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| "...the experts donÂ’t know as much as they think they do." |
| 2010-07-12 |
| Jonah Goldberg, National Review According to New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman in his mega-best-selling book Hot, Flat, and Crowded, China banned plastic bags a few years ago. “Bam! Just like that — 1.3 billion people, theoretically, will stop using thin plastic bags,” he gushed. “Millions of barrels of petroleum will be saved, and mountains of garbage avoided.” China’s got us beat, suggests Friedman, because its leaders aren’t hung up on democracy, checks and balances, or any of the other dusty old impediments found in the American system. Friedman has proclaimed his envy for China’s authoritarian system countless times. It’s why he titled one of the chapters in his book “China for a Day.” The idea — he calls it his “fantasy” — is that if we could just be China for a day, the experts could impose by diktat what they cannot win through democratic debate. If only the Founding Fathers had included an annual “Tyranny Day” in the Constitution. Every 364 days America could debate and scheme, pitting faction against faction, government branch against government branch, and on the 365th day the Supreme Soviet of the United States could simply “do things that are tough” and shove ten pounds of policy awesomeness into democracy’s five-pound bag. Now, just for the record, China hasn’t banned plastic bags. Just ask anybody who’s been to China recently. But what a strange thing to sell your soul for. What was it Thomas More said — “It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . but to ban plastic bags”?... But it’s also worth noting that Friedman is hardly alone. He may stretch his argument to the point of parody, but he shares a widespread view that the “experts” have all the answers and the “system” is holding them back. Such arguments are as old as they are dangerous. And they are arrogant beyond description. People like Friedman automatically assume that their preferred policies are so obviously right, so objectively enlightened, that there’s no need to debate them or vote on them. Such arguments are usually deployed to avoid valid criticisms, not because there are none. Indeed, the Obama White House virtually lives by such claims. All of the experts agreed that their stimulus would work, that Obama’s version of health-care reform was both necessary and popular, and that weaning the U.S. from fossil fuels would create “green jobs.” The evidence on all of these fronts is mixed or weak, yet the president constantly insists that he doesn’t want to hear from people who disagree with him on these issues because all the facts are in. Such arrogance is dangerous. The literature on the unintended consequences of policies crafted by experts is at least as old as the field of economics. Frédéric Bastiat, the great 19th-century economist, noted all that separated the good economist from the bad is the ability to appreciate the possibility of the unforeseen. Nobel Prize–winning economist Friedrich Hayek demonstrated that healthy economies couldn’t be controlled by experts, because the experts will always have a “knowledge problem.” They can never know all of the variables and never fully predict how their theories will play out in reality. Right now, Congress is debating a financial-reform bill that simply commands that regulators predict when an unforeseen crisis will occur. This is like demanding that regulators know when stocks will go up or down. If they knew that, they wouldn’t be regulators — they’d be billionaires. But forget all that. Let’s get back to those evil plastic bags. A new study from the University of Arizona reveals that reusable shopping bags, the enlightened replacement for plastic ones, are breeding grounds for E. coli and other dangerous bacteria. Roughly 50 percent of the bags inspected were found to contain dangerous, potentially lethal, bacteria. No, this doesn’t mean we should abandon reusable bags, let alone ban them on next year’s Tyranny Day. People can clean the bags and solve the problem. That’s a hassle, to be sure. But that’s the point. There’s always going to be a downside to even the best policies, because the experts don’t know as much as they think they do. Sometimes, they don’t even know they’re not experts at all. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #6 If ever in all of human history appeared to be the enthusiastic and blatant willful disrespect of others and the law since Sodom and Gomorrah, this is it. America sold out to the dumbest tribe, and they shall lead it straight into hell. Not too many Promised lands beyond this one. |
| Posted by: newc 2010-07-12 21:26 |
| #5 It is nihilism to the end degree. These people think that Stalin could be better than lenin, and Fidel could be better than stalin, and mao could have been better than castro, but in America, obama could make it work here. It fails 34 times, give it another shot. This is not a mental disorder so to speak, it is a fundamental lack of understanding of human nature, and insanity. To force My Family and myself to live under this draconian foolishness is criminal and comes nothing short of never being forgiven - that goes for all of you aholes in the democrat parthy. Move to europe. I have had it with all of you. Move to venezuela, move to greece, move to north korea, move to china, move to canada, I don't give a damn, but leave me alone. Get the bean counting out of my life right now. Government is the problem- always. And those pagans that worship it. Cesar cannot grant you salvation, and at this point, I doubt Cesar has any left to "dispense". Only two types of people vote democrat: Those in on the take, or the stupid. Thats the bottom line. There are no mansions in Heaven for those that enslave an entire mansion by using lust for power, Coveting,. stealing, and bearing false witness. You get horns. |
| Posted by: newc 2010-07-12 21:10 |
#4
I have come to that exact conclusion myself. How interesting. I also see some aspects of borderline personality disorder in the people who are the most loyal followers of socialism but don't themselves lead. But we have to keep in mind that narcissism is a sort of scale and we all have different degrees of narcissistic behavior and we all show some borderline tendencies. Socialists just can't stand the idea of someone thinking "outside the box" because to them the box is everything. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2010-07-12 14:40 |
| #3 Lookup Dunning Kruger. I've come to the conclusion that Socialistic thought is a form of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2010-07-12 12:11 |
| #2 Gulag for the Day, yep, that's the answer. |
| Posted by: Hammerhead 2010-07-12 11:28 |
| #1 ThereÂ’s always going to be a downside to even the best policies, because the experts donÂ’t know as much as they think they do. Sometimes, they donÂ’t even know theyÂ’re not experts at all. These last two sentences say it all. |
| Posted by: WolfDog 2010-07-12 10:55 |