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 Experts tend to suffer from groupthink. ... Moreover, because experts tend to believe more than most in the absolute authority of experts, the average expert in the room will defer to the judgment of the superexpert. ... Some recent examples include Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs, the failure to find WMDs in Iraq, and, of course, the release of New Coke. ... One of the more fascinating counterintuitive facts of life is that the introduction of dumb people can make a group of smart people collectively smarter. Bluntly stated, some stupid people are too stupid to automatically defer to smart people. Remember the story about the truck that got jammed in the tunnel because it was too small? All the experts were stumped. But some kid yelled, "Let the air out of the tires," saving the day. Jonah Goldberg Book: The Tyranny of Cliche`s: How liberals cheat in the war of ideas. 2012. Sentinel; p 93-4
According to Nash's theorem, your response in the Trust Game should be simply to keep whatever comes to you, even though you know some other person increased your wealth partly in the hope that you'd reciprocate. ... the unintended consequence of such "rational" behavior--that is, looking out for number one--is for both of you to miss the opportunity to gain by creating a larger pie, then sharing it. ... Yet with all deference to John Nash and his Nobel Prize, the Trust Game shows that rational self-interest is bupkis when it comes to real people. ... With large sums or small, in dollars or dinars, participants almost always behave with more trust and trustworthiness than the established theories predict they will.Paul J. Zak Book: The Moral Molecule -- The source of love and prosperity. 2012. Dutton; p 8
[Referring to the disvalue of statism as a social system for mankind] PASOK and New Democracy have long used the public sector to give patronage jobs to supporters. ... So the government created a monster that was more powerful than the government itself.Manos Matsaganis http://www.wbur.org/npr/150804420/george-papandreou-greece-had-to-make-changes
Marx ... did not quite grasp that formal property was not simply an instrument for appropriation but also the means to motivate people to create real additional usable value. Moreover, he did not see that it is the mechanisms contained in the property system itself that give assets and the labor invested in them the form required to create capital. ... That is why Marx did not fully understand that legal property is the indispensable process that fixes and deploys capital, that without property mankind cannot convert the fruits of its labor into fungible, liquid forms that can be differentiated, combined, divided, and invested to produce surplus value.Hernando de Soto Book: Hernando de Soto. (2000). The Mystery of Capital. Basic Books; pp. 215-16
The less one knows, the closer one comes to sharing with blocks of marble and bits of wood the advantage of being infallible and faultless.Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz New Essays on Human Understanding
We consume about 25 percent of the world’s oil. We only have 2 percent of the reserves.President Barack Obama http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/30/remarks-president-americas-energy-security
"The public's identification of order with law makes it impossible for the public to ask for one without asking for the other. There is clearly a public demand for an orderly society. One of human beings' most fundamental desires is for a peaceful existence secure from violence. But because the public has been conditioned to express its desire for order as one for law, all calls for a more orderly society are interpreted as calls for more law. And since under our current political system, all law is supplied by the state, all such calls are interpreted as calls for a more active and powerful state. The identification of order with law eliminates from public consciousness the very concept of the decentralized provision of order. With regard to legal services, it renders the classical liberal idea of a market-generated, spontaneous order incomprehensible. I began this Article with a reference to Orwell's concept of doublethink. But I am now describing the most effective contemporary example we have of Orwellian "newspeak," the process by which words are redefined to render certain thoughts unthinkable."John Hasnas http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm
