Atlas, Flubbed
Daniel Kuehn, March 15, 2012:
My reaction to the story itself (I’ve only read the first 100 pages or so of the book, and that was many years ago) was the same as the suspicions about it that I shared on here a couple months back after seeing the trailer: Ayn Rand really reaches for the low-hanging fruit with this story, and yet somehow it’s an epic libertarian tale.
Think about it – who are the “bad guys” in Atlas Shrugged?: Blatantly corrupt businessmen and politicians. A lobbyist. Obnoxious dead-beat family members. A wife that insults you to your face. These are the bad guys.
Who are the “good guys” in Atlas Shrugged?: Innovative entrepreneuers. The people with a can-do attitude. The creative people who just want to earn money and make a better life for themselves.
You don’t have to be an Objectivist or a libertarian to be on the same page as Rand on this one!
Anyway – I thought the movie was entertaining enough. It’s a story about entrepreneurs who withdraw from society when they don’t think they can earn a profit anymore, and it’s a story that criticizes the rentier class which doesn’t build and create things for the money they enjoy. What Keynesian wouldn’t enjoy a movie like that???
Paul Krugman, December 28, 2010:
Paul Ryan requires that his staffers read Atlas Shrugged. I mean, I was inspired by Isaac Asimov, but I don’t think I’m Hari Seldon — whereas Ryan, it seems, really does think he’s John Galt.Time to bring out the classic quote:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
Future historians will giggle at our expense.
I’m giggling already, but I’m sure I must have misunderstood what Krugman really meant here. Apparently I do that a LOT.
Potpourri
* At the risk of giving students to my “competitors,” I draw your attention to the current offerings at the Mises Academy. Some new and interesting stuff. Oh to be a young student in 2012 was divine!
* The Teacher’s Manual to my textbook Lessons for the Young Economist is now available.
* Some neat clips from a Feynman lecture on the scientific method. What’s funny is, if we didn’t have reasons for thinking science “worked,” Feynman would sound like a really pushy charlatan. I mean, just listen to what he’s saying: We can never know we’re right, we can only be proven wrong, we might think we’re right for a hundred years but really we’re wrong the whole time, the currently accepted principles are contradictory, and…don’t even bother criticizing what we’re doing unless you have a better idea. In just about any other field of human activity, such a person would be dismissed as a jerk and a crank, and yet Feynman is (correctly) adored by these students. It’s just very interesting. (LET ME AVOID A LANDSBURG: I AM *NOT* CRITICIZING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD HERE. I am observing that if you didn’t know anything else about it, on the surface it sounds like these scientists don’t have much to offer the rest of humanity.)
* The episode where I was on John Stossel’s program.
* Tom Woods guest hosted the Peter Schiff show and had me on. Tom in the beginning of the show lavishes praise on me such that I blushed (just now when hearing it), and the caller that gets through when I’m on the air was similarly dangerous for my already inflated self-esteem. I realized that just like Rush Limbaugh would often have Walter Williams guest-host, who in turn would have Thomas Sowell on for a commercial break or two, in an analogous fashion Schiff-Woods-me.
St. Patty’s Day Slug Fest: Murphy vs. O’Reilly
I forgot to blog this when it came out… At the Institute for Energy Research I wrote a blog post pointing out the nonsense behind Bill O’Reilly’s recent tirades against oil exports. Sample:
Bill O’Reilly’s talking points against oil companies completely misconstrue the actual trade flows of crude oil and refined products. Yet even if O’Reilly did state the facts, his proposal for raising taxes on a profitable sector of the U.S. economy would destroy jobs and do little to lower gasoline prices. In fact, his rhetoric sounds a lot like President Obama’s calls for increased taxes on oil companies as the way to reduce gasoline prices. No one should believe either of them.
National Income Accounts Bask
OK kids here’s one for you (since the BEA keeps sending me to voicemail): If you look at the FRED data for current (i.e. nominal) expenditures, unless I’m doing the math wrong it shows that for a few years (particularly in the 1940s) total government consumption and gross investment is higher than total government expenditures. For example, in 1942 nominal government C&I is $62.7 billion, while nominal federal spending is $31 billion and nominal state & local spending is $8.5 billion. I am pretty sure I’m doing apples to apples (i.e. nominal and government at all levels) in the various categories.
So, does this make theoretical sense or is something wrong with the numbers?
The motivation for this was that I was trying to back out government transfer payments. I thought for a given year I could look at how much the government spent on consumption and investment, and subtract this amount from total government spending. The remainder I thought would be transfer payments (and maybe debt payments? what else?). So I was surprised that this approach gave me negative numbers for some years.
Anyone?
How Low Does Krugman Have to Go…
…before his Keynesian colleagues abandon him? In a recent post Krugman writes:
Mark Thoma catches Kevin Hassett playing for Team Republican; really, no surprise. But Mark’s catch has me thinking: what, if anything, would make reasonable, moderate conservative intellectuals accept that the GOP no longer offers them a home?
