The Poisonous Fallacy at the Heart of Western Failure |
Friday, 23 February 2024 | By Nick Hubble | Editor, Strategic Intelligence Australia |
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[7 min read] Dear Reader, There’s a lot of funny business going on. Both in the street and on my TV. Things that just don’t make sense. Our bizarre energy policy, our cultural chaos, vehement debates and protests about things that don’t impact us, immigration policy that nobody wants but everybody is getting, housing shortages while builders go bust, children that claim to have actually become animals rather than just behaving like ones, gas shortages during a gas export boom, supranational treaties that supersede democratic will, excess deaths that nobody wants to talk about, politicians vying for who can be the most incoherent criminal, and so much more. It’s all just getting a bit too weird for my liking. And it’s my job to write about this stuff! Pointing any of it out has become a risky business. Put a foot wrong these days and you might find yourself the subject of an international cancel campaign, protestors outside your office, your customers boycotting you, billion-dollar companies deplatforming you, your employer announcing your retirement, your friends ‘unfriending’ you, or the police are at your door asking about someone else’s social media posts. It’s become a high stakes game of mob rule, and nobody has explained the rules. What happened to the good old complaints department and letter writing? But if you feel like the world has gone mad, you may just be missing the right perspective. Not that it hasn’t gone mad. But there may be a way to explain and understand what’s really going on. What’s behind the change we’re undergoing? Today, I’d like to offer you one such prism that unlocks the more bizarre things we see on the news and in our lives each day. I just haven’t figured out what to call it. Maybe you can help? Here’s how it works though… When we look at the world, different people see completely different things. The distinction is that some of us think in terms of groups and some in terms of individuals. If you think in terms of individuals, you believe people carry personal responsibility and that they can only be held responsible for their own actions. Similarly, they are entitled to be treated equally, without bias, because they are an individual. For those who think this way, making the world a better place is all about giving individuals freedom to choose for themselves. Because, being individuals, nobody else can possibly know what they want or need. Nobody else knows their dreams or intentions. The only guidance individuals need are the harsh teachers of success, failure and the consequences of taking personal responsibility for themselves. Those individuals who need our help should get it, on an individual level. And it should be given by individuals choosing to provide it, from their own pocket, not someone else’s. Institutions like health care, government and education are there to serve us, as individuals. We are not there to serve them. Nor do we serve some greater good like a leader, country or ideology. Everyone has their own beliefs, held as an individual. The fact that individuals seeking to improve their own lives leads to a society which is harmonious and prosperous is an important discovery we only made a few hundred years ago. Cooperation, not coercion, is the only way to interact, if you believe in the individual. The hand that guides us in our everyday decision making isn’t invisible. Adam Smith was very clear that it’s ‘as if guided by an invisible hand,’ because there isn’t one. Those who believe in the individual argue nobody should be in charge of anyone else’s life. That’s because the individual is the sovereign over their own life. That’s one side of the story — one way of looking at the world. Those who think in terms of groups see the world very differently... Each person belongs to a segment of society. Your race, you gender, your wealth, your education, your profession, your family history and countless other classifications all define you. They determine how you see the world had how you live in it. They define your decisions by constraining them. Reality is what you perceive from the context of the group you belong to. There is a different reality for each group. Because these groups have very different histories, beliefs and face very different conditions and constraints, making the world a better place means correcting for these differences in order to ensure a fair outcome between the groups. Those who belong to historically oppressed or disadvantaged groups must be given a helping hand, as a group. Those who belong to historically advantaged groups must be disadvantaged, as a group. Then things can be “fair” between the different groups. This is a correction — the right thing to do and the purpose of government. Feminism perceives everyone as being in two groups, for example. It is about making women and men equal, or correcting for the historical inequalities in various