Economic arrogance on the left
I’ve noticed a few articles and posts lately from people on the left containing the meme “we know exactly what to do to fix the economy, and the mean and destructive politicians just won’t do it.”
Here’s a good example from Kevin Drum:
Watching the world slide slowly back into recession without a fight, even though we know perfectly well how to prevent it, is just depressing beyond words. Our descendents will view the grasping politicians and cowardly bankers responsible for this about as uncomprehendingly as we now view the world leaders who cavalierly allowed World War I to unfold even though they could have stopped it at any time.
For the moment, let’s suspend the argument on who’s right about the best way to try to jump-start the economy and enhance confidence. Let’s forget about the fact that this is a worldwide problem, and the latest downturn seems to be more about events in Europe than in this country. Forget the argument about whether WWI could have been prevented, or whether even the omniscient Kevin Drum, had he been alive back then and Master of the World, could have foreseen the nature of the war that was to follow and known the exact steps to take to avoid it.
Just focus on that phrase “we know perfectly well how to prevent it.” The mind-boggling, toe-curling arrogance it expresses, the unbounded faith in the human understanding of exceedingly complex systems and human ability to intervene effectively, and the idea that failure to do so is a combination of failure of will and the evil impulse, is unapologetic and monumental arrogance of the classic leftist variety. The Vision of the Anointed in its purest form.
I don’t think it’s just ego. It’s one more nail in the coffin of a rationally driven humanity. We can learn it, but it sure isn’t natural. Drum has towering, terrifying faith in his politics. If we actually did exactly what he proscribes, and it failed utterly (as I am reasonably sure it would), I have absolutely no doubt he would merely ascribe the failure to his ideological enemies and continue merrily on his way.
I can’t make up my mind if this really is an era of zealots, or if I just have more exposure to them then ever before.
Well, they’re always covered.
Because the answer to every failure of government, is more government!
And, by the way, the left didn’t lose “without a fight.”
The Tea Party dramatically changed the political landscape and the 2010 elections expressed the will of the American people. The people decided that Obama’s borrowing and spending binge was over.
The left lost. It didn’t lose “without a fight.”
If he is so cock sure of what needs to be done, why didn’t he tell us what it is? I, for one, would call my representatives and demand his fix be put into action immediately.
It’s worse than it seems when you factor in how many problems don’t even exist that leftist know perfectly well how to fix.
Stephen Moore has a good article today in the WSJ on why people hate economists:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576514552877388610.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond
It isn’t just that so many of the noisy economists are arrogant, it’s also that they “reason” with a logic that entirely alien to common sense.
Mark Steyn, in his recently published book (which I’m about half-way through), has a section in the fourth chapter (pgs. 132-33) where he discusses the penchant of the left for what he calls “no-side buzzwords,” borrowing the phrase from a passage by Ray Bradbury:
“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides of a question to worry him: give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag.”
The language of the left is totalitarian in just that way. It creates a thought-world entirely built of “no-side buzzwords” – words that are designed to encompass all truth and good intent – and then contrast them with demonized Others: “the environment” vs. “the deniers;” “diversity” vs. “racists;” “pragmatism” vs. “ideology;” and so forth.
This is part and parcel of what I tend to call the left’s “political Gnosticism,” as is the macroeconomic jibber-jabber Moore exposes in his article.
It’s really intriguing how the right is accused of being super-ideological while the left is always given the benefit of the doubt as to its “pragmatism.” Intriguing because while we can argue about the unwonted effects of austerity, there is no doubt that IF we cut spending and privatized much of the government, our budget woes would be resolved. And there is no doubt that it is simply impossible to do that with tax increases and token, papier-mache spending cuts. That is, however “ideological” the right may be on the matter, at the limit its proposals WILL address the problem; and however “pragmatic” the left is thought to be, its proposals will NOT address it.
More, the accusations against the right are simply incoherent. We are accused of being both ruthlessly pragmatic (heartless, selfish, only caring about the bottom-line) AND absolutely unbendingly ideological (committed to some value system). The way the left squares this circle is by convincing itself that whatever we are – ruthless pragmatists or ideological fanatics – we are heartless in any case. As ever, it boils down to the right being the side of Evil and the left being the side of Good. Everything else is noise.
All political philosophy is a compromise, often uneasy, between principle and practice. Yet people are shocked to find this perennial tension on the right, while the same problem at an even higher level of tension is flat ignored on the left.
How is the idea that tax increases on the wealthy can sustain more accrued debt than the GDP of all major nations combined “pragmatic”? Exactly how is that supposed to work? And, on the flip side, if the left is so ideologically committed to “caring about the little guy,” how do they remain so callously in hock to unions and unaccountable bureaucracies, the very function of which is to keep a boot on the little guy’s face, forever?
Simple questions. They are not even asked in the public square, and we wind up having to constantly fight off the left’s “no-side buzzwords” and conventionally accepted political Gnosticism, draining at leas half of the time we could be spending making our case.
The first step on the path to wisdom is the recognition of our own ignorance. And the wise man is he who realizes, with each new morsel of knowledge gained, how much more there is that he doesn’t know.
