By Thomas Sowell
May 31, 2016
Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.
While throngs of young people are cheering loudly for avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, socialism has turned oil-rich Venezuela into a place where there are shortages of everything from toilet paper to beer, where electricity keeps shutting down, and where there are long lines of people hoping to get food, people complaining that they cannot feed their families.
With national income going down, and prices going up under triple-digit inflation in Venezuela, these complaints are by no means frivolous. But it is doubtful if the young people cheering for Bernie Sanders have even heard of such things, whether in Venezuela or in other countries around the world that have turned their economies over to politicians and bureaucrats to run.
The anti-capitalist policies in Venezuela have worked so well that the number of companies in Venezuela is now a fraction of what it once was. That should certainly reduce capitalist "exploitation," shouldn't it?
But people who attribute income inequality to capitalists exploiting workers, as Karl Marx claimed, never seem to get around to testing that belief against facts -- such as the fact that none of the Marxist regimes around the world has ever had as high a standard of living for working people as there is in many capitalist countries.
Facts are seldom allowed to contaminate the beautiful vision of the left. What matters to the true believers are the ringing slogans, endlessly repeated.
When Senator Sanders cries, "The system is rigged!" no one asks, "Just what specifically does that mean?" or "What facts do you have to back that up?"
In 2015, the 400 richest people in the world had net losses of $19 billion. If they had rigged the system, surely they could have rigged it better than that.
But the very idea of subjecting their pet notions to the test of hard facts will probably not even occur to those who are cheering for socialism and for other bright ideas of the political left.
How many of the people who are demanding an increase in the minimum wage have ever bothered to check what actually happens when higher minimum wages are imposed? More often they just assume what is assumed by like-minded peers -- sometimes known as "everybody," with their assumptions being what "everybody knows."
Back in 1948, when inflation had rendered meaningless the minimum wage established a decade earlier, the unemployment rate among 16-17-year-old black males was under 10 percent. But after the minimum wage was raised repeatedly to keep up with inflation, the unemployment rate for black males that age was never under 30 percent for more than 20 consecutive years, from 1971 through 1994. In many of those years, the unemployment rate for black youngsters that age exceeded 40 percent and, for a couple of years, it exceeded 50 percent.
The damage is even greater than these statistics might suggest. Most low-wage jobs are entry-level jobs that young people move up out of, after acquiring work experience and a track record that makes them eligible for better jobs. But you can't move up the ladder if you don't get on the ladder.
The great promise of socialism is something for nothing. It is one of the signs of today's dumbed-down education that so many college students seem to think that the cost of their education should -- and will -- be paid by raising taxes on "the rich."
Here again, just a little check of the facts would reveal that higher tax rates on upper-income earners do not automatically translate into more tax revenue coming in to the government. Often high tax rates have led to less revenue than lower tax rates.
In a globalized economy, high tax rates may just lead investors to invest in other countries with lower tax rates. That means that jobs created by those investments will be overseas.
None of this is rocket science. But you do have to stop and think -- and that is what too many of our schools and colleges are failing to teach their students to do.
31 May, 2016
27 May, 2016
Gawker + Thiel + Free Speech
The Liberal Case Against Peter Thiel Is The Worst Kind Of Hypocrisy
Hysteria over the Gawker suit is unconvincing— especially when you consider who’s leading the charge.
May 26, 2016 By David Harsanyi
We recently discovered that Peter Thiel, libertarian (?) billionaire co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook, has been bankrolling lawsuits against the gossip site Gawker.
Now, as someone who considers himself a near-absolutist on free speech, I’m open to hearing arguments for why we need tort reform in these sorts of cases or why Hulk Hogan’s suit undermines free expression. But so far, the media’s hysteria about Thiel’s third-party legal funding has been unconvincing — especially when we consider who’s making the arguments.
And after wading through the thousands of angst-ridden words, I noticed that the case mostly boils down to two objections: Thiel’s motivations and Thiel’s money. And when I say Thiel, I mean Thiel. There is little anxiety over third-party funding when we’re talking about the giant apparatus the Left uses to implement their own will via the courts. Even more hypocritical is the fact that many of the same people so distressed about the future of sex tapes regularly advocate for policies that would allow the state to inhibit political speech.
Ezra Klein, for instance, writes that what’s “endangering Gawker is Thiel’s endless resources, and his apparently limitless appetite for revenge. Those tools can be used by anyone with enough money, against any media target they choose, for any slight they perceive.”
