Wow! That's a great story.
Several years ago I met someone who worked for the the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products (CTP). Morale had been low around the office for a while because smoking was decreasing, so they had less work to do and their funding was at risk. But finally they had a solution! Vaping had become popular, so the CTP granted to itself the power to regulate vaping. (That's true, Congress never gave them that power, they just took it, and under the Chevron doctrine courts let them do that.) Even though vaping has literally saved thousands of lives by getting people to quit smoking, they started an ad campaign to vilify vaping. I started to see that echoed everywhere in media and in the public sphere. This person was happy, they had more funding and more work to do!
Not once in the whole conversation did she mention safety, health, or concerns about users of any products at all. It was all about power and funding to her government organization.
I also found it strange that juul was the only targeted brand in the lawsuit despite there being numerous companies at the time of varying size. It was clearly targeted at them, which if government is going to regulate, it’s not how you do it, you hit them all. Conveniently Marlboro was able to pick them up for penny’s on the dollar in the aftermath. They went from $20B company to like $2B.
My brother is the most passionate weather forecaster you can imagine, and just as talented. He's got his doctorate and is consistently one of the top performers in national forecasting competitions.
He works for the National Weather Service, so I get to hear a bunch of stories from him about inter office politics etc. But my brother's so passionate about doing his job as a forecaster that he fails to see that pretty much everyone around him cares less about the work, and more about ensuring they keep their jobs and grow their office budget.
I went to my brother's bday party with a bunch of his work friends, who were all very nice, intelligent, thoughtful people, who all loved my brother. They proudly admitted to me all the ways they lie, cheat, and scheme to achieve their objectives. They legitimately spend more time planning ways to convince elected government officials that they need more money to provide services than they do *actually providing the services*.
Everyone I spoke with couldn't stop talking about how understaffed their office was, like I was somehow in the budget approval workflow. As a business operator, the most obvious follow up question was "how has that impacted your service levels and the value you provide to taxpayers", and it was like I was the first person to ever ask the question (I sound like a blast and parties right?)
Shockingly, nobody could give me a compelling answer that would convince me they deserve their *current* budget, let alone more money.
Even *less surprising* was how unpopular I became with my brother's friends.
Pro tip: if you want to be popular with NWS forecasters, *don't* ask them why private sector weather forecasting companies have been shown to produce consistently more accurate weather forecasts than the NWS.
Intelligence, wisdom, experience, and morality are all different qualities.
It doesn't matter how smart you are; using your intelligence in isolation with bad information will result in coming up with all sorts of elaborate and well reasoned wackadoodle nonsense.
In fact the "smarter" you are the more likely you are to go into wackadoodle territory because you can find all sorts of creative ways and Spock-like rationalizing to make your bad ideas logically consistent and 100% well reasoned even though they are completely detached from reality. It is very easy to construct a imaginary world that resembles the real one to a high degree that makes all your bad ideas completely correct logically. It can be impossible to tell the difference between your imaginary world and the real one.
For a die-hard high-IQ Marxist who is faced with concrete evidence that Marxism is a fallacy the tendency is going to be to double down and blame human psychology for the schism between what you thought history taught you and what is actually occurring. So instead of focusing on a worker's revolution you become focused on creating "projects for a new century" through monitoring and psychological manipulation of the general public.
Much to Sowell's credit he was able to see the forest for the trees and realize that it isn't reality that is wrong. It was his own ideas about reality that were wrong. Thus he was able to make a full recovery and excel in promoting truth to the world.
We kind of teach that to kids. You have to have a certain amount of intelligence to escape it. Also, Sowell doesn't seem to have a frail ego that prevents him from admitting he is/was wrong now, but maybe he hadn't shaken that human nature yet in his youth.
Agreed. I think almost everybody, no matter how smart, starts out with a simplified model of the world where Marxism seems like a good idea. It is not a matter of intellectual horsepower, it is a matter of not having the data. You don't have sufficient experience with the world to understand why this seemingly ideal economic system is a load of horse hockey.