ways. This way of thinking only makes sense in the context of sweeping generalisations and characterisations of people. And there can be plenty of debate about who really is disadvantaged and who is advantaged. Not to mention what should be done about it. But there’s no doubt there’s plenty of truth to the idea that society is full of groups of people who are unequal, once you accept that way of looking at the world. In fact, once you accept it, the unequal groups are all you can see. It’s where the idea leads that worth noting: it’s righteous to intervene in people’s lives because of the way the world looks when you think in terms of groups. It looks unfair in a way that you can fix. You just need to treat people as groups that need uplifting and bringing down to a fair level. My theory for what is going on in our culture, which explains some of the stranger things we see each day, is that people are increasingly looking at the world ever more in terms of groups and ever less in terms of individuals. The chaos follows from this characterisation. We are constantly being “asked” to sacrifice our ability to be individuals who make our own choices and decisions in favour of doing so in groups. We were forced into lockdowns to protect our health services and the vulnerable. The same for vaccinations, which risked harm to some individuals, but supposedly protected the group. We are asked to pay vast shares of our income to the government for redistributing amongst needy groups like EV buyers, the defence industry and solar panel installers. We are asked to deny biological reality to make an oppressed group of people feel more welcome when competing in a sport. Protests in favour of the individual’s rights during the pandemic were not allowed. But protests in favour of a suppressed group were allowed. The individual’s freedom of speech is denied if it makes an oppressed group feel bad, and I don’t mean physically. But an oppressed group can say what it likes about a group or an individual who are privileged. In fact, they can do what they like to that group. Looting from big companies’ shops, for example, is ok when it is done by an oppressed group. The rights of migrants, a disadvantaged group, are superior to the rights of those unfairly advantaged enough to already live in a stable place. All around us, the individual’s rights are giving way to group entitlement. Perhaps the best way to describe all this is collectivism. Although that has a “we are all in this together” feel about it, historically speaking, it descended into just the same sort of chaos. Countries that attempted collectivism all featured vetting different groups of societies against each other. The farmers versus the factory workers. The intellectuals versus the oppressed. The rich versus the poor. Agriculture versus cities. The landowners versus the serfs. The capitalists versus the workers. That’s how revolutions were justified and empowered in the past — pitting arbitrary groups against each other. The collectivist theory was just the lipstick on the pig. It was all about defining groups, dividing them and then demanding retribution for one group by dispossessing another. As China and Russia went communist, it was popular for ideological mob trials to demand of their victims that they admit to the crime of being part of an advantaged class like the nobility, intellectuals or bourgeoise. These days, we must admit to white privilege and kneel. Academic high achievers must make way for those who didn’t achieve because of the group they came from. Those who can read and write must refrain from doing so to stop making those who can’t feel inferior. Spelling and grammar are in the eye of the beholder. The problem with looking at the world in groups is the incentives it creates. As Warren Buffet’s right hand man Charlie Munger once said, ‘Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.’ The incentive for individuals who see themselves as taking personal responsibility for their lives is to improve their own lot by doing something useful, usually for others. We create products or perform services others want to buy. But those who see only oppressed and advantaged groups have the incentive to ‘fix it’, by imposing a correction on others, whether they agree or not. That’s why collectivist societies go totalitarian. It’s the only way to reverse supposedly unfair inequality and enforce equality between groups. But what is the incentive for the individual in a world dominated by those who see only groups, not individuals? If government policies, social norms and economic incentives are defined by thinking in terms of making groups equal, how do people begin to behave? Do they take responsibility? Do they try to build and create something? Do they try to innovate? Are they productive? Do they work hard? Or do they try to become politically powerful to lord over others? Do they try to play the victim to get benefits? Do they try to belong to disadvantaged groups and disavow being part of advantaged ones? Do they disavow ambition in favour of appearing