Holly Baird has an interesting post on gay marriage. Personally, I think that gays are crazy to want to get married. Insurance companies could permit domestic partner coverage without marriage.
I do not think that the government should be involved in regulating marriage. Marriage is a religiously derived sacrament. The Catholic Church or any other religion should not be obligated to recognize what it considers to be a sin. However, there is no reason why a gay religion might not recognize marriage among gays. I don't believe the strong arm of the state should interfere with private choices unless the choices cause harm.
The abolition of state regulation of marriage need not modify divorce laws. The contractual nature of marriage need not change if all marriage is religious rather than civil. On the other hand, I think I can be convinced that divorce court should be abolished, and all divorce law should be religious in nature. I'm not convinced that marriage is a civil issue. It is religious.
I also disagree, incidentally, with the illegalization of polygamy, or for that matter polyandry, which feminists might prefer. The Bible has alot of polygamy, and there is no reason why the Mormons should have had to give it up. I don't see why the state needs to be involved in victimless crime questions. Child abuse is another story, of course. It is not victimless.
There is a long standing debate among people I know as to whether homosexuality is learned or inherited. The "liberal" view is that it is inherited, which contrasts with the "liberal" view on IQ scores--that they are environmentally acquired. That poses an interesting question: why do "liberals" send their children to elite private universities if the criteria to get in (SAT scores) are mere environmental artifacts and not inherited? Do they really believe that students learn more in expensive colleges?
It is kind of interesting: "liberals" say homosexuality is inherited but IQ is acquired, while "conservatives" say that IQ is inherited but homosexuality is learned. Whether one prefers the chicken or the egg seems to be a temperamental trait. I wonder if that trait is inherited, or environmentally determined!
I do not believe in gay marriage. First of all, marriage is a religious sacrament and/or state-derived relationship. I do not believe the state should play a role, so all marriage should be religious. If someone wants to get married, they should not have the right to ask the taxpayers to subsidize their folly. Go to church or sign a contract. I don't see how City Hall can sanctify a marriage. If gays want to start their own religion, then more power to them. The state should not be involved one way or the other.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The Fallacy of the Middle Ground: The Case of the O'Reilly Spin Zone
One of my favorite posters here reads my blog to balance the views of left wing blogs. He believes that if he sees all sides, he can find the moderate view, the happy medium, that is truthful because it takes all views into account. This is something like a Fox television program, the O'Reilly Spin Zone, where the announcer claims to be "balanced". O'Reilly, however, is anything but balanced. He gives two rather extreme points of view, call them the Progressive Republican and the progressive Democratic, then he splits the difference between them. The O'Reilly Spin Zone is characterized by its persistent omission of the most important issues facing the nation, especially monetary policy and the Federal Reserve Bank, which O'Reilly seems to believe is unimportant compared to the activities of shadowy speculators. Given that monetary policy is the one issue of crucial importance to his working class viewers, his claim that he "looks out for his viewers" is especially vicious.
There is no such thing as a happy medium much of the time. O'Reilly's claim is nonsensical. The truth does not lie in the middle. For instance, in the 18th century Dr. Benjamin Rush advocated bleeding as a cure for various illnesses. Today, physicians use antibiotics. Is the truth in the middle? Do you want your doctor to use bleeding half the time and antibiotics the other half? Or is bleeding based on an erroneous theory, so you are hopeful that your doctor dispenses with it?
How about astronomy in ancient Greece? I think it was Parmenides who believed that the universe was a sphere with the earth at the center, while Democritus believed that the earth revolved around the sun. Would a balanced view, that the center of the universe was midway between the earth and the sun, have been accurate? Or was the truth of the matter irrelevant to what either Parmenides or Democritus had to say?