Has anyone noticed that Pres Obama apologized for the Koran burning done by some American soldiers. Would he have done this had they burned an American flag as some citizens did back a few decades ago, here at home? All liberals talked about then was the right to do such terrible things, in the spirit of the First Amendment. Why not now, when it involves the Koran?Tibor R. Machan Message from Tibor Machan
The data show a clear positive relationship, the more individualized the nation, the more citizens enjoy their life. This suggests that the benefits of individualization are greater than its costs. Inspection of the scattergrams shows a linear relationship. There is no pattern of diminishing returns. This indicates that individualization has not yet passed its optimum. The relationship appears to be contingent to level of education and economic prosperity. Positive correlations appear only among the most knowledgeable and prosperous nations. This suggests that the misgivings about individualization apply more to the past than to the future.Ruut Veenhoven http://www2.eur.nl/fsw/research/veenhoven/Pub1990s/97a-ab.htm
Those who tatoo or 'body pierce' themselves or others do so in the belief that an illustrated body compensates an empty mind, and those who wear a headscarf for religious motives or paint scriptural writings on walls, banners and majolicas do so likewise.Manfred F. Schieder (1937 - )
It's 1961. I'm 6 years old, and in the kitchen of my buddy, Howie. Howie has a brother, a stay at home mother who is active in the local PTA, and a father who graduated from HS and is a janitor at Beth Steel. Howie's father is standing in the kitchen with one arm around his wife, who is crying and laughing. They are staring at his first weekly take home check that cleared the miracle amount of $100. They live in a clean neighborhood on a tree lined street, they send their kids to a good local school. They think they have just won the lottery. The day this is happening, JFK's federal budget is $100B, over half of which is for defense at the peak of the cold war. JFK will soon give his speech at Rice, and America the nation, as well as American economies, are about to go on a tear. A nation of inspired youth is about to head off in a hundred million different quests to change the world. As well as the odd adventure in Vietnam. Flash ahead to 2012. The federal government spends over $3600B/yr of the nation's income, not $100B/yr. But where are the stories of joyous janitors and their happy wives crying with joy over bringing home a weekly check in which Dad the HS grad has cleared over $3600/wk?Fred Bartlett http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Books/0274_1.shtml#20
Atheists may have many other virtues, but on one of the least controversial and most objective measures of moral behavior—giving time, money, and blood to help strangers in need—religious people appear to be morally superior to secular folk.Jonathan Haidt http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.html
So much of the argument out there all the time is up at 40,000 feet, these abstract arguments about who's conservative or who's liberal," Obama said. "Most Americans — and certainly most small business owners — you guys are just trying to figure out how do we make things work, how do we apply common sense. And that's what this is aboutBarack H. Obama http://nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/13/10148099-obama-seeks-power-to-merge-agencies
Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire
It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men’s spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictatorship has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; ...Ayn Rand “Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason,” The Objectivist Newsletter, Feb. 1962, 5
Blacks today are just as racially different from whites of two generations ago as they are from whites today. Yet the data suggest that the number of questions that blacks answer correctly on IQ tests today is very similar to the number answered correctly by past generations of whites. If race A differs from race B in IQ, and two generations of race A differ from each other by the same amount, where is the logic in suggesting that the IQ differences are even partly racial?Thomas Sowell Vol. 28, American Spectator, 02-01-1995, pp 32.
