Exiting 'Economic Thinking' and re-entering into the Reality of what is real and true

Exiting 'Economic Thinking' and re-entering into the Reality of what is real and true

Part 21 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

So what do we do to escape the Wizard's Circle of the 'new economics' of J.S. Mill, Marx, and Lord Keynes? We start where we always should: at the beginning.

The first step in considering the legitimacy of any theory, economic or otherwise, is to look into its principles; examine its metaphysical standing, its causal connections, and ethical coherence. If a theory doesn't conform to, or even violates what you know to be real and true, there's no need to test it further, let alone show any deference or respect to the theory or theorizer because of the predictions they assert will justify it - those arbitrary claims are without actual causes, and so are meaningless. It's important that we understand this, not as a 'debating tip', but as a survival tip, because failing to do so will deaden your own ability to assess what is real and true, and that failure will draw you further into alignment with still worse theories and assertions, as time goes on.

It's instructive what a Physicist does when presented with what purports to be a shiny new theory for a Perpetual Motion machine, without its theorizer having first refuted or significantly amended the laws of thermodynamics which rules such a scheme out. A good physicist isn't going to parse its formulas, crunch its numbers, or debate its predictions - no matter how elegant or grand its promises may be - they'll simply throw it into the trash where it belongs. If the principles that a claim is based upon are clearly unsound, then it cannot be of value. Likewise, any theories presented by 'Economic Thinkers', that propose violating property rights or 'managing markets' (a distinction without a difference), or otherwise limiting freedom of speech and action, should be thrown directly into the trash without a second thought - no matter how fine its promises to improve the 'Common Good' are, and it would be unethical to not do so.

If we ever expect to escape the downward spiral of 'Economic Thinking', we have to recognize that its nature is not confined to obviously economic issues, but is equally reflected in its fellow 'Social Sciences' of Positivist Law, Progressive Education, Social Studies, and so on. Together they envision experts utilizing the Rule of Rules to 'manage' an economy (meaning the lives of all of those living within it) to produce outcomes which they deem favorable to the 'Common Good', which are ultimately supported by those aspirations alone.

'Economic Thinking' formed the substance of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto, and was signed by everyone from professors of Economics & Law, to church Ministers and 'Progressive' educators like John Dewey, and all endorsed its demands, such as its 14th plank:

"…A socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible. The goal of humanism is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily and intelligently cooperate for the common good. Humanists demand a shared life in a shared world."

Against political economy's understanding of Value as the product of uncoerced exchange, and of Say's Law of Markets, or against the philosophical realism that underlies the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian West's history and literature, 'Economic Thinkers' have and can have no good arguments. Even if their 'Epistemology' permitted them to believe that objective truth was possible (which it kant do), their lack of, or rejection of metaphysics, means that they are unable to prove their claims to be *true*, or to prove Classical American Liberalism and Political Economy to be *false*. Where that leaves them, is, with no other recourse but to use old-fashioned sophistries to deride, dismiss, and ignore those principles of the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian West that might lead people into a deeper understanding of the world and their place within it.

Men like Frederic Bastiat were among the last leading figures to understand that a sound economy has far more to do with morality, and laws that comport with Natural Law and Justice, than with the machinations of finance. Those fundamental principles are what a society must understand in order to establish a Rule of Law where Liberty - meaning that you are at liberty to make those decisions you choose to make in living your life, and understand how vital it is that your neighbor is able to do so as well - can be enjoyed, upheld, and defended.

Once those fundamental principles are respected, then the magic of the marketplace (meaning we can't see how it happens, only that it does) transmits something of each interested person's judgment of value and expectation into the wider market to an extent which no 'expert' has or ever will fully comprehend, let alone manage (see 'I, Pencil', and "That Which Is Seen and that Which Is Not Seen").The result of those principles in action are what reverberate in the observable effects of a Free Market, such as the 'mechanisms' of Pricing and Supply & Demand, and the attempt to manipulate those effects into causes - Price Controls, 'Caps' on profits, etc. - floods the market with corrupted information which impedes the operations of the market, and eventually kills it.

Liberty is an effect, not a cause. The Free Market is an effect, not a cause. Both are what result from respecting fundamental principles, and neither can long survive their violation.