In the 1920s Ludwig von Mises argued for the importance of price in the functioning of an economy, and that socialist coordination would be inefficient because of the absence of price. In the 1930s, Oskar Lange claimed to have disproven von Mises's arguments because socialist planners could equate marginal revenue product and price, but his argument is so laden question begging and circular reasoning that it is difficult to believe that anyone would have take it seriously. Yet, academic economists and sociologists for many years seriously stated that Lange had disproven von Mises. Many prominent scholars, such as Clark Kerr, advocated a "consensus" view of the "convergence" of capitalism and socialism in the 1950s. But this view of a happy medium was patently false. It was an extreme fallacy to say that there would be convergence. Von Mises and Hayek were right, Lange and Kerr were wrong. Kerr's "medium" view of socialism was an extreme one. Von Mises's and Hayek's view of the efficiency of information in a capitalist economy was an accurate and moderate one.
In 1989 the Soviet Union fell for the very reasons that von Mises and Hayek said it would. But not one of the academic economists or sociologists who insisted on the nonsensical convergence theory, the ancient idea of the happy medium, admitted that convergence was wrong because socialism failed. Rather, many continued to advocate socialism and to apologize for Lange's argument.
Today, we see on Fox News continued advocacy of the convergence doctrine, support for the bailout and the like, views which coincidentally favor the interests of Rupert Murdoch and various other contributors to the American Enterprise Institute, interests which do not have O'Reilly's viewers' happiness in mind.
There is no medium. Socialism fails because it interferes with the communication of information. Cognitive limits of socialist managers inhibit innovation. There is no in between. You either reward people fully for their innovation, or you don't. If you don't you get less innovation. You get the bailout, failed firms like Citibank and General Motors receiving massive taxpayer subsidies in the name of the "economy" and economically illiterate bozos on Fox telling us that it is good that the large firms steal from us. We should be grateful because it is midway between what the Republicans say and what the Democrats say. The bailout reflects the middle ground between the two. It must be right.
The fallacy of the middle ground may have evolved from a misinterpretation of Aristotle. In his Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle argues that virtue is typically the mean, so that courage is the mean between cowardice and rashness. There is a difference between ethics and science, though. Aristotle did not claim that truth was the middle ground, only that virtue is. It seems likely that those who believe in "moderation" and "the middle ground" are confused between virtue and truth. The truth depends on an accurate depiction of how the world behaves. The middle ground between two nonsensical views, such as those of the Democrats and the Republicans, is neither moderate nor truthful.
There is no such thing as a happy medium much of the time. O'Reilly's claim is nonsensical. The truth does not lie in the middle. For instance, in the 18th century Dr. Benjamin Rush advocated bleeding as a cure for various illnesses. Today, physicians use antibiotics. Is the truth in the middle? Do you want your doctor to use bleeding half the time and antibiotics the other half? Or is bleeding based on an erroneous theory, so you are hopeful that your doctor dispenses with it?
How about astronomy in ancient Greece? I think it was Parmenides who believed that the universe was a sphere with the earth at the center, while Democritus believed that the earth revolved around the sun. Would a balanced view, that the center of the universe was midway between the earth and the sun, have been accurate? Or was the truth of the matter irrelevant to what either Parmenides or Democritus had to say?
In the 1920s Ludwig von Mises argued for the importance of price in the functioning of an economy, and that socialist coordination would be inefficient because of the absence of price. In the 1930s, Oskar Lange claimed to have disproven von Mises's arguments because socialist planners could equate marginal revenue product and price, but his argument is so laden question begging and circular reasoning that it is difficult to believe that anyone would have take it seriously. Yet, academic economists and sociologists for many years seriously stated that Lange had disproven von Mises. Many prominent scholars, such as Clark Kerr, advocated a "consensus" view of the "convergence" of capitalism and socialism in the 1950s. But this view of a happy medium was patently false. It was an extreme fallacy to say that there would be convergence. Von Mises and Hayek were right, Lange and Kerr were wrong. Kerr's "medium" view of socialism was an extreme one. Von Mises's and Hayek's view of the efficiency of information in a capitalist economy was an accurate and moderate one.
In 1989 the Soviet Union fell for the very reasons that von Mises and Hayek said it would. But not one of the academic economists or sociologists who insisted on the nonsensical convergence theory, the ancient idea of the happy medium, admitted that convergence was wrong because socialism failed. Rather, many continued to advocate socialism and to apologize for Lange's argument.