[I]deology signifies a phenomenon intermediate between a simple lie at one pole, and an error, which is the result of a distorted and faulty conceptual apparatus, at the other.Karl Mannheium http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/189545.Karl_Mannheim
Occupy Wall Street protesters had just a few hours to celebrate what they saw as their biggest victory so far: the peaceful shutdown of the nation's fifth-busiest port.Associated Press http://www.twincities.com/alllistings/ci_19260639?source=rss
There cannot be any question of abolishing interest by any institutions, laws, and devices of bank manipulation. He who wants to "abolish" interst will have to induce people to value an apple available in a hundred years no less than a present apple. What can be abolished by laws and decrees is merely the right of the capitalists to receive interest. But such laws would bring about capital consumption and would very soon throw mankind back into the original state of natural poverty.Ludwig von Mises Human Action
Overheard: "School children who see the exhibits in the Creation Museum in Kentucky will be confused when they learn in school that the universe is 14 billion years old rather than 6,000."Iqbal Latif http://www.evolutionminute.com/00-galaxiescoll.html
The individual politic tactic of hypothesizing an authority above all of us individually ... and then jarringly speaking for it as individuals and presenting our individual interpretations of what this remote supreme and yet curiously otherwise mute authority demands of us individually... is the oldest carny huckster political trick in the book.Fred Bartlett RoR's Morality Needs No God thread
President Obama’s jobs bill is better than doing nothing in the face of a national crisis, but it won’t have much impact on unemployment.Fareed Zakaria http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/where-obamas-jobs-bill-falls-short/2011/09/28/gIQA5jne5K_story.html
In laissez-faire capitalism, the government has no function to perform with regard to money. There is no central bank. ... This is essentially the monetary system that the United States had between the Civil War and the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Under that system, the United states had an average annual rate of economic growth (over 5 percent a year) higher than any country has ever had over a similar period of time in the history of the world.M. Northrup Buechner Buechner, N. M. (2011), Objective Economics: How Ayn Rand's philosophy changes everything about economics, Lanham: University Press of America, p 19-20
Let's start calling spade the spade, whenever, tolerance has been overtaken by bigotry, blinkeredness and singularity; nations and empires have just withered away. At heart of hatred, viciousness and venomous intensity lies intolerance, bigotry and inability to ever find the enemy within. Fanaticism is an evil of a society that corrodes the elegance of any culture.Iqbal Latif http://www.globalpolitician.com/print.asp?id=3999'Nation of Islam' and Denial of Its Killing Fields!
[answering the question, 'What are we to do when the president behaves in a blatantly unconstitutional fashion?'] The only remedy in the constitution is the impeachment remedy. Unfortunately, the framers never dreamed... that when they separated the powers between legislative, executive and judicial that one branch would give up its constitutional authority, the way Congress has. We now have, increasingly, an elected dictatorship - no matter which party is in the White House.Ralph Nader Freedom Watch TV Interview on 9/15/11
Now is the time to jump-start job creation, restart lending and invest in areas like energy, health care and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down...It's an agenda that begins with jobs. (First address to Congress, 2.2009, when unemployment was 8.1%)President Obama http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/analysis-jobs-obama-hopes-save/story?id=14478913&page=2
The Pluralism of Ideas and the prosperity of any land are intertwined. Freedom of minds and skill of intellect to 'think the unthinkable' is how humanity has progressed; when minds are incarcerated nothing endures.Iqbal Latif http://www.globalpolitician.com/print.asp?id=4272
[Obama] probably shouldn't be calling for what I would want, because the public should want what I want, but it doesn't.Paul Krugman http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/roundtable-part-ii-plan-jobs-14445346
If I claim to have an ideology, the specifics of that ideology are a reflection of who I am. There can be no factor that more accurately speaks to the content of my character. For this reason, we must judge people's beliefs if we are to assess their character. If there is an intolerance that should be tolerated, it is the intolerance of ignorance.Eric Collazo Tolerance of Intolerance
We're capable of empathizing and sympathizing, but only with single individuals, and not with very large numbers of people and collectives. Now, these kinds of limitations have quite striking consequences today. First of all, they result in our 'failure to aid.' In 2008, only five countries (Sweden, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands) had reached the modest goal that the United Nations set decades ago of aid amounting to 0.7% of a country's GNP.Julian Savulescu "Festival of Dangerous Ideas" (Sydney Opera House) video link: http://vimeo.com/7515623 -- at the 19:20 mark
