William M. Briggs has a fine, light-hearted but trenchant piece on how experts use concocted calamities to find concocted victims and gain undeserved power. A familiar issue of course, but very well presented.
The whole piece is well worth reading.
How Experts Use “Calamities” to Find Official Victims & Gain Power
Let’s first remind ourselves of The Poor Have Less Money Fallacy. This is most commonly seen when the price of a thing rises (which often happens because of government “solutions”), and we hear from the “media” or academia something like “This price increase hurts the poor!” That is not the fallacy, because that is of course true. The Fallacy comes in intimating (below the headline) this deprivation ought not to be: that the poor ought not to have less money. That, and you saw this coming, Equity ought to reign instead.
The Poor Have Less Money is yet another false theorem derived from one of the greatest errors of our time:
Let’s first remind ourselves of The Poor Have Less Money Fallacy. This is most commonly seen when the price of a thing rises (which often happens because of government “solutions”), and we hear from the “media” or academia something like “This price increase hurts the poor!” That is not the fallacy, because that is of course true. The Fallacy comes in intimating (below the headline) this deprivation ought not to be: that the poor ought not to have less money. That, and you saw this coming, Equity ought to reign instead.
The Poor Have Less Money is yet another false theorem derived from one of the greatest errors of our time:
Equality.
The solution to the Fallacy is not to do do anything straightforward like remove the previous “solutions” which causes prices to rise, but to subsidize the poor. Which, as you know, continues the cycle of solution-inflation-increase-subsidize-solution…etc.
It’s not only price increases where we see the fallacy, but in any supposed calamity that “impacts” the poor hardest. Anything in which Experts can make the poor into Official Victims. And therefore eligible to be wards of Experts. Experts are the highly credentialed well-titled people under the spell of scientism who know just how to bring Utopia about: by the studied application of Theory.
The solution to the Fallacy is not to do do anything straightforward like remove the previous “solutions” which causes prices to rise, but to subsidize the poor. Which, as you know, continues the cycle of solution-inflation-increase-subsidize-solution…etc.
It’s not only price increases where we see the fallacy, but in any supposed calamity that “impacts” the poor hardest. Anything in which Experts can make the poor into Official Victims. And therefore eligible to be wards of Experts. Experts are the highly credentialed well-titled people under the spell of scientism who know just how to bring Utopia about: by the studied application of Theory.
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