing out, especially in Europe.
Things will get a LOT worse here before they can begin to get better, IF they even can.
I read once that the reason those Nigerian Prince spam emails are so obviously poorly, unconvincingly written is to make sure that only the most gullible and unthinking recipients (the best marks) would bite on them. They're basically selecting for the highest quality leads like any salesman ought to.
I think something similar can happen with statist fantasy.
Excellent piece. I believe there is an analogous situation in academic science (at least in the field of biomedicine, which I am familiar with). Scientists almost exclusively make decisions about 1) who is accepted for graduate school, 2) who is hired for faculty and leadership positions at universities, and 3) who receives grant funding. A major criteria for 2) and 3) is having produced some ground-breaking, sensational, or “high-impact” publication(s). This is how you get grifters rising to leadership positions. Then they choose loyalists and true believers to fill the ranks beneath them. The next thing you know, you have major problems like a reproducibility crisis, whole fields that are essentially fabricated (look what’s just happened in Alzheimer’s research), and drugs that don’t actually work but are standard of care.
University vaccine mandates have effectively solidified this situation by excluding anyone who isn’t willing to be a true believer, or at least pretend to be one.
The grifting is made possible by fiat currency “printed” in unlimited amounts. This can be “spent” by people who have no skin in the game whatsoever, no consequences at all. In the old days, the gold would have left the building, and running out would pressure the People In Charge but now there is nothing holding them back, nothing.
‘... just how it came to pass that the entirety of western governance seems to have become bereft of reality and competence and generally run by people who appear to be about as smart as a soup sandwich...’
Filling the void. Because they have no marketable skills that would get them decent jobs in the competitive, private wealth producing sector, and those that do, have jobs in the competitive, private wealth producing sector thus leaving politics vacant for parasites to infest.
On-Point with our (shared) libertarian ethic, as usual. Proposition 5 reminds me of a quote I loved from one of Robert Heinlein's classics, "A confidence man knows he's lying. That limits his scope. A successful shaman believes what he says and belief is contagious." ~ Jubal Harshaw
I don't disagree with anything that you've said, but there's another crucial thing happening without which the kind of mess we find ourselves in could not happen.
The "education system" has been captured by these same sophists. You don't need a diploma to become educated, but in this country you need one to become credentialed—only credentialed people wield any kind of power.
Our system of education is so unfit for purpose, so god-awfully, gob-smackingly corrupt and broken that just graduating high school has become an exercise in submission and humiliation. You can only "win" by memorizing and repeating back to these sophists bullet-pointed lists of demonstrably false things.
To anyone without critical thinking skills, this is no problem. For people with marginal critical thinking skills, this signals the slow death of their critical thinking skills. To anyone with robust critical thinking skills, the experience is absolutely gutting—the goal, graduation and a good job someday, seemingly impossible.
Go figure that everyone in a position of power is intellectually lazy, can't think for themselves, and defers to these other credentialed authorities who are not authorities on anything. Being an actual authority means having beliefs which make correct predictions because they are true. It has nothing to do with credentials. The correlation between one's qualifications to lead and one's ability to lead should actually be NEGATIVE in a system this bad—and indeed, it is.
The system is totally backwards, elevating the worst and least-capable people, coddling them in a sense of bureaucratic smugness, while the rest of us shake our heads (when we aren't actually doing nothing about it at all). This is by design. People who can't think for themselves are easy to control.
Im an MD. I m an ophthalmologist with over 20 years of experience. These rubes are trying to constantly take over medicine and medical care. Problem is they have no idea what is it to be a diagnostician. They hve no appreciation as to how difficult and nuanced it is to perform a surgery on an eyeball or any other body part. These people demonstrate their ineptitude and ignorance to me every day and yet I am living under their authority in the tightly regulated medical industry
Good Friday to all. An excellent article and great examples of the incestuous and corrupt behavior. As Vladimir Ilyich might ask, "What is to be done?"
Be nice to Tonya. She's a talented, hard-working girl who made a mistake. She lives near me and is close to my age. The movie "I Tonya" was actually really good.
I hope I don't screw this up too badly, but I heard somewhere that the difference between a cult and a religion is that in a cult, the guy at the top knows the whole thing is a scam. In a religion, that guy is dead.
And yes, that display yesterday was disgusting as hell. The casual way in which Tlaib throws around her fascist demands is astonishing.
Your theory seems to align with Mattias Desmet's theory of mass formation. In other words, it is a ground up operation rather than a top down imposition. Yes, politics is a grift, and the grift attracts grifters. Yes, the smart grifters are going to cloak themselves with true believers to protect the grift.
But who selects the grifters?
Who's behind the curtain moving the levers?
Do we elect our elected leaders or are they selected for us?
I don't believe the social changes and devolution into incomprehensible stupidity (as demonstrated by Rep Tlaib) over the past several decades was a natural phenomenon.
The energy sector might be the best current example of your phenomenon. Laypeople simply have no understanding of where their electricity comes from. They turn on a lightswitch, the light comes on. They plug in their phone, it charges. What makes the electricity? Dunno. May as well be magic.
So what starts as "coal fired power plants create a lot of pollution, we should do something about that" leads to "shut down ALL coal power plants and replace them with windmills!" If one has any understanding about how an electrical grid functions, and has to continue functioning, you recognize this as laughable on its face (include nuclear & solar here for more examples). Yet western governments are falling all over themselves trying to do just that, and we see the results playing out, especially in Europe.
Things will get a LOT worse here before they can begin to get better, IF they even can.
I read once that the reason those Nigerian Prince spam emails are so obviously poorly, unconvincingly written is to make sure that only the most gullible and unthinking recipients (the best marks) would bite on them. They're basically selecting for the highest quality leads like any salesman ought to.