oppressed? Do athletes win races by training hard, or by changing their gender and complaining about it? Do politicians win elections by appealing to people as individuals, or by dividing society into ‘groups’. Do businesspeople compete by improving their products, or do they stage marketing campaigns pandering to victimised groups? Are comedians funny, or just bullies the crowd is cheering on? I think the incentive structure of our society is radically changing because of the world view we’ve adapted. I’d call it group-think, if that term wasn’t already taken. But you get the idea. This is an understandable reaction in many ways. Young people face some rather large challenges should they think about their world as being made up of individuals who take personal responsibility for their own lives. How many can afford to buy a house if they believe it is their own responsibility to secure one, not the government’s responsibility to do it for them, and their right to have one? Can the people who have bought a house afford to save for retirement if they accept the premise it’s their own responsibility to do so? Wouldn’t it be easier to just claim that it’s the government’s job to help that disadvantaged group which can’t afford retirement? Can people be entrepreneurial in a society so strangled in red tape? Better to forge a career adding to that red tape and then collect a safe pension. If you feel like society is falling apart at the seams, I think you should acknowledge that it is merely changing in the way that the incentives we created demand it to change. If you agree, there’s not much you can do to avoid the consequences. We have to let them play out and wait for people to wake up. But some assets have a very long history of helping their owners protect their wealth during unstable times like this, when having any wealth at all puts you at risk. When it’s all about financial survival, gold is one of the best places to be. The only question is how to go about investing in it? Here’s one answer that could help you try to grow your wealth as society melts down around it. Until next time, Nick Hubble, Editor, Strategic Intelligence Australia Nick Hubble found us at Fat Tail Investment Research in 2010 after a stint inside Wall Street’s most notorious bank, Goldman Sachs, during the 2008 GFC. That’s where he saw the true nature of the investment banking business. Since then, he’s been the editor of the Daily Reckoning Australia and the UK-based Fortune & Freedom and Gold Stock Fortunes. He’s delighted to work as Investment Director and Editor for Jim Rickards’ Strategic Intelligence Australia. Here he helps turn Jim’s big-picture views into specific actionable advice and ideas for Australian investors. Advertisement: ‘THE NEXT LITHIUM’? Recently, we saw a 90-fold gain from an Aussie mining stock in the lithium sector. That’s an extremely rare and exceptional reaction. But the pattern behind its historic up move is playing out again, this time in an under-the-radar sector of the resource markets. Could this new resource be lithium 2.0? 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| By Bill Bonner | Editor, Fat Tail Daily |
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[4 min read] …government officials wanted Amazon to remove from its online catalog books containing “misinformation” regarding the safety and effectiveness of covid vaccines, meaning anything questioning the government’s pro-vaccine propaganda. ~ Ron Paul We begin with this report from the American Conservative… “Is American Journalism Headed Toward an ‘Extinction-Level Event’?” asks an Atlantic headline. The numbers are deadly. The grimmest news was from the Los Angeles Times, the biggest newspaper outside the East Coast. The paper announced it was cutting 115 people, more than 20 percent of its newsroom. In June of last year, the Times dropped 74 people. Some 2,900 newspapers have closed or merged since 2005. Sports Illustrated is in trouble. The Washington Post, NBC News, ABC News, CNN, NPR, Vice, Vox, and BuzzFeed, among others, have shed hundreds of journalists over the past year. (The author of the Atlantic article himself was a layoff from the Post.) Job losses among print, digital, and broadcast-news organizations grew by nearly 50 percent during 2023. Why so much downsizing in the mainstream media? It is possible that consumers don’t really want to pay for propaganda? Hand in Glove It is obvious that the media, the US firepower industry, and the government work closely together. All are arms of America’s Establishment — rich, well-educated, and powerful…with elites who have grown distant from ‘The People’ they were meant to serve. No conspiracy theory is necessary to explain it; their interests…and the interests of ‘the masses’… simply diverge. People with power tend to want more power. And as Eisenhower observed in 1961, pretty soon, they exert an ‘unwarranted influence’ over public policy to get it. The rich are different. They have more money. More power. More influence. Can you blame them for wanting to control the government…and