But, if the wealth of rich capitalists comes from exploitation of poor workers, then we might expect to find that where there are larger concentrations of rich capitalists, we would find correspondingly larger concentrations of poverty.
Economists tend to rely on “revealed preference” rather than verbal statements. That is, what people do reveals what their values are, better than what they say.
Often it is those who are most critical of a “Eurocentric” view of the world who are most Eurocentric when it comes to the evils and failings of the human race.
The community as a whole is better off or worse off according to whether or not the next generation is raised under circumstances that are more likely to produce productive citizens rather than parasites and criminals. Indeed, the less fortunate are the hardest hit by the consequences when social standards are compromise or jettisoned for the sake of cosmic concepts of equality.
Even when “both sides” are presented in the media, seldom are the reasons for each side presented.
When laws and policies make honesty increasingly costly, then government is, in effect, promoting dishonesty. Such dishonesty can then extend beyond the particular laws and policies in question to a more general habit of disobeying laws, to the detriment of the whole economy and society.
Various mental tests or scholastic tests have been criticized as unfair because different groups perform very differently on such tests. But one reply to critics summarized the issue succinctly: “The tests are not unfair. Life is unfair and the tests measure the results.
Nothing is easier than to find some individuals – in any group – who share a given writer’s opinion, and to quote such individuals as if their views were typical.
Statistics compiled from what people say may be worse than useless, if they lead to a belief that those numbers convey a reality that can be relied on for serious decision-making about social policies.
What the British had earlier than many other peoples was a framework of law and government that facilitated economic transactions.
Cromwell’s punitive expedition marked a watershed in Irish history. An estimated 40 percent of the Irish population died either in the war or in the famine which accompanied the devastation.
Complex and time-consuming international economic transactions, including long-term investments, are particularly dependent on a reliable framework of law, so that changes of government policy or of individuals in power, do not create large uncertainties as to whether commitments will be honored or foreigners treated on an equal plane with the natives involved in commercial and financial transactions.
After the political success of the anti-DDT crusade by environmentalists, the banning of this insecticide was followed by a resurgence of malaria, taking millions of lives, even in countries where the disease had been all but eradicated. Rachel Carson may have been responsible for more deaths of human beings than anyone without an army. Yet she remains a revered figure among environmental crusaders.
23 Two centuries later, the task appears less simple and such expressions as “brain-washing” and “reeducation” camps have chilling overtones in the light of history, though that has not stopped indoctrination efforts in American schools and colleges, led by those who still have the vision of the anointed today.
The dire poverty of the early nineteenth century Irish may be indicated by their average life expectancy of 19 years-compared to 36 years for contemporary American slaves-and the fact that slaves in the United States typically lived in houses a little larger than the unventilated huts of the Irish and slept on mattresses, while the Irish slept in piles of.
The idea that students can determine relevance in advance is one of the many counterproductive notions to come out of the 1960s.
It was in the wake of these erosions of economic controls that intellectual challenges were then made to the role of government in the economy, first by the Physiocrats in France, who coined the term “laissez-faire,” and then by Adam Smith in Britain, who became its leading champion.
The civil rights vision tends to view group characteristics as mere “stereotypes” and concentrates on changing the public’s “perceptions” or raising the public’s “consciousness.” Yet the reality of group patterns that transcend any given society cannot be denied.
It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word.
Choice, like behavior and performance, is often circumvented by the vocabulary of the anointed.