The reality then, is that when you adopt positions which stray from or discard those underlying principles, and justify doing so on the basis of the promise that going against what you know to be real and true will somehow benefit the 'common good', as Bastiat pointed out the 'capitalists', utilitarians, socialists, and communists were doing in their false & misleading claims about what Value is (in his "IX Landed Property of The Harmonies of Political Economy, book one"), then as those principles predicted, and history has since confirmed, what you can be sure of is that what all of their numbers, promises, and broken principles will commonly 'add up' to, will be massive amounts of waste, confusion, and misery that will be felt by all.

Bastiat's clear and accessible writing embodied everything that 'Economic Thinkers' have been desperate to dialectically 'evolve' mankind out of, and like the alchemists he once compared them to, their positions are often made in willful ignorance & utter contempt of those who have firsthand knowledge of what is of value in their lives (that'd be you & me), as they unhesitatingly seek the power to impose their own decisions over what the market - you & I - might otherwise have decided, despite the fact that their ignorance of that and more, can only result in depleting and destroying real value from within our lives, and *their* economy.

Recognize this: If the principles that a theory has based its promises upon are unsound it is and can be of no value to you or your society, and its use will deplete what value you do have.

Don't fail to learn the lessons of intellectual history
Ask yourself this, if you don't start from the position afforded by the high ground of principles rooted in reality through common sense, how long might you otherwise continue listening with an interest that ensnares you in its details, unaware of the faulty intellectual ground that you've begun standing upon, and unsure of where it's leading (you) to? If you don't identify its principles first and check both your position, and the direction you're being led in, you'll soon find yourself having stepped into the Wizards Circle, and its dialectical funhouse mirrors will make it seem like there is no escape for you.

Recognize that the 'Economic Thinker's standard reaction to any mention of principles is to deride, dismiss, and ignore them (bring up 'Free Speech' or 'Property Rights' to see a free demo), which is an expression of the modernist ideas that 'Economic Thinking' evolved from. Their aggressively surface level thinking urges you to resist applying what we might call the 'perpetual motion principle', because principled thinking is an inherent threat to their positions.

TURD's (The Umpires of Reasonable Discourse) spin honeyed falsehoods to ease their popular consumption.

For the 'Economic Thinker', by nature, is less concerned with what might result from his theories, than with how best to utilize your desires towards their ends, and to do so they need for you to follow them down the same path that they travelled, which begins with appealing to your pride with the power to causelessly doubt what is real and true" which Descartes' Method of Doubt urges you to indulge in. The next big step is into the Pragmatic assertion that '*Truth* is whatever works', and from there it's but a short step to the Post-Modernist "Your *Truth* isn't my truth", and 1-2-3 you've been led into an interior world of untethered ideas, where you'll be unable to fully resist whatever the TURD's say is '*true* enough'.

The rationalism that began with Descartes, and developed into Rousseau's latter 'General Will', 'Noble Savage', and 'child centered' education of 'Emile' (which one day Marx, Dewey, and Mussolini would find so useful), made it relatively easy for the skeptic David Hume's radical 'empiricism' to make the claim that only measurable 'empirical facts' are credible, and therefore people should gather up their metaphysical and moral claims, and:

"...Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion..."

What most don't realize, is that the consequence of a person putting Hume's supposedly 'Scientific Empiricism' into practice, is that they'll become demoralized (see previous post), not because they're being 'Scientific', but because they're not - without due regard to what is real and true (metaphysics), what follows from that (causality & logic), and what should be done in regards to that (ethics), Science cannot be meaningfully practiced, it can only be 'empirically' deconstructed.

To *counter* Hume's skepticism, Immanuel Kant declared that "I found it necessary to destroy reason [which of course is the very same faculty he used to formulate the words he used to do so] in order to save religion" [which is a condemnation of both religion and reason], which left his followers defenseless against the ultimate in arbitrary assertions, Kant's claim that reality isn't knowable at all,

"You cannot know the thing as it is" [if true, by what means could either he or you know that?]

, and so Kant claims that the only 'good' that you can do (what 'good' can be Good, without regard to what is real & true?), is to do your duty by obeying the Categorical Imperatives of experts which demand that we:

"...act in accordance with a maxim of ends that it can be a universal law for everyone to have..." [sorry, but within a reality that cannot be known, what could in 'accordance with', and 'universal', possibly mean?]

