Stop Being Stupid
(PowerPoint slide on Stupidity)
The Caroling appears to have stopped. I listened closely to the radio this morning and did not hear a Fantasia on Greensleeves once. It may be safe to poke my head up again, now that the mass intoxication has passed. We have entered into that strange few days of denial that the New Year is coming, no kidding, and 2009 is going to run over us like a steam roller.
There are a lot of possibilities in the air. The retailers are offering astonishing deals to entice us to spend the last of the money we don’t have. I am sorely tempted don’t often have a lot in common with Bob Herbert of the New York Times editorial staff, but I did like his column this morning. He advised us to stop being stupid.
Those are indeed words to live by. I am not sure he took the thought far enough- I am fairly confident that his definition of being smart includes more rigorous oversight of our personal affairs in the interest of a higher good, with higher taxes, and that sort of thing.
The Greening of the next administration is going to mean, necessarily, that Washington will be allocating resources again. It will likely come as some sort of carbon dioxide tax and mandates about “carbon footprints.” It will be a field day for the Nanny State, since the people who know what is good for us will be able to put caps and limits on big things like energy and raw materials production that will have the mirror image effect of trickle-down economics.
Which is to say that the resource pie will be carved up and allocated as to how it will be used, sort of like Hillary’s Health Care Plan of four administrations attempted to do, or the number of idiots on snowmobiles who are permitted in Yellowstone.
I am not going to wave the banner of the failed Bush policies this morning. I did not think they made a great deal of sense, and strayed far from those of a secular democracy. You remember the quaint ideas: sound currency, a progressive eye for the needy, respect for individual liberties and a strong common defense.
I have found that both sides of this argument have something fundamentally wrong, and are stupid to almost the same degree. There is no viable third way, regardless of what Mr. Blair or Mr. Clinton seemed to think. We are stuck with ideologues of the right and left and no real option for common sense.
For example, we are stuck with global warming as the model for the future, even as the real culprit in the latest decade’s temperatures appears to be sun-spots, rather than carbon dioxide.
I am not smart enough to tell if global warming is happening even as the planet is cooling- that involves too many impossible things to comprehend before breakfast- but a simplistic look at oil and energy suggests we have to change anyway, so we should do so in a way that encourages the development of technology and jobs.
If that puts me on the rhetorical page with the new Administration, so be it. Yet you know as well as I do that lurking in the background is the social Puritanism that is just itching to start controlling all manner of bad things.
The invisible hand of the market that Adam Smith described will sort this out by itself, in time, but we have put so many things in place to hinder that controlling device that we simply wind up with more unwanted and entirely unpalatable consequences.
It is more than a bit like the whole housing mess. It is perfectly understandable when you look at it backwards. Home ownership is probably a good thing, but in the zealous pursuit of increasing the percentage of mortgages, the government fattened the smart guys and permitted the issuance of cash to people who could never pay it back.
It cheapened the whole currency, and is goes a long way to the ruination of otherwise sensible people like you and me.
Oh well. I found out why I have no inclination to riot this morning. It appears that shared bad times- the ones in which we all have taken a hit- does not provoke widespread discontent. It is only when there is dramatic and focused unfairness that our sense of justice is outraged. It is a little more refined than the old joke that a recession is when your neighbor is out of work, and a depression is when you are.
If we all took the same chill bath, here and next door, too, it is a shared jolt. It has resulted in throwing one set of pious rascals out in order to bring in a new sanctimonious crew.
The Republic will stand until it cannot. It is simple, really. We just have to stop being stupid. The chances on that score are entirely problematic, but I think you know where I am going with that. Sound currency, anyone?
Ah, never mind. I’m just being stupid.
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