use it to their own advantage? Elites, already on top, typically aim to protect themselves by blocking innovation and competition. They control both political parties, for example; they don’t want any others butting in. But the rest of the population is better off in an open, dynamic society where they can go about their business without the costs and constraints imposed by the feds. This divergence explains much of America’s excess spending, its cancerous debt, and its lust for foreign wars. They are all obvious ways in which the insiders transfer more wealth and power to themselves. Less obvious is our subject for today: the extent to which the country has already become, in effect, a military dictatorship. That, at any rate, is the charge levelled by Mr. Mike Benz. He is not saying anything we haven’t said. But he has taken it a step further. The US is not just in danger of being taken over by some form of insider rule; the federal government already has been captured. It is an explosive assertion; if true, it upsets hundreds of years’ worth of progress, in which fighting men were meant to serve civilized authorities, not the other way around. Internet Tools And he may be right. The deciders are selected, more or less, not by the voters, but by the political parties, the media and the firepower industry. They decide when we go to war and with whom, how much the feds spend…and, indirectly, where they get it. One way they control the idea-flow, says Benz, Director of the Foundation for On-Line Freedom, is by using the latest internet tools. Benz: Google is a great example of this. Google began as a DARPA grant by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were Stanford PhDs, and they got their funding as part of a joint CIA NSA program to chart how “birds of a feather flock together online” through search engine aggregation. And then one year later they launched Google and then became a military contractor. From there it was one hop and one skip until Google was fully part of the Deep State program. At first, this was widely seen as helping independence movements — such as the famous Arab Spring — liberate their countries from dictatorial or backward leaders. Overseas, the CIA and other US intel agencies had been rigging elections and pulling strings for a long time. Benz recalls George Keenan, then head of the CIA, explaining: “…listen, it's a mean old world out there. We at the CIA just rigged the Italian election [of 1948]. We had to do it because if the Communist won, maybe there'd never be another election in Italy again, but it's really effective, guys. We need a department of dirty tricks to be able to do this around the world. And this is essentially a new social contract we're constructing with the American people because this is not the way we've conducted diplomacy before…” The Biggest Danger But after the surprise election of Donald Trump, the insiders began to see that it wasn’t only Italian voters who couldn’t be trusted. Benz… Russiagate died in July, 2019 when Robert Mueller basically choked on the stand for three hours and revealed he had absolutely nothing. After two and a half years of investigation…they took all of this censorship architecture, spanning DHS, the FBI, the CIA, the DOD, the DOJ, and then the thousands of government funded NGO and private sector mercenary firms were all basically transited from a foreign predicate, a Russian disinformation predicate to a democracy predicate by saying that disinformation is not just a threat when it comes from the Russians, it's actually an intrinsic threat to democracy itself. Get it? The threat is not just that foreign elections may not go the way the elites want. Domestic elections might go awry too. The biggest danger to ordinary Americans is a debt crisis — followed by defaults, depression and inflation. But the biggest danger to the powers-that-be is a sudden cut-off in the flow of deficit-financed spending…easy money…stock market gains…cushy jobs…contracts…directorships…and other government boondoggles. Suppose, for example, that a ‘peace candidate’ were elected president? Suppose he used his office to make a logical and compelling case for America First, proposing to stay out of other peoples’ wars? And suppose he cut spending in the one and only area where substantial savings are readily available — the ‘discretionary’ budget for maintaining the US empire? It would be easy to save $500 billion with no loss in security for the homeland; the US would still be spending 6 times as much on ‘defense’ as Russia. A few other cuts to the empire budget and the federal deficit would be eliminated completely! But what would the toady press say? How would the elites defend themselves? How much longer would this reformer live? More to come… Regards, Bill Bonner, For Fat Tail Daily All advice is general advice and has not taken into account your personal circumstances. Please seek independent financial advice regarding your own situation, or if in doubt about the suitability of an investment. |
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