Josh Marshall says it’s a “Huge, Huge Deal,” and writes, “We don’t have to go any further than Donald Trump to know that the incredibly rich often use frivolous litigation to intimidate critics and bludgeon enemies.”
Thiel is “reinventing the concept of philanthropy so as to include weapons-grade attacks on America’s free press,” writes Felix Salmon, who goes onto say that Thiel’s success has essentially given other billionaires a blueprint on how to put critics out of business. Slate says Thiel is the bully here.
Which would all be very upsetting if true.
There’s a question that should not be lost in this debate: is it an invasion of privacy to make public a tape—not a news story about a sexual indiscretion or a snapped picture of a sexual indiscretion in some public place, but a movie of a person engaged in sex in private—without the consent of the person in it? In other words, was this lawsuit really “frivolous?” Not according to a judge. Not according to the jury that awarded Hogan more than $100 million. And not according to a circuit court judge that upheld that verdict.
There’s no doubt the judicial system has its share of ridiculous decisions, frivolous lawsuits and hyper-litigious troublemakers. So what precedent has Thiel really set? Well, we’ve probably seen the end of sites posting private sex tapes without permission. If you’re upset about the amount Gawker is on the hook for, let’s talk about capping awards. But the contention that Thiel is abusing the system because of a “limitless appetite” for revenge would be a lot stronger if he hadn’t actually won the case.
Now, whether Thiel was compelled to engage in this crusade because he was “slighted” by Gawker is immaterial. Some rich people are motivated to act because they are slighted, others because of ideology, or empathy or hate, or because there’s a media outlet that believes it’s okay to run sex tapes of people as long as they’re not under the age of four. So what?
Moreover, if Thiel’s motivation were a cause liberal pundits felt some moral or ideological affinity towards, they would be cheering him on. Vox asserts that Thiel “sees his lawsuit as a public-spirited attempt to enforce norms of decency and respect for personal privacy.” Or, in other words, he uses the judicial system the same way liberals have for decades when trying to enforce their own norms—including ones on abortion rights, gay marriage, and basically everything else they value.
Actually, every contemporary major lawsuit of any political consequence has probably been funded in some way by a third party. If Thiel is a problem, so is the pro bono legal work of wealthy lawyers who donate their time and resources to causes that move them. So is contingent litigation. So are class-action lawsuits. So is every advocacy legal group. Start with the ACLU, which is backed by hundreds of One Percenters and works to enforce its own norms of “decency and respect” when it comes boys’ and girls’ bathrooms and leads crusades to do away with the Free Exercise Clause.
By the way, Nick Denton is also a One Percenter. So are the owners of the New York Times and every other major media outlet you can think of. These One Percenters can just as easily destroy lives and abuse their powerful position and hire teams of lawyers. Sometimes the only way to fight back is to collectively fund an effort or find a third-party benefactor.
If press outlets feel that the sex tape case is worthy of a First Amendment fight, they could easily match Thiel’s $10 million investment. Otherwise, what do these critics propose? Should we pass a law capping the amount of funding people with the last names “Thiel” and “Koch” can provide for lawsuits? Ban billionaires from participating in the legal system?
But the most infuriating hypocrisy of the entire Thiel kerfuffle is that many of those wringing their hands have no problem with the overall deteriorating attitude regarding free expression on the Left. Some, in fact, actively argue for inhibiting free speech. I’m not only talking about the rampant illiberalism we see at institutions of higher learning or the abuse of government officials who are attempting to punish Americans who are skeptical of liberal doctrine. Some of them would be perfectly content handing over far broader and more consequential powers of censorship to the state, allowing government to literally ban movies and books with political messages. That includes the institutional position at almost every liberal publication lamenting the actions of Peter Thiel.
24 May, 2016
Ben Stein: Words of Wisdom
Ben Stein’s Diary
Playing the Teacher in Front of a Classroom
Ben Stein
May 17, 2016
The best part about it is that it’s not acting.
In my life, aside from my very private moments with my wife and my dogs, the happiest moments of my existence have been in front of a classroom.
When I contemplate my roughly 71 years on this planet, I had many great times watching cartoons with my son and my wife and getting awards and walking in the redwoods of Santa Cruz, looking out my window in Sandpoint at the stupefying blue, red, yellow, and grey daybreak. Zooming along the lake in my Cobalt, with the Stars and Stripes fluttering on the rear of the boat and my wifey’s perfect profile to my left. I can recall happy times with my Pop at the White House Mess, sharing our secrets while John Dean plotted his next move nearby. I can have a great time any moment I step into my pool and start swimming the world’s laziest backstroke while the sun beats through the palms and jets ply the air overhead with their silvery magic. I remember my mother offering me grapes as I slept.