I think something similar can happen with statist fantasy.
“Build Back Better”...spouted by politicians who’ve never built anything.
Excellent piece. I believe there is an analogous situation in academic science (at least in the field of biomedicine, which I am familiar with). Scientists almost exclusively make decisions about 1) who is accepted for graduate school, 2) who is hired for faculty and leadership positions at universities, and 3) who receives grant funding. A major criteria for 2) and 3) is having produced some ground-breaking, sensational, or “high-impact” publication(s). This is how you get grifters rising to leadership positions. Then they choose loyalists and true believers to fill the ranks beneath them. The next thing you know, you have major problems like a reproducibility crisis, whole fields that are essentially fabricated (look what’s just happened in Alzheimer’s research), and drugs that don’t actually work but are standard of care.
University vaccine mandates have effectively solidified this situation by excluding anyone who isn’t willing to be a true believer, or at least pretend to be one.
The grifting is made possible by fiat currency “printed” in unlimited amounts. This can be “spent” by people who have no skin in the game whatsoever, no consequences at all. In the old days, the gold would have left the building, and running out would pressure the People In Charge but now there is nothing holding them back, nothing.
‘... just how it came to pass that the entirety of western governance seems to have become bereft of reality and competence and generally run by people who appear to be about as smart as a soup sandwich...’
Filling the void. Because they have no marketable skills that would get them decent jobs in the competitive, private wealth producing sector, and those that do, have jobs in the competitive, private wealth producing sector thus leaving politics vacant for parasites to infest.
#DementiaJoe is the grifter, but his staff is filled with true believers. God help us all.
On-Point with our (shared) libertarian ethic, as usual. Proposition 5 reminds me of a quote I loved from one of Robert Heinlein's classics, "A confidence man knows he's lying. That limits his scope. A successful shaman believes what he says and belief is contagious." ~ Jubal Harshaw
I don't disagree with anything that you've said, but there's another crucial thing happening without which the kind of mess we find ourselves in could not happen.
The "education system" has been captured by these same sophists. You don't need a diploma to become educated, but in this country you need one to become credentialed—only credentialed people wield any kind of power.
Our system of education is so unfit for purpose, so god-awfully, gob-smackingly corrupt and broken that just graduating high school has become an exercise in submission and humiliation. You can only "win" by memorizing and repeating back to these sophists bullet-pointed lists of demonstrably false things.
To anyone without critical thinking skills, this is no problem. For people with marginal critical thinking skills, this signals the slow death of their critical thinking skills. To anyone with robust critical thinking skills, the experience is absolutely gutting—the goal, graduation and a good job someday, seemingly impossible.
Go figure that everyone in a position of power is intellectually lazy, can't think for themselves, and defers to these other credentialed authorities who are not authorities on anything. Being an actual authority means having beliefs which make correct predictions because they are true. It has nothing to do with credentials. The correlation between one's qualifications to lead and one's ability to lead should actually be NEGATIVE in a system this bad—and indeed, it is.
The system is totally backwards, elevating the worst and least-capable people, coddling them in a sense of bureaucratic smugness, while the rest of us shake our heads (when we aren't actually doing nothing about it at all). This is by design. People who can't think for themselves are easy to control.
Im an MD. I m an ophthalmologist with over 20 years of experience. These rubes are trying to constantly take over medicine and medical care. Problem is they have no idea what is it to be a diagnostician. They hve no appreciation as to how difficult and nuanced it is to perform a surgery on an eyeball or any other body part. These people demonstrate their ineptitude and ignorance to me every day and yet I am living under their authority in the tightly regulated medical industry
Good Friday to all. An excellent article and great examples of the incestuous and corrupt behavior. As Vladimir Ilyich might ask, "What is to be done?"
Be nice to Tonya. She's a talented, hard-working girl who made a mistake. She lives near me and is close to my age. The movie "I Tonya" was actually really good.
I hope I don't screw this up too badly, but I heard somewhere that the difference between a cult and a religion is that in a cult, the guy at the top knows the whole thing is a scam. In a religion, that guy is dead.
And yes, that display yesterday was disgusting as hell. The casual way in which Tlaib throws around her fascist demands is astonishing.
1. ⅔ functionally Illiterate & Innumerate (5th grade level) => "A #Republic if you can keep it," Dr Benjamin Franklin (Ratchet Effect, Gibbs)
2. 1913 Banker's Coup d'Etat (IRS, FED, IncomeTax, Senatorial Popular Election) => #Oligarchy (Iron Law of)
3. FDR 3-Letter Agencies (US Stasi, FBI) => #Fascism (F A Hayek)
4. USDA (Low Salt, Low Animal Fats, High Seed Oils, HFCS, sugar) => Obesity Epidemic (Chronic Inflammation & Mental Fog, 90% Metabolically impaired citizenry)
5. GWB (TSA, Patriot Act) => #Nazism
6. JRB (#MedicalTyranny) => #Faucism
7. #RatPark (#RatUtopia = #Behavioral Sink & #BeautifulOnes — #CatParadise, John B Calhoun).
8. #Collapse.
Tailor made to attract narcissistic psychopaths. Now add stupid and you have a jackpot.
Your theory seems to align with Mattias Desmet's theory of mass formation. In other words, it is a ground up operation rather than a top down imposition. Yes, politics is a grift, and the grift attracts grifters. Yes, the smart grifters are going to cloak themselves with true believers to protect the grift.
But who selects the grifters?
Who's behind the curtain moving the levers?
Do we elect our elected leaders or are they selected for us?
I don't believe the social changes and devolution into incomprehensible stupidity (as demonstrated by Rep Tlaib) over the past several decades was a natural phenomenon.
I think it was a strategic plan.