, whose commands are formulated as *reasonable* rules for behavior in a *reality* where there can be no context for arguing either for or against them - 'Just do it!' Obey!

Those form the basis for legitimizing the thin-as-ice surface appearances, as the *foundation* of modern thinking, and serve as the warp & woof of all of the later Hegelian, Marxist, Pragmatist, and Post-Modern expectations that the TURDs of modern life have spun from them, which keep popular attention efficiently skidding across the surface level of events, too distracted to even think of looking any deeper.

But to begin cracking that ice often requires nothing more than asking a question. For instance, when they advise you that:

"You cannot know what is objectively true!'

, instead of nodding along or looking awkwardly away, ask them how they can know that is 'true'? And if it is *true*, what could that possibly mean?! Raising even trifling questions like that, reveal a glimpse of what their words are so desperate for you to remain unaware of, that their words don't really have any meaning - not even to them - they are only nominal tools for manipulating popular opinion with. Their powers of mystification depend upon your thinking no further than the surface appearances of what they're verbal presenting for you to accept without question.

The health of your society hinges upon your asking what they expect you to fear will sound like 'stupid questions'. Ask them!

As Thomas Sowell observed, there are few ideas that are too ridiculous to be accepted by an Intellectual, so long as they feel it will improve their position.

It is urgent that we realize that what they mean by 'improve their position', is not what you & I would mean by that, as our sense of 'working' that achieves what was planned, isn't the point of their theories, having the power to take action is - say hello to the meaning of "*Truth* is what works", actually means. 'Economic Thinkers' are 'unprincipled on principle', so to speak, and they expect that any position can be 'improved' upon by tossing another arbitrary epicycle onto whatever objections are raised against them:

'You don't like that Idea? Then try this one, argue it against that one, and we'll see something more useful come out of it.'

, that is the nature of the dialectical dance they perform, and to whichever scheme evolves out of that process, they will confidently proclaim that this time they've foreseen everything, and so "This time it will work!"

Explaining to them the fact that an economy cannot be managed from the top down, it can only be destroyed from there, is not a lesson that will teach the TURD & 'Economic Thinker' a new respect for principles, it will only make them more committed to formulating a craftier and more stringent Rule of Rules to get around what you've pointed out is real and true. Their idea of success is injecting the decisions that they've made at a great distance in time and place from those who are actually involved in any exchange (you & I), even though their ignorance of the realities which those actually involved in an exchange (you & I) are concerned with, and the fact that real Value will be depleted from *their* economy, and from our lives, they'll greet that as an opportunity for another turn at the Wizards' dialectical dance.

As Yuri Bezmenov said, the demoralized person will not see (or care) that the exceedingly predictable results of such 'Economic Thinking' as theirs has already been attested to in the wrecked economies and tens of millions of dead across the 20th Century. You can show them in graphic detail what such 'Economic Thinking' as theirs produced in Nazi Germany, the USSR, Red China, Cuba, Venezuela, but they will not be affected by it, it simply does not make sense to them.

The question to ask yourself, as you come to realize the nature of their 'theories', is how much of their self-refuting nonsense that direct people's attention to the shallowest details of surface appearances, do you think that you should continue to read?

Engaging with arbitrary assertions as if they were worthy of consideration, serves to weaken the Common Sense of expert and novice alike, and lowers those defenses that the literary, philosophical, and moral center that the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian tradition provides. Agreeing to 'think it over', rather than rejecting it outright as you should, is how they utilize your pride and less savory desires, to progressively separate your interests from what is real and true, which will quickly enclose you within their ideas of it.

Be aware that it was by being artificially 'reasonable' in thinking their ideas over, that We The People's common sense understanding of the self-evident truths that America was founded upon, became so quickly distanced from popular opinion that the regression from the Political Economy of Classical American Liberalism, into 'Economics', workforce training, and Positivist Law, took little over a half-century to accomplish.

If we want our lives back, an understanding of what is real and true (metaphysics), what follows from that (causality & logic), and what should be done in regards to that (ethics), is what We The People must recover for ourselves.

