If I win a popularity contest, does that make me an economist? A general? A doctor? Anything at all? Nope, it only makes me the winner of a popularity contest. Put aside the fact that the political system in the US is not at all free and open but rather controlled by parties that may occasionally slip up and let in someone of which they don’t approve; once the votes are counted, there you are. With a voice on the course of the nation and no real idea what you’re doing. You were, however, able to convince some people that you have a plan, and that that plan will work.
I find a lot of problems with this. Once you get into a position to wield coercive power over others, and a vocal minority is cheering you on, you tend to think more of your opinions. I contend that the problem starts way earlier, by thinking that politics is a virtuous pursuit in the first place. Telling people what to do is not virtuous, no matter what you think you know and they don’t.
Back to ignorance. We’re seeing it every day in 2020; someone with a very narrow scope of competence is allowed to influence (and sometimes create from whole cloth) policies completely outside that area. What does an epidemiologist necessarily know about the economy? How does Fauci, for example, know how to keep supply chains intact when there’s a disruption in transportation or labor markets? Does he even think about it or does he just think “Virus Bad” and every single other thing out of his mouth flows from that central tenet? And I’m being generous here; I don’t believe for a single second that his intentions are benign. My reasoning is that this virus is not particularly dangerous, but with a complicit media they can obscure this fact using statistics. Between 7,800-8,000 die on an average day in this country for a total of roughly 2.8-2.9 million deaths a year (as of 2019), but a daily death toll of 3,000, almost all of whom actually died from comorbidities contributed to by decades of poor lifestyle choices, has thousands of people freaking out, at least online and on TV.
Backing up, this is another reason we supposedly had a narrowly defined list of enumerated powers granted to the government in the Constitution; to protect “the people” from encroaching statists. That has worked out poorly. The creeping nature of coercive power has allowed political decision-making to expand beyond its statutory bounds, and we see the results every day. Rather than keeping force as much out of life as possible and seeing the greatest leaps of innovation and increases in history in the standard of living, we now see that very success being used as an example of what we aren’t supposed to want anymore.
Back to Dunning-Kruger; people who have nothing to offer but rhetorical skill and corporate sponsorship are now literally dictating how people are to live because it’s supposedly an emergency. By the way, that’s another reason I don’t think this virus is any real big deal; if the stakes were really that high, our “leadership” wouldn’t be flaunting their own rules quite so brazenly. That they are making rules for the rest of us that they don’t feel obligated to follow themselves tells me all I need to know about how seriously they take what they say in public.
And where do they get their supposed “authority” to do any of this in the first place? The founders knew about plagues when they drafted the Constitution (and let me say I don’t like the USC, I’m just referencing it because that’s, in theory, what gives these assholes the power they’re exercising.) and there was no clause giving the gov emergency powers in the time of a plague or pandemic; the 1st Amendment does not have a “some restrictions apply” clause. That was added later, apparently. Let us review:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
“Peaceable assembly” means I can go about my business without interference from government agents. Can anyone in the US really do that? Pandemic notwithstanding? We’ve allowed “experts” to convince all too many of us that there is danger in going about your life, and the people saying this the loudest either have a myopic view of the world, or no damned clue whatsoever and are just regurgitating what people they like and respect are saying. That’s a terrible recipe for tyranny, and it seems like fewer people see this than should. And it’s all borne of the overconfidence morons get from winning a popularity contest.
Listening to the experts gives me whiplash, because they’re like reporters all rushing to get their story out first and “scoop” everyone else. If you wait to publish you don’t get to control the narrative, and that’s all-important. Not being right, being first. As long as the precedent for power-grabbing has been set, you can change the story and move the goalposts as much as you want. Can anyone deny that’s what we’ve been seeing in the world of “experts” for quite some time now?
Reason 5,234,759 I’m an anarchist is that the people that claim dominion over us are incompetent, venal, arrogant assholes who never pay a commensurate price for their evil deeds. It’s even more galling that they make grand pronouncements in public that are completely at odds with their private selves, but we’re supposed to adhere to the public BS or risk punishment up to and including death.