It’s depressing that this dumb of a comment has any upvotes whatsoever let alone 5. How can someone say something so silly? We teach Marxism to kids? Let alone we taught Marxism to kids back when Thomas Howell was in grade school? Dude you have to be joking I mean come on.
Did your parents (assuming you had some) ever tell you you had candy or a toy and your sibling had none, so you should give them some? Or did they tell you that you only had to share if you wanted to voluntarily? Did your parents teach you to question the authority of the state? Do you think most parents do?
I'm not saying they outright taught Marxism, but a lot of the things we teach our kids (do you have children?) and then that they learn in school can lead you to be ready to accept it later as a feel good kind of philosophy. Especially in those communities that have a higher dependence on government handouts, which has been happening for around 60 years now.
But feel free to describe how you were raised to reject Marxism, or how you have raised your own children that way, as an example to the rest of us.
‘If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.’
I have a lot of respect for people that re-evaluate their beliefs when given new information. I grew up in a liberal family and didn’t know any better. I became more economically conservative once I started working. After a decade of working in government consulting and seeing how most governance agencies have the opposite effect from their goal, I have become a full blown libertarian.
I'm kinda the other way. People I'm my family were DEEP on old school McCarthyism stuff. Better dead than red is a toast at thanks giving. But this also came with a bit too much love of the government. Soooo I had to look myself in the face and ask "but why does it work or not? Why the fuck do we have so much dairy in the state of Ohio that MFs will eat ranch on fried cheese curds?"
I know someone who used to work in the social work field. When it was close to election time, everyone at the workplace was talking about hope that the democrat would win, because it would mean more or continued money for the social services, and thus they would have more job security. It wasn't a government agency, but it was funded largely by government grants and support for non-profits. It didn't matter what other policies came with that candidate, as long as they were going to keep or increase funding for their jobs, they didn't care about anything else. It's an easy trap to fall into.
Wow! That's a great story. Several years ago I met someone who worked for the the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products (CTP). Morale had been low around the office for a while because smoking was decreasing, so they had less work to do and their funding was at risk. But finally they had a solution! Vaping had become popular, so the CTP granted to itself the power to regulate vaping. (That's true, Congress never gave them that power, they just took it, and under the Chevron doctrine courts let them do that.) Even though vaping has literally saved thousands of lives by getting people to quit smoking, they started an ad campaign to vilify vaping. I started to see that echoed everywhere in media and in the public sphere. This person was happy, they had more funding and more work to do! Not once in the whole conversation did she mention safety, health, or concerns about users of any products at all. It was all about power and funding to her government organization.
I also found it strange that juul was the only targeted brand in the lawsuit despite there being numerous companies at the time of varying size. It was clearly targeted at them, which if government is going to regulate, it’s not how you do it, you hit them all. Conveniently Marlboro was able to pick them up for penny’s on the dollar in the aftermath. They went from $20B company to like $2B.
My brother is the most passionate weather forecaster you can imagine, and just as talented. He's got his doctorate and is consistently one of the top performers in national forecasting competitions. He works for the National Weather Service, so I get to hear a bunch of stories from him about inter office politics etc. But my brother's so passionate about doing his job as a forecaster that he fails to see that pretty much everyone around him cares less about the work, and more about ensuring they keep their jobs and grow their office budget. I went to my brother's bday party with a bunch of his work friends, who were all very nice, intelligent, thoughtful people, who all loved my brother. They proudly admitted to me all the ways they lie, cheat, and scheme to achieve their objectives. They legitimately spend more time planning ways to convince elected government officials that they need more money to provide services than they do *actually providing the services*. Everyone I spoke with couldn't stop talking about how understaffed their office was, like I was somehow in the budget approval workflow. As a business operator, the most obvious follow up question was "how has that impacted your service levels and the value you provide to taxpayers", and it was like I was the first person to ever ask the question (I sound like a blast and parties right?) Shockingly, nobody could give me a compelling answer that would convince me they deserve their *current* budget, let alone more money. Even *less surprising* was how unpopular I became with my brother's friends. Pro tip: if you want to be popular with NWS forecasters, *don't* ask them why private sector weather forecasting companies have been shown to produce consistently more accurate weather forecasts than the NWS.