When I awaken and look at my wife and the dogs, I cannot believe how blessed I am. Just to look at the American flag over my bed and the map of the USA in my living room is to feel the red, white, and blue glory of living in the most spectacular edifice of all eternity.
But it has been in front of a classroom that I have had my greatest joy.
In 1970, in Anti-Trust Law at Yale, I commandeered the class and made our bully of a teacher (but a super smart guy) leave the room and quit teaching: all because I threatened to take my clothes off and recite the names of the Vietnam War dead if he didn’t stop his game playing.
In 1973, I was an adjunct teacher of film at American University at Ward Circle in my home town of DC. It was my third semester teaching there in the evenings after harrowing days practicing trial law. I had the most popular class ever in the history of AU up until then: 360 students for the superficially easiest elective in the world. It was called “Film and Revolution!”
The first day of class, when I entered the room and strode up to the podium, at about 150 pounds, long hair, mustache, menacing potent ’62 Red Corvette in the parking lot, Buick repair jacket on, the whole room erupted in sustained, standing cheering.
They knew I was their pal and that we would have a great time. And the class was not at all easy at in fact. The kids had to use Socratic method techniques to dissect what the secret motives of the writers were in terms of wishes for social change.
(This led to my book: The View From Sunset Boulevard — about the political attitudes of the TV writing aristocracy and how those views gave us the distinctly red-tinged messages of prime time. But that was later. In ’72 and ’73 I was talking about movies.)
Your humble servant had a rush of excitement every day I taught that class. The kids loved me and I loved them.
Soon, I went on to teach at UC, Santa Cruz. It was fabulous, too, although not like AU. But the views from my classroom were incredible. Then to teach at Pepperdine, also great stuff, an even better view, but nothing like my magical mystery tour at the Ward Circle Building at AU.
Then, on about November 16, 1985, came the day that altered my life forever: Playing a teacher in a movie called Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I did a long speech about the economy off the cuff and the young extras playing high school students applauded and whistled when I was done.
Matthew Broderick asked me if I did theater on Broadway. Michael Chinich and John Hughes told me I would be a star.
Now, I travel about the nation speaking about the economy, the demise of certain ethnic and demographic groups, politics, and investing. It’s not AU in 1973, but it’s still paradise.
I love to speak and by now, with 71 years over my belt (not under my belt… I am too fat for that), I have a bit to say, and if I were asked to speak at a college (as I actually often am), this is what I would say to graduates:
WE ALL WANT TO BE ABLE TO LOOK BACK at our lives when we are my age and say we have been successful. But what is successful? It certainly has something to do with money. Shortages of money are simply horrifying. Fear of financial insecurity is awful. So before anything else, success requires at least a modicum of financial security, obtained in a respectable way.
But once we are past that, success requires that we spend our lives doing what we like to do: in a free society, one of the best possibilities is to do not what your parents expect you to do, not what the school guidance counselor tells you to do, but what you enjoy doing.
My old pal and inspiration, Warren E. Buffett, says (if I may boil it down) that he has become the richest man in the world or one of the richest not because he chose a highly paid field that he hated, but because he happened to love a field that paid astoundingly well: allocating capital.
When I worked on Wall Street, I hated every moment of it (although I love finance people once they are away from New York). Buffett “tap dances to work,” as he likes to say. That’s the way to make a life.
My dear young friend, L., just graduated from a prestige university. She is going to work at improving the lives of poor people in our nation’s capital. Some people in her life told her she was wasting her education working in that vineyard. I disagree. I think she’ll do great things there and she’ll be doing what she loves. That’s what makes you succeed — making your work your play or maybe making your play your work.
That last comes from one of the smartest men I have ever met, the mega producer, Norman Lear. (I know I have not quoted it exactly right.) He made what he enjoyed doing — weaving tales of meaning and humor — into a super remunerative career.
It’s really a matter of definition. As I see it, we all have only one life to live. If we spend it doing work we hate, we have made a serious mistake. If we spend it doing work we barely tolerate, we have made a mistake.
What good does it do to have money, even a meaningful amount of money, if you have spent your one and only life doing work that does not thrill you?
So, make a living — but also make a life.