For such people do exist — or at least there is such a position. You can believe that the welfare state is too big without believing that the unemployed are just lazy; you can believe that more activist monetary and especially fiscal policy would be a mistake without practicing Dark Age macroeconomics. Obviously I disagree, but I can see how a reasonable person could hold such views.
But these are not the views that prevail, or indeed are considered even marginally acceptable, in today’s Republican Party. The modern party is, on social issues, the party of Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum; on economic issues it is the party of Ron Paul and Arthur Laffer. Nobody with political ambitions within the GOP dares challenge these views; attempts to defend Mitt Romney depend entirely on the proposition, or maybe hope, that everything he says is a lie (which seems like a good assumption in any case).
And no, there’s nothing comparable on the other side. Sure, Obama plays some word games — but in word and deed he’s a moderately liberal, slightly interventionist politician whom neither liberals nor, if truth be told, moderate conservatives should find especially alarming.
So when do the reasonable conservatives jump ship? David Frum and Bruce Bartlett have done the deed; but who else?
Of course, maybe the people we think are reasonable actually aren’t. Some supposedly libertarian bloggers have let down their guard, coming out in favor of the vile Virginia probe law and the Rush slut attack, and revealing in the process that all that reasonableness was just a facade.
But what’s mainly going on, I think, is cynical ambition — an unwillingness to take the hit to hopes of future office and influence that would come from acknowledging that this is not the Republican Party of yore.
So on the “Rush slut attack” phrase, Krugman of course is linking to a story about Steve Landsburg and his controversial role in the Fluke Fiasco. Regular readers know I think Landsburg’s defenders have gone overboard, but I am quite surprised to see Krugman somehow spinning this as Steve’s attempt to play for “Team Republican.”
I mean seriously, anyone even remotely familiar with Landsburg knows that Krugman’s analysis of motives is preposterous. So Krugman launched that personal attack either (a) without having a clue of what he was talking about or (b) knowing full well it was a lie. Take your pick.
Even though I personally know this wasn’t a case of Steve “letting his guard down” and forgetting to put on his fake libertarian mask–while secretly pining to get the nod from the Council of Economic Advisors–I decided to make it official. I googled “George W Bush” at Landsburg’s blog and within 30 seconds I was reading from this post, which Landsburg put up in January 2011:
The LA Times reports that Republican lawmakers have called on the Obama administration to return to the Bush-era practice of sending jackbooted thugs into private workplaces to arrest illegal aliens — revealing (as if we didn’t already know) that virulent xenophobia is alive and well in the Republican party. (Note well the hypocrisy of complaining that foreigners sneak into our country to take advantage of the welfare system, and then addressing the problem by focusing your deportation efforts on foreigners who have obviously come here to work).
Now it’s true, in that post Steve goes on to say that the Democrats are probably slightly more shameful on this dimension than the Republicans, but it is hardly a rah-rah-let’s-go-GOP piece.
In contrast, let’s remember the beautiful quotation I highlighted in this masterpiece:
A funny thing has been happening on Capitol Hill: lately, the Democrats have started exceeding expectations. Health reform, pronounced dead by all the usual suspects, happened (all hail Nancy Pelosi, arguably the greatest Speaker ever). —Paul Krugman, May 16, 2010.
Also, let’s not forget that Krugman constantly pats himself on the back for warning everybody about the bogus propaganda being offered by the White House in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Has Krugman said a single word about the current saber-rattling about Iran? Is that because he thinks there is a much better case for Iran?
(On that score, let me acknowledge that Brad DeLong recently went nuts at his blog over an Orwellian statement by Eric Holder [sorry no link]. So I think DeLong is actually an ideological Keynesian, more than a starter for Team Democrat.)
In closing, let me turn Krugman’s post around and ask his colleagues: What more does this guy have to do, before you agree he’s gone too far? I can’t understand why “nice guy” Karl Smith threw in the towel on this issue. Karl seems to be saying (my paraphrase), “Yes, if it were just an academic dispute with nothing really at stake, then being cordial to your opponents would be important and productive. But since the world economy and real lives are at stake, I think Krugman’s childish insults and petty misrepresentation of his opponents is the right thing to do.”
To repeat, I’m obviously paraphrasing–quite heavily–what Karl actually said, but since I think the above is a legitimate paraphrase, you can see why I don’t understand his apparent conversion to the Way of Krugman.
Let me put it this way: Guys like me, who think government intervention constitutes theft and is therefore impermissible, obviously aren’t going to be swayed by a new econometric study of the multiplier. But there are plenty of economists who are on the fence. And when Krugman acts like Scott Farkus (the guy with yellow eyes), a lot of these scholars on the fence are going to actively root against him. They’re going to subconsciously hope price inflation picks up while unemployment stays high, because people can’t stand a bully. So if you think Krugman has been giving spot-on policy recommendations, you should recognize that his boorish behavior (considered as a partial derivative, if you will) makes it less likely that people will embrace the correct policies.