Global warming has become the defining moral issue of our time. Science has been hijacked by alarmists. And the public are given to believe that they are to blame.Paul Reiter Documentary: "Cool It"; 2010; Bjorn Lomborg
It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. ... Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. ... For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.James Madison Federalist No. 41 ( http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa41.htm )
So, sir, we find that not alone in these two conventions, but by the common action of the states, there was an important addition made to the Constitution by which it was expressly provided that it should not be construed to be a General Government over all the people, but that it was a Government of States, which delegated powers to the General Government. The language of the ninth and tenth amendments to the Constitution is susceptible of no other construction: 'The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'Judah P. Benjamin (19th Century US senator) Book: Power Divided is Power Checked (p 77); by Jason Lewis; ISBN: 978-1-935098-50-8
We ain't got no jobs, no money ... We heard that other people were getting things for free, so why not us?A person rioting http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44055812/ns/world_news-europe/t/cameron-cuts-short-vacation-amid-uk-riots/?GT1=43001#.TkCrjF3WGfU
If something doesn't work in a two-person economy, it's not good economics.Arthur Laffer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRA71trwgtw (@ minute 3:45)
What does "rational" mean? At its most basic, it means an ability to make a ratio, as with "rational numbers" in mathematics. More broadly, it means an ability to weigh one thing against another.Thomas Sowell Ideals vs. Realities
... mortgage lending to creditworthy homebuyers has been a stable, profitable, and boring business in the United States of America for about a hundred years; so for those who blame “Wall Street greed” for the crisis, I ask you “why now?” Why did greed not appear, not infect the system, not attempt to seize filthy lucre for that hundred years? Why did greed only show up at that particular moment in time? I further ask why did greed not make its way to Canada, where they did not have a housing and/or banking crisis? Is greed only a US and highly time specific phenomenon?Donny Baseball http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/the-one-chart-that-explains-the-entire-financial-crisis/
They [politicians] don't need to drive us deeper in debt, they choose toJohn Stossel Fox News - John Stossel web site
The House legislates, the President talks, and the Senate kills.Charles Krauthammer Fox News Commentary 7/29/2010
Before we ask seniors to pay more for Medicare, we should ask people like me to give up tax breaks that we don't need and weren't even asking for.Barack H. Obama http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/07/obama-opposes-short-term-debt-deal-from-boehner/1?csp=34news
To err is progress. To institutionalize error is progressive.Bernard Levine Comment to Wall Street Journal Article "To Err Is Progress"
Earth First: We will pump the oil from the other planets later.Anonymous Bumper sticker on a pick-up truck.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.Thomas Jefferson United States Declaration of Independence
The rights to food, water, adequate housing and work under fair and equitable conditions should not be compromised by the implementation of austerity measures.Cephas Lumina, unpaid "Toohey-like" UN expert http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38901&Cr=austerity&Cr1=
Survival in the market often requires recognizing mistakes and changing course, while survival in politics often requires denying mistakes, continuing the current policies, and blaming the bad policies on others.Thomas Sowell The Housing Boom and Bust, second edition, page 153
Wednesday's rally took up a familiar theme: taxing the state's wealthiest residents to help solve the deficit. One man held a sign that took his frustration a step further--he had changed it from "Tax the Rich" to "Eat the Rich." Organizers also went after specific GOP legislators, reminding Minnesotans of what they think the state will look like if the Republicans succeed with their budget cuts. One sign read "Gazelka Gulch," a reference to Sen. Paul Gazelka, R-Brainerd.Minneapolis StarTribune http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/125117154.html
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.Barack Hussein Obama .... as a Senator, March 2006, he voted against raising the debt ceiling.
... the EU has said Greece has wasted funds on extravagant social welfare programs, raising mandatory minimum wages for all employees and allowing union workers to retire early on generous pensions that Europe can no longer subsidize. Many Greeks say they should not be forced to pay for a crisis they believe politicians have caused.Associated Press USA Today, Wednesday, June 29, 2011; p 6A
Postmodern politics: the characterization of others refusal to agree with your desire to eat them as irrational intransigent dogmatism. Fred Bartlett from this ROR Thread
Notoriously, disciples tend to narrow their minds, admitting as meaningful questions, legitimate interpretations, and acceptable patterns of thought only those which they regard---rightly or wrongly---as sanctioned by the example of the master within whose 'school' they are working.Stephen Edelston Toulmin Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts
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