I also respectfully advise that young people have a spiritual basis for their lives — and that such spiritual basis involve doing good for others. As I have grown older I see that a selfish life spent without having a high priority for helping others is a waste of life. The knowledge that you are sharing your humanity and your limited span on this planet with those in need gives you self-esteem in even the darkest hours.
This goes hand in hand with my own certain conviction that there is a Higher Power which controls the universe. It’s not evolution and it’s not chance. It’s God and when He does some things and lets other horrible events happen, when there are death camps and child rapes and gulags and trench warfare and killing fields, we have to wonder what kind of God He is. But I am certain that the laws of physics and motion and gravity did not happen by themselves, that Someone designed them. I don’t think that someone was Marx or a pit boss in some cosmic gambling house.
Life is a heavy burden. Ask and then allow God to share it.
Have gratitude on your plate night and day and sup heartily. We in America, especially the young, have lives that even the wealthiest people two centuries ago could not imagine. We have air conditioning and modern medicine and automobiles and jet travel. We have free worldwide instantaneous communication.
But mostly, we have freedom under law. We have equality before the law. We have the liberty to do what we want with our lives day by day and have that liberty protected — not repressed — by the government.
We have a free capitalist system that allows everyone who saves to become a part owner in the mighty American capitalist engine, even the super mighty worldwide industrial machine. “Every man a King,” said Huey Long of Louisiana. That was a joke, but “Every man a capitalist” is real and true and has saved many a life.
Investing early and often, in a diversified basket of corporate ownership, making yourselves partners with the likes of Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg and harnessing the genius of the system of capitalism — that’s a miraculous freedom all too often derided by the young. But those who pay attention to what is real instead of to fantasies of paranoia will reap immense rewards as the years go by. The freedom to invest is a boon to mankind.
But gratitude in general is a gift for the man or woman who is grateful as well as to the person to whom he is grateful. Make use of that truly free and indispensable gift.
There is much more to say: Be thrifty. Don’t get high as a matter of course. Don’t be afraid to take on powerful opponents.
Respect innocent life, no matter how politically unpopular it is. The power elites and the media will hate you for it, but respect for the most innocent life among us is to be worn as a badge of honor.
Life in America for most of us is great. Let’s spend time enjoying ourselves making it even better for others whose lives are not great. Let’s do it in freedom and gratitude, and let’s do it now. Class dismissed.
Playing the Teacher in Front of a Classroom
Ben Stein
May 17, 2016
The best part about it is that it’s not acting.
In my life, aside from my very private moments with my wife and my dogs, the happiest moments of my existence have been in front of a classroom.
When I contemplate my roughly 71 years on this planet, I had many great times watching cartoons with my son and my wife and getting awards and walking in the redwoods of Santa Cruz, looking out my window in Sandpoint at the stupefying blue, red, yellow, and grey daybreak. Zooming along the lake in my Cobalt, with the Stars and Stripes fluttering on the rear of the boat and my wifey’s perfect profile to my left. I can recall happy times with my Pop at the White House Mess, sharing our secrets while John Dean plotted his next move nearby. I can have a great time any moment I step into my pool and start swimming the world’s laziest backstroke while the sun beats through the palms and jets ply the air overhead with their silvery magic. I remember my mother offering me grapes as I slept.
When I awaken and look at my wife and the dogs, I cannot believe how blessed I am. Just to look at the American flag over my bed and the map of the USA in my living room is to feel the red, white, and blue glory of living in the most spectacular edifice of all eternity.
But it has been in front of a classroom that I have had my greatest joy.
In 1970, in Anti-Trust Law at Yale, I commandeered the class and made our bully of a teacher (but a super smart guy) leave the room and quit teaching: all because I threatened to take my clothes off and recite the names of the Vietnam War dead if he didn’t stop his game playing.
In 1973, I was an adjunct teacher of film at American University at Ward Circle in my home town of DC. It was my third semester teaching there in the evenings after harrowing days practicing trial law. I had the most popular class ever in the history of AU up until then: 360 students for the superficially easiest elective in the world. It was called “Film and Revolution!”
The first day of class, when I entered the room and strode up to the podium, at about 150 pounds, long hair, mustache, menacing potent ’62 Red Corvette in the parking lot, Buick repair jacket on, the whole room erupted in sustained, standing cheering.
They knew I was their pal and that we would have a great time. And the class was not at all easy at in fact. The kids had to use Socratic method techniques to dissect what the secret motives of the writers were in terms of wishes for social change.
(This led to my book: The View From Sunset Boulevard — about the political attitudes of the TV writing aristocracy and how those views gave us the distinctly red-tinged messages of prime time. But that was later. In ’72 and ’73 I was talking about movies.)