Back to the real future
To get back to the reality that 'Economic Thinking' separates us from, requires our thinking past the surface image that they present us with as being 'the big picture', and we'd best realize that the dirty little secret of 'Economic Thinking', is that its real currency is the power to oppress, and that their ploys and policies could have no power over us, if we didn't imagine some value in our agreeing to that exchange.

Neither of us should look too innocent at that. How closely do you listen to the promises that the TURD's on your side of the political aisle, are continually making and advising you to support? Do you look for reasons and principles that do or don't support them? Or do you look no further than how it appears on the surface to support what you think of as being for the 'Common Good', and nod up-down or side-to-side accordingly? We are all susceptible to the temptation of blaming 'THEY' and 'THEM' to justify our gaining a benefit for ourselves, especially when 'everyone agrees' it is 'for the Common Good'.

Have 'THEY ever succeeded in riling you up into supporting or opposing the raising or lowering of H1B Visas, Test Scores, boosting Human Capital, 'School Choice', interest rates, capital gains taxes, or the minimum wage? Have you argued for government implementing more or less of any of those?

If so, then I'd be curious what your argument was for the limited government of a constitutional republic, having any role in is something such as how you choose to educate your child? Or how and why should Govt's responsibility to ensure that visitors and immigrants are capable of abiding by our laws, be in any way subordinated to helping some corporations secures specialized Visas to hire some number of aliens that still other corporations will benefit from their hiring? Etc., etc., etc.?! If so, you need to admit that you've agreed to engage in the currency of oppressive power, in exchange for participating in the Rule of Rules to rule over We The People with.

Those who are demoralized are those that can be manipulated by their own ill-considered notions of 'Justice!' that've been reduced to benefits, and our own conceit that we wouldn't do anything wrong, is easily used to involve ourselves in concealing the consequences of our own thinking. Willfully blind to our own faults, we see only that what's being done 'to me', is being done to you by those others - Democrats, Republicans, The Rich, The Poor, Da Joos - which we of course don't have anything to do with, noOooo no, no, no, it's not you, it's all 'THEY'!

It is a confidence game, and you have to 'think' that way for it to work, because as every conman knows: 'You can't cheat an honest man'.

The Cold War dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, saw all too clearly how 'THEY' is used to hide us from ourselves, noting:

"...If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

Our getting past dealing in the currency of oppression, begins with our being able to see if we're engaging in it. Only then will we be able to realize that 'THEIR' utilitarian affordance traps aren't just designed to get their way, but that they are specifically designed to involve We The People in them, so as to sever ourselves from what is real and true.

Those systems of 'Economic Thinking' that we agree to participate in daily, are what ensures that 'We' become an active part of 'THEY', and by involving ourselves in that perspective, 'THEY' know that we will resist cutting off that 'beneficial' part of ourselves with all of our strength, because it appeals to those incentives and sensibilities which we've accepted as part of 'an economy' that we give too little thought to.

When you see that someone's ideas and plans are inviting you to blindly enter into the matrix of their ideas, so as to destroy your ability to think anything other than those ideas, what more do you need to know before dropping those ideas like a hot potato? Take the plank out of your own eye, before worrying about the mote in another's, and look for what is of actual substance. As Solzhenitsyn noted, 'THEY' is a picture that is too easily distorted in our favor, and oh how much easier it would all be if we could just isolate who "THEY" are, and "...remove them from our presence!" (Where would 'THEY' go to? How?).

America was the result of the best of the West, which developed into the Classical American Liberalism of our Founders' era, and the Political Economy that was able to develop from Adam Smith, through Jean Baptiste Say, to Frederic Bastiat. The Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian West is what formed the foundation of their understanding, and is what is able to provide the Red Pill that you need to be able to reject modernity's Matrix of Ideas.

Gradually, progressively, over the course of over 150 years, We The People have allowed that foundation to be eroded from our own understanding, which we've duped ourselves into allowing to continue for 'The Common Good!', and We The People have to recognize that the system we're engaging with, has been constructed to appeal to our basest desires, to fulfill the evil fantasy that it is.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance in defense of what is real and true (metaphysics), what follows from that (causality & logic), and what we should do in regards to that (ethics). If we want our lives back, that understanding is the price that We The People must pay.