Today, we see on Fox News continued advocacy of the convergence doctrine, support for the bailout and the like, views which coincidentally favor the interests of Rupert Murdoch and various other contributors to the American Enterprise Institute, interests which do not have O'Reilly's viewers' happiness in mind.
There is no medium. Socialism fails because it interferes with the communication of information. Cognitive limits of socialist managers inhibit innovation. There is no in between. You either reward people fully for their innovation, or you don't. If you don't you get less innovation. You get the bailout, failed firms like Citibank and General Motors receiving massive taxpayer subsidies in the name of the "economy" and economically illiterate bozos on Fox telling us that it is good that the large firms steal from us. We should be grateful because it is midway between what the Republicans say and what the Democrats say. The bailout reflects the middle ground between the two. It must be right.
The fallacy of the middle ground may have evolved from a misinterpretation of Aristotle. In his Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle argues that virtue is typically the mean, so that courage is the mean between cowardice and rashness. There is a difference between ethics and science, though. Aristotle did not claim that truth was the middle ground, only that virtue is. It seems likely that those who believe in "moderation" and "the middle ground" are confused between virtue and truth. The truth depends on an accurate depiction of how the world behaves. The middle ground between two nonsensical views, such as those of the Democrats and the Republicans, is neither moderate nor truthful.
American Democracy, RIP
America was a bold experiment, but it has failed. It has failed for the reasons that the Founding Fathers, specifically Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist Papers, feared an excessively democratic nation would fail: faction and the use of democratic power to redistribute wealth in favor of special interests. Hamilton did not anticipate that Wall Street and a central bank would prove crucial in this regard. Nevertheless, the public's stupidity in supporting Wall Street's looting in the name of socialist rhetoric (the "bailout") leaves me with a cliche--a people gets the government and economy it deserves.
Socialism is a failed philosophy, and a socialist America is a moribund nation. A poster on this blog raised the question of whether a majority can be wrong. Well yes, a majority cannot repeal the law of gravity; and they cannot make socialism function as well or as fairly as capitalism. A majority of Americans cannot motivate progress or productivity through income redistribution; and a majority of Americans cannot say that government stealing is not theft. A majority of Americans cannot invent a cure for cancer. But the majority has been able to slow medical, economic and technological progress. They have managed to create an economy where new firms cannot form and old ones flee. They have harmed the nation and themselves.
Thus, Americans are going through a period of economic decline due to the policies for which the majority has voted since 1932. Your children are going to be hoisted by the American voters' petard. They are going to be hoisted by an illusory faith in democracy at the expense of liberalism and liberal government; of mob rule at the expense of freedom. Happily, I have no children on whom to inflict America's dismal future, made dismal by the democratic mob.
George W. Bush's socialization of banking, the massive bailout, the recent tripling of Federal Reserve Bank Credit and monetary reserves suggests the probability of serious economic instability. This is occurring in front of the faces of the American voter. Yet Americans vote for ever more government.
Today, few Americans are familiar with the principles on which the nation was founded; few are familiar with Locke or the laissez faire principles of Jefferson and Adam Smith. Few understand the reasons why America became the most technologically advanced nation. The universities are bastions of ignorance. They advocate failed, stupid, reactionary ideologies like socialism no matter how many times socialism has failed and how many people it has killed.
There is little to look forward to as America declines. I pity future generations of Americans, who might have led exceptional lives, but instead will lead impoverished lives because their ancestors were duped by the socialist argument.
American democracy, RIP.
Socialism is a failed philosophy, and a socialist America is a moribund nation. A poster on this blog raised the question of whether a majority can be wrong. Well yes, a majority cannot repeal the law of gravity; and they cannot make socialism function as well or as fairly as capitalism. A majority of Americans cannot motivate progress or productivity through income redistribution; and a majority of Americans cannot say that government stealing is not theft. A majority of Americans cannot invent a cure for cancer. But the majority has been able to slow medical, economic and technological progress. They have managed to create an economy where new firms cannot form and old ones flee. They have harmed the nation and themselves.
Thus, Americans are going through a period of economic decline due to the policies for which the majority has voted since 1932. Your children are going to be hoisted by the American voters' petard. They are going to be hoisted by an illusory faith in democracy at the expense of liberalism and liberal government; of mob rule at the expense of freedom. Happily, I have no children on whom to inflict America's dismal future, made dismal by the democratic mob.