Your humble servant had a rush of excitement every day I taught that class. The kids loved me and I loved them.
Soon, I went on to teach at UC, Santa Cruz. It was fabulous, too, although not like AU. But the views from my classroom were incredible. Then to teach at Pepperdine, also great stuff, an even better view, but nothing like my magical mystery tour at the Ward Circle Building at AU.
Then, on about November 16, 1985, came the day that altered my life forever: Playing a teacher in a movie called Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I did a long speech about the economy off the cuff and the young extras playing high school students applauded and whistled when I was done.
Matthew Broderick asked me if I did theater on Broadway. Michael Chinich and John Hughes told me I would be a star.
Now, I travel about the nation speaking about the economy, the demise of certain ethnic and demographic groups, politics, and investing. It’s not AU in 1973, but it’s still paradise.
I love to speak and by now, with 71 years over my belt (not under my belt… I am too fat for that), I have a bit to say, and if I were asked to speak at a college (as I actually often am), this is what I would say to graduates:
WE ALL WANT TO BE ABLE TO LOOK BACK at our lives when we are my age and say we have been successful. But what is successful? It certainly has something to do with money. Shortages of money are simply horrifying. Fear of financial insecurity is awful. So before anything else, success requires at least a modicum of financial security, obtained in a respectable way.
But once we are past that, success requires that we spend our lives doing what we like to do: in a free society, one of the best possibilities is to do not what your parents expect you to do, not what the school guidance counselor tells you to do, but what you enjoy doing.
My old pal and inspiration, Warren E. Buffett, says (if I may boil it down) that he has become the richest man in the world or one of the richest not because he chose a highly paid field that he hated, but because he happened to love a field that paid astoundingly well: allocating capital.
When I worked on Wall Street, I hated every moment of it (although I love finance people once they are away from New York). Buffett “tap dances to work,” as he likes to say. That’s the way to make a life.
My dear young friend, L., just graduated from a prestige university. She is going to work at improving the lives of poor people in our nation’s capital. Some people in her life told her she was wasting her education working in that vineyard. I disagree. I think she’ll do great things there and she’ll be doing what she loves. That’s what makes you succeed — making your work your play or maybe making your play your work.
That last comes from one of the smartest men I have ever met, the mega producer, Norman Lear. (I know I have not quoted it exactly right.) He made what he enjoyed doing — weaving tales of meaning and humor — into a super remunerative career.
It’s really a matter of definition. As I see it, we all have only one life to live. If we spend it doing work we hate, we have made a serious mistake. If we spend it doing work we barely tolerate, we have made a mistake.
What good does it do to have money, even a meaningful amount of money, if you have spent your one and only life doing work that does not thrill you?
So, make a living — but also make a life.
I also respectfully advise that young people have a spiritual basis for their lives — and that such spiritual basis involve doing good for others. As I have grown older I see that a selfish life spent without having a high priority for helping others is a waste of life. The knowledge that you are sharing your humanity and your limited span on this planet with those in need gives you self-esteem in even the darkest hours.
This goes hand in hand with my own certain conviction that there is a Higher Power which controls the universe. It’s not evolution and it’s not chance. It’s God and when He does some things and lets other horrible events happen, when there are death camps and child rapes and gulags and trench warfare and killing fields, we have to wonder what kind of God He is. But I am certain that the laws of physics and motion and gravity did not happen by themselves, that Someone designed them. I don’t think that someone was Marx or a pit boss in some cosmic gambling house.
Life is a heavy burden. Ask and then allow God to share it.
Have gratitude on your plate night and day and sup heartily. We in America, especially the young, have lives that even the wealthiest people two centuries ago could not imagine. We have air conditioning and modern medicine and automobiles and jet travel. We have free worldwide instantaneous communication.
But mostly, we have freedom under law. We have equality before the law. We have the liberty to do what we want with our lives day by day and have that liberty protected — not repressed — by the government.
We have a free capitalist system that allows everyone who saves to become a part owner in the mighty American capitalist engine, even the super mighty worldwide industrial machine. “Every man a King,” said Huey Long of Louisiana. That was a joke, but “Every man a capitalist” is real and true and has saved many a life.
Investing early and often, in a diversified basket of corporate ownership, making yourselves partners with the likes of Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg and harnessing the genius of the system of capitalism — that’s a miraculous freedom all too often derided by the young. But those who pay attention to what is real instead of to fantasies of paranoia will reap immense rewards as the years go by. The freedom to invest is a boon to mankind.
