Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, General Science, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

What Makes Socialism So Attractive?

23 Comments

Evolution has wired our brains for it, unfortunately.

The chief problem, he suggested, is that many people are beguiled by “romantic socialism”—that is, they imagine what their personal lives would be like if everyone shared and treated one another like family. We evolved in small bands that were an individual’s only protection from starvation, victimization, and inter-group aggression. People feel vulnerable if their band does not exist. Such sentiments are more or less appropriate when people lived in small groups of hunter-gatherers composed mostly of kin, but they fail spectacularly when navigating a world of strangers cooperating in global markets.

Tooby also argued that markets make intellectuals irrelevant. Consequently, academics have a huge bias against spontaneous order and the basic goal of most social science is to critique the social institutions associated with market-based society.

More darkly, Tooby pointed out that political entrepreneurs know how to appeal to romantic socialist sentiments as a way to establish themselves in power. The evolved psychological propensity toward romantic socialism facilitates political coalitions that oppose free-market societies. Since such coalitions are organized around romantically appealing ideas, any heresy is treated as betrayal. If things are not going well (and they never are in full-blown socialist societies) and since the ideology cannot be wrong, evildoers are undermining progress and must be found and punished (think kulaks and the Gulag). Such coalitions tend to revert to primitive zero-sum thinking: If there is something you don’t get that means that someone took it from you. The result is, according to Tooby, that there really are those who are willing to make poor people worse off in order to make rich people worse off.

In terms of defining socialism, I don’t make a distinction between it and Marxism, which was simply a failed attempt to explain economics and human nature scientifically. Simply put, though it’s more complex, it is the belief that one person can know better than another what that other person “needs,” and should have the power to ensure that those “needs” are met.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

California’s “Boom”

11 Comments

Is about to go bust. The notion that CA is doing better than Texas would be hilarious if it weren’t such an infuriating lie.

Reminder: When the state asks for a federal bailout, it should be only on the condition that it become a territory, and not be allowed back in as a single state.

[Update a while later]

I wish that this didn’t seem related: Printing money in Venezuela didn’t work out all that well. Of course, California can’t print money, fortunately.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Fifteen Years On

51 Comments

Falling Man

It’s hard to come up with anything new to say about 9/11, but in the midst of this insane election, I think that this picture could be viewed by many as a metaphor for America, and the overreactionary result was Donald Trump, a man manifestly unqualified for the presidency, whose disqualifying characteristics are exceeded only by those of his sickly, corrupt, incompetent, mendacious, felonious opponent.

I don’t think that Trump will prove to be the parachute that saves the nation — he’s far too ignorant and contemptuous of the Constitution (and much else) — but many do, and that is how he has gotten as far as he has, and may yet win the presidency. And if he does, I think that history will record that the seeds of his victory, for good or ill, were sown on a bright sunny September Tuesday in 2001, and the feckless response of the nation’s “leadership” through three presidential cycles since.

[Update a while later]

Falling man, falling presidential candidate.

[Update a few minutes later]

I should note that one of the reasons I’m showing this picture is that too many people think we shouldn’t see it or be reminded, which gets back to the fecklessness of our “elites.”

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

For The Good Of The Country

9 Comments

James Comey should resign.

I agree. He should have done so long ago over this. I’m surprised and disappointed that he’s willing to go along with this level of government corruption. He’s destroying the reputation of the FBI.

[Update a few minutes later]

If you want checks and balances, vote Trump.

He’s not really a Republican, but he’ll be viewed sufficiently as one by the press to treat him like one, so we’ll once again get serious scrutiny on the White House.

[Update a few minutes later]

Don’t let Comey put a criminal in the White House.

I agree; if Comey wants to do the right thing, the new revelations provide an opening for him to do so. But I don’t think he wants to. He seems to be doubling down on the corruption.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Crooked Hillary

4 Comments

The name should and will stick: She’s either criminal, or criminally incompetent, or both.

[Update a few minutes later]

The civil service system is broken: we had to find out about her emails from a hacker. #Transparency

Public-employee unions should be abolished, and we need reform of the civil service, which has become a one-party weapon against the people.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The ethics wall between Hillary and her foundation didn’t extend to her State Department staff. This is insane. Criminally insane.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Granny Clinton

4 Comments

Time to take the car keys away from her.

Unless, of course, she’s just lying. In which case it’s time for her to take a vacation in Club Fed.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The end of American exceptionalism (which the Left has always hated):

The question is whether Madison’s defenses failed and the factions are inside the wire. America for a long time beat the odds but recently things have taken a turn for the worse. It is no accident that many of America’s troubles have coincided with the growth of identity politics, special interest groups, foreign lobbying and corruption. If so they have spread their poison and created an American version of the “informal networks” that proved so fatal in other countries, as Madison feared.

Moreover, the American factional system operates in the worst possible way. The Clinton Foundation and private email scandal is a portrait of venality without competence. The peculiar characteristics of American factionalism have bred something singular; a phenomenon at once cunning yet stupid, both corrupt and inept. America is no longer exceptional, just another bum in the ring. Yet while Putin can often outwit Obama (and Hillary when she was in State), the Russian cannot seem to turn anything to lasting advantage. The outcome is a kind of impotence afflicting both sides.

2016 should have been an election charged with passion, but it is atmospherically deadening, as if many voters wished the candidates would just go away. If the 20th century was one in which people believed government could solve all the world’s problems, the 21st century is fast developing into one where government has become like the weather: chaotic, capricious and ultimately arbitrary — something everyone talks about but no one can do anything about.

The factions have filled political discourse with entropy. There it will remain until it settles around a new attractor. Until then, all that is left is to live out our lives in the shadow of a mysterious federal building that no intelligent life is known to inhabit, save for a lady rumored to be in periodic residence occasionally glimpsed trying to send a message on a BlackBerry before smashing it with a hammer.

Or wiping it, like, with cloth or something.

[Update a couple more minutes later]

Hillary’s terrible, no good, very bad week.

May all her weeks be like that.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Oh, and speaking of the competence of the “elite” left, Jill Stein missed a rally because her people booked her on a flight to the wrong city. Hey, as Ed says, who can tell one “c” city from another in Flyover Country?

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Today’s FBI Friday-Before-Holiday-Weekend Email Drop

14 Comments

I am simply stunned at what came out of it, even the parts that weren’t redacted (one has to wonder how bad the redacted portions are). Here’s Ben Shapiro’s take:

Here’s the bottom line: this is obviously criminal activity. The FBI’s decision not to recommend indictment was a total fraud; they hid behind the fig leaf that she didn’t “intend” to break the law, which was not required by the law. Even so, there is no way in hell that any other human being would be treated with such deference regarding the question of intent. Either Hillary Clinton is either the most incompetent woman ever put in charge of a major governmental department, or she’s a criminal. There’s no in-between here. And we’ve been informed she’s the Most Competent Woman In Human History.

I wonder if we’ve finally reached a point at which even the MSM can no longer support this?

[Update a while later]

Comey was full of it when he said that she didn’t lie to the FBI. She’s been lying to everyone.

[Update later afternoon]

More from former intelligence analyst John Schindler: “Although the FBI’s press release is terse, the documents themselves indelibly portray the Democratic presidential nominee as dishonest, entitled, and thoroughly incompetent.”

But other than that, she’s great.