This is why there are no wise leftists and few politicians of any party with any wisdom.
See global warming. Same song, different verse.
He was never so sure in the thinking of it. It was when he first heard it coming out of his mouth that clinched it. The epistemic arrogance of the Left knows no bounds and is good for for a laugh if you’re in the mood for mental slapstick.
kolnai, very astute observations. As to your last paragraph. Our problem is that we want to convince others that our policies are better by explaining the policies while the progressives attack our policies with poll tested buzzwords and the arrogant assumption that their policies are de facto the best. We need, methinks, to go on offense. The problem is most conservatives have an aversion to the politics of personal destruction, while POPD is as normal as breathing for the progressives.
Drum’s statement, “Watching the world slide slowly back into recession without a fight, when we know perfectly well how to prevent it, is just depressing beyond words.” Could have come from my mouth or computer keyboard. I really do believe that the evidence of economic history points to development of energy resources, less regulation, consistently low taxes, and other business friendly government policies will lead to a real recovery. (Just the opposite of what Drum, etal believe.) However, if such efforts were to fail, I would certainly be surprised but ready to try some other approach. Is that the difference between the sides? I think it is.
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.
– F. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit : The Errors of Socialism (1988), p. 76
Kolnai,
One answer to your question of how the left can lay claim to concern for the “little man” while supporting bureaucracies is that the left still thinks of itself as a Harry Truman/Tip O’Neill Democrat system. Needless to say these earlier Democrats (and JFK) are rolling over in their graves at the unabashed Marxism of today’s Democrat party. The Dems of yore wanted to give the working man an even break, curent Dems want to redistribute from the producers to the slugabeds. These are two markedly different approaches to the world, but the Dems justify this Marxism by cloaking it with the rhetoric of a former age.
As to Drum’s arrogance, this is the epitome of a cyclical development. The left is overly represented in social “science” because these fields dwell in the world of unprovable theory unlike the hard sciences and the applied sciences where more conservative types are more readily (not exclusively) found.
Take, e.g., an engineer. Engineer’s are faced with the reality of their decisions every day. If a deck collapses the engineer is faced with the possibility that it wasn’t built properly. A leftist engineer would simply claim that the deck collapsed because too many Americans are overweight and create a committee to help Americans lose weight all the while writing numerous local ordnances to prohinbit more than 3 people from standing on any deck at any single time (and paying for a force of “Deck Enforcement Officers” at $45,000/yr with benefits and pensions).
So for the left, the stimulus wasn’t big enough (regardless of its size). ATMs are responsible for unemployment green technology will undo the recession (if only we can pump enough govt money into subsidies), etc., etc., ad infinitum (actually, ad nauseum). Drum’s arrogance is a simple and direct statement of this premise. WE know what to do and the bastards won’t let us do it (notice how it pushes all the responsibility from the viability of the theory itself to the opponents of said theory. Remind you of anyone in particular?)
You know, had I read that excerpt on my own, I’m not even sure that Drum’s cock-sure attitude would have even phased me.
As neo-neocon points out, it is so commonplace on the Left now that I suspect I’ve sorta conditioned myself just to ignore it.
Maybe it’s proof of Darwinian evolution. After reading Krugman’s arrogance all the years that I lived in NYC, perhaps my mind has developed some sort of subconscious coping mechanism to tune out the arrogance to prevent my blood pressure from boiling over.
So that’s why New Jersey is leading the country out of the recession! They still require gas station attendents to pump your gas!
On the internet this last week I learned some wonderful things. On a CNBC interview of Otis Peebles I learned that Obama was just enforcing existing regulations and had not created new ones. Mr Peebles did not say how he came to know this. I suppose the subject came up at the previous evenings $71,600 dinner for Obama. Steve Forbes also in the interview went on mumbling something about Dodd Frank and medical stuff. Oh well just that.
Next I read an article from Paul Krugman about how S & P had caused the mortgage crisis by not rating mortgages properly . He did not mention anything about social manipulation or even Axelrod’s previous praise of subprime mortgages as they allowed people who could not normally qualify to buy houses.
Then I read in Cagels cartoons that I was lucky to have my retirement SS handled by the government and not invested in the stock market as I most likely would have included those monies with my IRA’s
I rest easier now knowing that someone else is doing all this thinking on my behalf
This is pretty much off-topic, but I can’t not share it. From Gates of Vienna:
“I Am the True Embodiment of a Socialistic President”
comments are being eaten.
Comments are being eaten with ONLY ONE LINK.
ONE LINK.
ONE LINK
ONE LINK.
Gringo: I liberated your comment from the spam folder.
Neo: Thanks.
Isn’t it in the end a matter of what works and what does not? How many examples of failed ‘leftist economics’ do we need to know the answer?
You can–in the sense that you probably can’t–imagine having a discussion with people who think like this.
Many years ago, I had to take an econ course as part of getting a professional designation. Wow, I thought, this is really conservative.
Upon further study, I discovered it was telling us what happens when people make free choices. IOW, right up there with the laws of physics.
Parker wrote:
“Isn’t it in the end a matter of what works and what does not?”