George W. Bush's socialization of banking, the massive bailout, the recent tripling of Federal Reserve Bank Credit and monetary reserves suggests the probability of serious economic instability. This is occurring in front of the faces of the American voter. Yet Americans vote for ever more government.
Today, few Americans are familiar with the principles on which the nation was founded; few are familiar with Locke or the laissez faire principles of Jefferson and Adam Smith. Few understand the reasons why America became the most technologically advanced nation. The universities are bastions of ignorance. They advocate failed, stupid, reactionary ideologies like socialism no matter how many times socialism has failed and how many people it has killed.
There is little to look forward to as America declines. I pity future generations of Americans, who might have led exceptional lives, but instead will lead impoverished lives because their ancestors were duped by the socialist argument.
American democracy, RIP.
Henry Hazlitt on the Bush-Obama Bailout
Henry Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson in 1946 and it was republished in 1978. I was just re-reading it and noticed these paragraphs on pages 186-7 of the Three Rivers Press edition available through the Foundation for Economic Education:
"The effect of keeping interest rates artificially low, in fact, is eventually the same as that of keeping any other price below the natural market. It increases demand and reduces supply. It increases the demand for capital and reduces the supply of real capital. It creates economic distortions. It is true, no doubt, that an artificial reduction in the interest rate encourages increased borrowing. It tends, in fact, to encourage highly speculative ventures that cannot continue except under the artificial conditions that give them birth. On the supply side, the artificial reduction of interest rates discourages normal thrift, saving and investment. It reduces the accumulation of capital. It slows down that increase in productivity, that "economic growth," that "progressives" profess to be so eager to promote.
"The money rate can indeed, be kept artificially low only by continuous new injections of currency or bank credit in place of real savings. This can create the illusion of more capital just as the addition of water can create the illusion of more milk. But it is a policy of continuous inflation. It is obviously a process involving cumulative danger. The money rate will rise and a crisis will develop if the inflation is reversed, or merely brought to a halt, or even continued at a diminished rate.
"It remains to be pointed out that while new injections of currency or bank credit can at first, and temporarily, bring about lower interest rates, persistence in this device must eventually raise interest rates. It does so because new injections of money tend to lower the purchasing power of money. Lenders then come to realize that the money they lend today will buy less a year from now, say, when they get it back."
When that occurs, only severe disruption of the economy will end the hyper-inflation. The policies of the past twenty-five years, supported by a majority of Americans, is leading us to that point. The Bush-Obama bailout is the tipping point
"The effect of keeping interest rates artificially low, in fact, is eventually the same as that of keeping any other price below the natural market. It increases demand and reduces supply. It increases the demand for capital and reduces the supply of real capital. It creates economic distortions. It is true, no doubt, that an artificial reduction in the interest rate encourages increased borrowing. It tends, in fact, to encourage highly speculative ventures that cannot continue except under the artificial conditions that give them birth. On the supply side, the artificial reduction of interest rates discourages normal thrift, saving and investment. It reduces the accumulation of capital. It slows down that increase in productivity, that "economic growth," that "progressives" profess to be so eager to promote.
"The money rate can indeed, be kept artificially low only by continuous new injections of currency or bank credit in place of real savings. This can create the illusion of more capital just as the addition of water can create the illusion of more milk. But it is a policy of continuous inflation. It is obviously a process involving cumulative danger. The money rate will rise and a crisis will develop if the inflation is reversed, or merely brought to a halt, or even continued at a diminished rate.
"It remains to be pointed out that while new injections of currency or bank credit can at first, and temporarily, bring about lower interest rates, persistence in this device must eventually raise interest rates. It does so because new injections of money tend to lower the purchasing power of money. Lenders then come to realize that the money they lend today will buy less a year from now, say, when they get it back."
When that occurs, only severe disruption of the economy will end the hyper-inflation. The policies of the past twenty-five years, supported by a majority of Americans, is leading us to that point. The Bush-Obama bailout is the tipping point
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