By Jeffrey A. Tucker
American Institute for Economic Research, February9, 2020: People of the future will look back at these 11 months and be very confused. How could virtually the entire world have thrown out settled practices of civil, economic, and cultural liberties for a virus that resisted every attempt to control it?
This virus is not Ebola and it has come nowhere near approaching the death rates associated with H1N1 of 1918. By some measures, it’s not been as deadly as 1957-58, a virus that came and went without much public attention at all. New pathogens are part of life, and there was and is nothing particularly unusual about this one.
The enduring question now and for many years to come will be: why? We all asked the question a thousand times, and it has been asked of us the same number of times. It is too early to say, and the answer will likely be similar to other epic events in history such as the Great War or the Fall of Rome.
Related:
The risk of eternal lockdown
One thing about the Year of the Mask is that it changed my internet browsing habits. I had to abandon the sites that promoted the COVID hoax, and later the US election hoax, and find sites that didn't insult my intelligence. There was the problem with this is that in March, April, and even May generally the places you could find questioning the establishment pandemic narrative were the type of sites promoting flat earth, astrology, nonlogical conspiracy theories such as 5G, and the like. I think many of these were controlled opposition. Over the rest of the year some of these sites got purged from my blogroll.
ReplyDeleteWhile no site is perfect, AIER was one of the keepers. Its writers are thoughtful even when I disagree with them, and I will probably bookmark it soon (I don't use "feeds"). So I read the Jeffrey Tucker article. However, Polistra's Mill, which I also discovered during this time, is even better, however he does not publish his posts in easily bookmarkable form so I will have to do a copy and paste.
The most recent (February 10th) post on Polistra is the best I've seen there in a year, so there is no problem in just giving the url for the site (polistrasmill.blogspot.com).
However, here is the post most relevant to the Tucker article:
" Stop this incompetence shit.
"I'm terminally tired of hearing the idiotic nonsense, sometimes attributed to Heinlein or Einstein or Lincoln or Churchill or Plato or any of the usual attributees:
"Always assume incompetence rather than evil.
"Dangerously wrong.
"When you're talking about an ordinary decision by an ordinary person, then you can start with incompetence or inadequate knowledge.
"When you're dealing with a decision by a large corporation or government, you MUST assume
"MAXIMUM INCOMPREHENSIBLE UNIMAGINABLE EVIL
"and your assumption will ALWAYS be correct. EVERY FUCKING TIME.
"Since I happened to be reading a Collectible Auto article on the design of the Edsel, let's take the Edsel as an example.
"Looks like incompetence, so it would make sense to assume incompetence.
"No. It was evil.
"Designers produce a wide range of attempts. Even excellent designers like Brooks Stevens or Virgil Exner produce timeless classics and weird shit at different times.
"A large company always invites proposals from dozens of inside and outside creators. The horrible choice was not made by a designer, and we know for a fact that it was evil. McNamara hated the Edsel and wanted it to fail, so he allowed and encouraged the worst possible designs.
"Bad decisions result from intentional sabotage** or crime by management. In the current holocaust, normal public health data was easily available to the governments. The governments could have simply continued using normal procedures, which were working normally. There was NO REASON to think that the regular way of handling a flu epidemic would fail.
"The governments chose instead to use bizarrely wrong theories and models produced by Neil Ferguson, whose record was UNIFORMLY BAD. Unlike a Stevens or an Exner, Ferguson didn't produce some classics and some weird shit at different times. He was ALWAYS WRONG. The governments KNEW he was always wrong, and his particular brand of RELIABLE INFINITE WRONGNESS was just what they needed to "justify" a universal holocaust. They knew that Ferguson couldn't possibly predict reality.
** Sometimes the sabotage is internal, such as a hostile takeover or LBO or feuding among executives, aimed at destroying the company or the government. Sometimes the crime is committed by the entire corporation or government acting in unison to destroy the world."
Tucker and his editors at AIER tries, but just too much assumption of good faith.
Thanks for the comment from the Polistra blog and the link to the original.
DeleteI am inclined to share the cynicism (although I do have a great respect for the power of petty-mindedness, bigotry, corruption and sheer massive stupidity). In fact, I go so far as to wonder whether the objective of the leaders of hate-Trumpers is to incite a civil war that will justify a totalitarian reaction. That way, totalitarians of both left and right must believe, the US will be better aligned with, and therefore better able to compete with, China.
At one time, of course, Americans boasted that freedom was secret of their success. But it was a freedom based in acceptance of the MSM narrative, which, in the age of the Internet, no longer sells. So now, the Hell with Freedom and the Free World that our fathers and grandfathers fought to preserve.
I realized the length and writing style would not really fit the formatting capabilities here, but reading it after posting it, you can still get the sense of the Polistra comment, and you can always go to the original site and scroll down to get a prettier view, separate from the introductory remarks.
ReplyDelete