Thursday, September 5, 2013

Why the American Public has become enfeebled

The Two Things game is an outstanding intellectual challenge. The goal is to distill any topic into two essential characteristics that explain the workings of the field. For example, the Two Things about economics are (1) incentives matter and (2) there's no such thing as a free lunch.

The fun comes in when you do this with friends at the local pub. It's the defense of your position that makes it a game.

As an example, the Two Things of pistol shooting might be (1) front sight and (2) trigger control. Feel free to have at this in the comments.

Looking at the American public over the last quarter century (the post Cold War period), it's clear that it's nowhere near as tough as it was then. Our institutions are incompetent and corrupt - and this includes a very broad swath of institutions from governmental agencies to the schools and Universities to non-profit organizations like Greenpeace to the Churches. I won't belabor the point with examples, because you can trivially fill in bushel baskets of examples all on your own.

I would point out that this has happened in a completely bipartisan era: sure, we've had Clinton and Obama lying that they're really "moderates", but we also had Bush pere et fils lying that they were Republicans. The rot in the GOP is so deep that their last two presidential candidates were basically Scoop Jackson Democrats, only less fiscally restrained.

The result has been the explosive growth of government and non-government organization (NGO) power, collected from the People. As those have gained power, authority, and freedom of action, the People have lost these in equal measure.

They have been enfeebled.

I suspect that much of the driving force behind the Tea Party movement is an unstated feeling that this is going on. Anyone who thinks that the rallies of 2010 were in favor of a 5% reduction in marginal tax rates is a dim bulb indeed.

The question before us is how did this come to pass? There is a dynamic in play that leads to this. Stopping or reversing this trend requires us to understand the dynamic. The Two Questions is an analytical tool that we can bring to bear on this conundrum. But that will be the next post (no Internet yet, and so I'm blogging from my phone).

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

8 comments:

  1. 1. Isolation from the consequences of action

    2. Excess wealth (Beyond what is needed to just stay alive) channeled into the government/welfare (corporate and private), corruption and logrolling.

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  2. I'd say no personal responsibility and free cheese...

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  3. I'd say Alan and Old NFO both have it, albeit using different words.

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  4. Great game. I'll play. I agree with Alan re excess wealth. My second choice is the disintegration of the traditional family unit, by which I mean the rise in single family households, births outside of marriage and the absence of male role models.

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  5. 1. The end of the Cold War with acompanying cultural refocusing and also hubris from "winning"

    "we're the biggest and best with all our power and bounty...we'll make utopia"

    2. Still thinking - maybe because things seem like they got more complicated (incl technology?)and people were willing to give up control for simplicity.

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  6. - Risk adversity and specialization.

    Risk adversity leads to risk distribution - the spreading of risk.

    Specialization leads to specialized interests. The concentration of rewards.

    I'm still thinking about this at rickscafe45.blogspot.com

    It's so simple, it's complicated.

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  7. 1 The subversion of the education system, particularly where math, history, critical reasoning, and government are concerned. A people who cannot think cannot sort out the facts from the propaganda. If basic algebra is nontrivial, folks won't cotton to the consequences of long term inflation until their bank accounts are empty.

    2. FDR's doctrine of the Four Freedoms. I may not be digging back far enough, but the transition from Freedom of to Freedom From was a tectonic shift in American thinking. I think the germ of much of our contemporaries' entitlement mentality stems from this one change. It absolves individuals of the risks inherent to free living and turns the very concept of freedom on its head.

    On the other hand, Prohibition predated FDR's propaganda by more than a decade. Our forebears had already swallowed the idea that the Federal government could dictate what folks could make, sell, buy, and drink as private persons, so perhaps the cat was already out of the bag.



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  8. 1. Alexander Hamilton
    2. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

    or...

    1. Abraham Lincoln
    2. Woodrow Wilson

    or...

    1. John Dewey
    2. Margaret Sanger

    One could go on all day.

    M

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