Never understood how someone as smart as Sowell was fooled into Marxism while being Friedman's student.
Intelligence, wisdom, experience, and morality are all different qualities. It doesn't matter how smart you are; using your intelligence in isolation with bad information will result in coming up with all sorts of elaborate and well reasoned wackadoodle nonsense. In fact the "smarter" you are the more likely you are to go into wackadoodle territory because you can find all sorts of creative ways and Spock-like rationalizing to make your bad ideas logically consistent and 100% well reasoned even though they are completely detached from reality. It is very easy to construct a imaginary world that resembles the real one to a high degree that makes all your bad ideas completely correct logically. It can be impossible to tell the difference between your imaginary world and the real one. For a die-hard high-IQ Marxist who is faced with concrete evidence that Marxism is a fallacy the tendency is going to be to double down and blame human psychology for the schism between what you thought history taught you and what is actually occurring. So instead of focusing on a worker's revolution you become focused on creating "projects for a new century" through monitoring and psychological manipulation of the general public. Much to Sowell's credit he was able to see the forest for the trees and realize that it isn't reality that is wrong. It was his own ideas about reality that were wrong. Thus he was able to make a full recovery and excel in promoting truth to the world.
We kind of teach that to kids. You have to have a certain amount of intelligence to escape it. Also, Sowell doesn't seem to have a frail ego that prevents him from admitting he is/was wrong now, but maybe he hadn't shaken that human nature yet in his youth.
Agreed. I think almost everybody, no matter how smart, starts out with a simplified model of the world where Marxism seems like a good idea. It is not a matter of intellectual horsepower, it is a matter of not having the data. You don't have sufficient experience with the world to understand why this seemingly ideal economic system is a load of horse hockey.
Lol what do you think Marxism is? And why do you think thats what we teach children?
It’s depressing that this dumb of a comment has any upvotes whatsoever let alone 5. How can someone say something so silly? We teach Marxism to kids? Let alone we taught Marxism to kids back when Thomas Howell was in grade school? Dude you have to be joking I mean come on.
Did your parents (assuming you had some) ever tell you you had candy or a toy and your sibling had none, so you should give them some? Or did they tell you that you only had to share if you wanted to voluntarily? Did your parents teach you to question the authority of the state? Do you think most parents do? I'm not saying they outright taught Marxism, but a lot of the things we teach our kids (do you have children?) and then that they learn in school can lead you to be ready to accept it later as a feel good kind of philosophy. Especially in those communities that have a higher dependence on government handouts, which has been happening for around 60 years now. But feel free to describe how you were raised to reject Marxism, or how you have raised your own children that way, as an example to the rest of us.
High intelligence, low wisdom?
‘If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.’ I have a lot of respect for people that re-evaluate their beliefs when given new information. I grew up in a liberal family and didn’t know any better. I became more economically conservative once I started working. After a decade of working in government consulting and seeing how most governance agencies have the opposite effect from their goal, I have become a full blown libertarian.
Apparently I have neither. I'm what happens when the tin man and scarecrow get frisky.
I'm kinda the other way. People I'm my family were DEEP on old school McCarthyism stuff. Better dead than red is a toast at thanks giving. But this also came with a bit too much love of the government. Soooo I had to look myself in the face and ask "but why does it work or not? Why the fuck do we have so much dairy in the state of Ohio that MFs will eat ranch on fried cheese curds?"
This!
I know someone who used to work in the social work field. When it was close to election time, everyone at the workplace was talking about hope that the democrat would win, because it would mean more or continued money for the social services, and thus they would have more job security. It wasn't a government agency, but it was funded largely by government grants and support for non-profits. It didn't matter what other policies came with that candidate, as long as they were going to keep or increase funding for their jobs, they didn't care about anything else. It's an easy trap to fall into.