But gratitude in general is a gift for the man or woman who is grateful as well as to the person to whom he is grateful. Make use of that truly free and indispensable gift.
There is much more to say: Be thrifty. Don’t get high as a matter of course. Don’t be afraid to take on powerful opponents.
Respect innocent life, no matter how politically unpopular it is. The power elites and the media will hate you for it, but respect for the most innocent life among us is to be worn as a badge of honor.
Life in America for most of us is great. Let’s spend time enjoying ourselves making it even better for others whose lives are not great. Let’s do it in freedom and gratitude, and let’s do it now. Class dismissed.
04 May, 2016
'Keeping our Jobs' Holds America Back
I Want a President Who Can Teach Us to Accept (Celebrate!) Capitalism
By Christopher Chantrill
In last week’s foreign policy speech Donald Trump had this to say about jobs:
NAFTA, as an example, has been a total disaster for the U.S. and has emptied our states of our manufacturing and our jobs. Never again. Only the reverse will happen. We will keep our jobs and bring in new ones. Their [sic] will be consequences for companies that leave the U.S. only to exploit it later.
Okay, I get it: you are running for president, Mr. Trump, and I get that you can’t say that, of course, NAFTA has hurt some people, because after all capitalism is creative destruction, but on balance NAFTA has benefited the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. And I know that you can’t tell the American people that no job is forever, because no technology, no market, no corporation, no nothing is forever. The last thing a president is allowed to do is tell us that life is tough and we just have to pick ourselves up and try something else when the market leaves us high and dry.
People insist on thinking that capitalism is accumulation. I wrote a long blog series on that Frenchie, Thomas Piketty and his often bought but seldom read Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century, where he makes the stupid point that the return on capital is greater than the growth rate. Of course it is. You can make money on lending money to another guy so he can buy a diamond for his mistress, and it does nothing for growth.
Capitalism is not about accumulating gold coins in a sack by stealing bread from the poor; it is about innovation. According to George Gilder it is surprise; according to Deirdre McCloskey it is “trade-tested betterment.” And the net result of innovation, trade-tested betterment, and surprise over the last 200 years has been an increase in per-capita income from $3 per day to $100 per day. That’s on top of an increase in world population from about 1 billion to 7 billion humans. There has been nothing like it, ever.
But the dirty little secret of capitalism is that it can only work its magic and raise up the poor from indigence if you let it destroy the commanding heights of today’s economy with surprise, with innovation, with trade-tested betterment.
Never mind all those hand-loom weavers thrown out of work by power looms. What about the keypunch operators of 1970 thrown out of work by floppy disks? What about the guys that used to earn good money calculating paper spreadsheets using ten-key adders? In the 1970s, I remember my employer buying a 50 megabyte disk drive that was the size of a washing machine and cost $15,000 or more. Today I have a 32GB chip in my $100 Android smartphone that starts playing my tunes the moment I start my car. Bully for me, but what about all those skilled disk-drive workers along Route 128 in Boston?
Usually, writes Joel Mokyr in The Gifts of Athena, the established interests down the ages have managed to smother in its cradle any innovation or surprise or trade-tested betterment that threatened their good life, and so for century after century things went on in the good old ways for the established interests and nothing changed. The astonishing thing is that the last 200 years has allowed any technological change to disrupt the establishment and its comforts.
But I have a dream, that one day this planet will have a cultural and political elite that accepts capitalism’s constant innovation and surprise and trade-tested betterment as the logical, epistemological and moral foundation of the raising up of the poor. And they would not be too shy to remold our culture, with traditional elite condescension and conceit, to ease the torments of change and teach the American people to regard with acceptance, rather than distemper, the disruptive changes that might afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
Instead we have a vile and contemptible “clerisy” of thinkers, popularizers, activists, and politicians that cruelly scratch the wounds of the afflicted. They marinate them in their tribal hatreds, trap them in dependency, tax and their wages and then play the Lady Bountiful giving it back years later, and teach them to hate the culture that has raised them, or will raise their children, out of Malthusian oblivion.
It’s great that Donald Trump wants to Make America Great Again. But what made America great was that for a season, the elite lacked the power to “keep our jobs” against some nobody with a crazy idea to demolish the status quo and surprise the world with an unlooked for invention, a trade-tested betterment, and the result was the Great Enrichment of the last 200 years.
And it really is about time that presidential candidates could dare to tell us that.
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