No. Because in the mind of the left, leftest social theory and social engineering are always correct. Why? Well, just because they are. That’s why we read of Drum’s arrogance. Also, right on cue, Daily Kos pipes up If Drum’s commments are liberalism on steroids, then Daily Kos is Drum squared (H/T Newsbusters:
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2011/08/19/daily-kos-only-we-liberals-are-sane-and-believe-freedom-justice-science-
“We know perfectly well” what to do about the economy.” Does this mean that when they dumped $1.2 billion (including interest( they didn’t, but now they do?
“”Isn’t it in the end a matter of what works and what does not? How many examples of failed ‘leftist economics’ do we need to know the answer?””
Parker
Given a choice, a liberal will take a feel good failure over any success cloaked in uncaringness. They can’t wrap their minds around the fact that if you really care about people, you’ll have to go out of your way to not go out of your way for them.
neo-neocon Says:
August 19th, 2011 at 9:19 pm
It was a liberation of short duration, as the comment no longer shows. When a comment with only one link gets spammed, there is a problem with the spam-o-meter. I will try it with a naked link.
Kevin Drum:
“Watching the world slide slowly back into recession without a fight, even though we know perfectly well how to prevent it, is just depressing beyond words. ”
The best reply to those who believe that “we know perfectly well how to prevent it,” is to bring up the graph that the all-knowing Democrats circulated in support of passing the Stimulus Package.
It predicted what unemployment would be with passage of the Stimulus Package, compared to what unemployment would be without passage of the Stimulus Package.
For example, it predicted that with the passage of the Stimulus Package, unemployment by Q3 in 2009 would be just under 8%. Actual unemployment by Q3 2009 was about 9.5%, and rising.
That shows that the “experts” don’t know their radius from their coccyx, anatomically speaking. Mr. Drum, if the “experts” were dead wrong on their unemployment predictions with passage of the Stimulus Package, why should be believe your claim that “we know perfectly well how to prevent it (a recession).”
Once fooled, shame on you. Twice fooled, shame on me.
Let’s see if THIS comment gets by the spam-o-meter.
http://www.qando.net/?p=10933
Funny thing: my comment @ 9:14 p.m. Friday was initially eaten by spam-o-meter- with only one link ( as a previous comment with only one link had been eaten). Neo later liberated it last night.
When I looked at the comments this morning, my comment @ 9:14 p.m Friday was no longer there- spam-o-meter in action again. Which is odd, as Neo had previously liberated the comment. Spam-o-meter overriding blog owner?
Right after I posted my comment @ 11:11 a.m., my comment @ 9:14 p.m. Friday shows up as “awaiting moderation.” Which is even odder.
My comment on Saturday morning is better written, so no need to liberate my Friday night comment.
Conclusion: embedded links, even if there is only one link, have a higher chance of not flying by the spam-o-meter, compared with a naked link.
Supposing Drum&Co’s view of “fixing” the economy “perfectly well” is substantially and dangerously different from what one would ordinarily expect when the discussion is about “fixing” the American economy.
And his comment is as positive as it is because, potentially, some are fooled by absolute confidence.
Gringo,
Excellent refernce. Thank you!
Intellectual arrogance is the most dangerous form of arrogance, because it is the most impenetrable by argument. Therefore intellectual humility-which is a daily and constant effort- is the most important of the virtues.
To me this is deepest meaning of the biblical aphorism: ‘All wisdom begins with the fear of God’.
God is Ultimate Truth, wisdom begins with the conversion from arrogance towards the Truth to humility towards the Truth.
I still remember my conversion when I was 22 from arrogant atheist Leftism, first to theism, and then to Christianity. The most difficult part was keeping my mouth shut on things I had no clear and founded knowledge on. And more than thirty years later I still struggle with it.
I also remember how I sometimes ‘regretted’ my conversion: arrogant leftism was so much more easy to do. But the regrets were short lived. By just remembering how corrupting this leftist ‘shooting my mouth of’ had been to my soul.
Intellectual arrogance is by the way to be found everywhere, not just on the Left. It is also on the Right, in the churches, synagogues, it is everywhere. I sometimes think the main purpose of a human life is to overcome it- a lifelong struggle.
“Just focus on that phrase “we know perfectly well how to prevent it.” The mind-boggling, toe-curling arrogance it expresses, the unbounded faith in the human understanding of exceedingly complex systems and human ability to intervene effectively, and the idea that failure to do so is a combination of failure of will and the evil impulse, is unapologetic and monumental arrogance of the classic leftist variety. The Vision of the Anointed in its purest form.”
That sums up the left’s position on everything.
There is only one thing that curls my toes. 🙂
One of the reasons most people speak with less than absolute certainty is the possibility that they might be wrong. Ben Franklin counseled that we should begin assertions with something like, “It seems to me….” or “The way things look now….” and then make the statement. It’s more likely to be accepted, less likely to annoy others, and contains less crow if you’re wrong.
One reason for speaking with absolute certainty is being certain that you’re absolutely right. Absolutely certain.
Or, you don’t care what happens if you’re wrong.