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.
4 comments:
The other day I saw someone say online that his wife was working to protect nature. Exasperated, I pointed out that the natural state of most land in Britain is to be under a thousand feet of ice. Was I being needlessly cruel or was I right to imply that the very idea of "nature" is incoherent?
1,000 feet of ice - now that's a real calamity. Except for the ice, I suppose.
dearieme - it's not needlessly cruel, it has to be admitted that our idea of "nature" is incoherent. Derby museum has part of a hippopotamus skeleton found locally and dating to the previous interglacial.
It's a useful word, but there are incoherent aspects to "nature" such as protecting it. This often comes across as a thatched cottages, rural lanes, hedgerows bustling with little creatures sense, perilously close to the world of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.
I love it when greenies drivel on about 'the beautiful natural countryside...' There is nothing remotely natural about any location in mainland Britain, except the tops of some of the higher hills. Everything you see is the result, directly or indirectly, of the activity of man. There are some beautiful places, say in Yorkshire, that to modern, uncritical ie: Unthinking eyes, that appear to be natural, but exist because of 'Hush' mining... Now that's a way to spoil the natural view.
Some of these utter nutters seem to think that you could abandon cattle and sheep to their own devices and everything would stay all pretty and, well, garden like.
Tony - 'Hush' mining is a new one for me so I looked it up - interesting, thanks. What the nutters seem to miss is that the natural world evolves, we are part of that and no particular state can be 'natural' in any permanent sense.
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