In contrast, from my perspective, I’m glad Krugman handles himself like such a jerk.
Now That He Can’t Respond, I Critique Christopher Hitchens
In the comments of last week’s post Major Freedom posted a quotation from Christopher Hitchens, criticizing the very structure of Christianity. I gave it a careful look because another commenter, AC, exclaimed that it was a great quote and should prove devastating to any Christian, but in particular a Biblical literalist. I have to say I find the first half of Hitchens’ assault comically bad, the second half much better. I promised the lads I would try to respond this week, so here goes… First the quotation from Hitchens:
Let’s say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I’ll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks “That’s enough of that. It’s time to intervene,” and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don’t lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let’s go to the desert and have another revelation there.
This is nonsense. It can’t be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can’t take your sins away, because I can’t abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn’t offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There’s no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It’s just a part of wish-thinking, and I don’t think wish-thinking is good for people either. It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can’t actually do. You’ll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That’s to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you’re again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy.
And that brings me to the final objection – I’ll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky – which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we’d be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it’s an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.
Now that we’ve read it in the full context, I’ll go through bit by bit:
Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks “That’s enough of that. It’s time to intervene,”…
What worldview is this? It certainly isn’t Christianity. A Bible-believing Christian thinks that God from the beginning sought a personal relationship with His children. He appeared to them personally many times, and sent numerous prophets and leaders such as Moses, Joshua, and David. He rescued them from slavery and delivered them a Promised Land. He gave them an excruciatingly precise list of rules for living, accompanied by draconian punishments. (Surely today’s atheists know this; they mock the rules every other day on Facebook.) Then finally, He sent His Son who summarized the essence or Spirit of those laws in His teachings. It wouldn’t have worked to send Jesus right away, because humanity wasn’t ready for him. The Old Testament had to come before the New Testament.
Hitchens could have said, “Why God would cater to one fickle group of humans, amidst all his other alleged ‘children,’ for such a long time–even according to the timeline of the Bible–is never explained. What a sadistic God, who coddles some of his children and condemns the rest to persecution or even genocide.” That would have at least had a passing relationship to what Christians actually believe. But instead Hitchens thought it would be easier to mock his opponent by attributing to him a worldview that no Christian believes.
This happens a lot. Suppose I actually were in a live debate with Paul Krugman and said, “Dr. Krugman, let me get this straight: According to you, the US government never had a responsibility to run a deficit–through wars, depressions, bank panics, etc.,–and then, in 2009, with the inauguration of The One, all of a sudden you wanted a $1.5 trillion deficit?” Now if I had said that, it wouldn’t render Keynesianism correct, but boy even my fellow Austrians would wonder what the heck I was doing.
And yet, when it comes to an atheist assault on Christianity, Hitchens can describe a worldview that has absolutely nothing to do with what his opponent believes, and his fans run around quoting it and wondering aloud how any Christian could possibly respond. Isn’t that odd?
Let’s move on:
And then 2000 years ago, thinks “That’s enough of that. It’s time to intervene,” and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don’t lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let’s go to the desert and have another revelation there.
Here again, the more I read this particular passage, the more astounded I am. Is Hitchens now claiming that God screwed up by not getting the written word involved in His plan to spread His message? I’ll just point out that the best-selling book in human history came out of what Christians believe God did 2000 years ago.
OK, let’s not focus so much on that single word “literate.” Let’s be fair to Hitchens and distill his general point. He is saying that if God really wanted to convince people, He would have sent His Son to appear to much more credible people. After all, one of the main objections modern agnostics raise is, “How can I trust a bunch of stories written down by common folk 2000 years ago?” Here are some responses:
(1) Notice that it contradicts Hitchens’ first objection. Remember, Hitchens can’t understand why God allowed people to suffer for 98,000 years, before deciding to send Jesus. Then, a mere few sentences later, Hitchens can’t understand why God didn’t appear to people who could have credibly documented Jesus’ life and feats. So just notice that if God had satisfied Hitchens’ first objection–by appearing to Stone Age savages–then God couldn’t have satisfied Hitchens’ second objection. A lot of times these contradictory demands of what God ought to be doing are voiced by different atheists, but in this case they come from the same one, and in the same paragraph.
(2) In my “Landsburg vs. the LORD” post I tried to show how God has tapped on all sorts of mechanisms to reveal Himself to us, and the modern atheist systematically rules them all out of bounds. For example, here’s something that should be right up Hitchens’ alley: An alleged miracle occurring in the 20th century, with thousands of eyewitnesses, and even reporters (who could read and write!) present. Now does the modern atheist go and investigate these claims carefully, to see if there is a God after all? No, of course not. He knows that is obvious balderdash.
(3) There are plenty of “faith healings” reported all the time, today, in societies where people can read, write, and perform experiments to detect subatomic particles. Do today’s atheists spend a lot of time hunting down the doctors involved–who say “I have no explanation, it was a miracle that that guy’s tumor went away”–and making sure nothing miraculous actually occurred? Of course not. They know there’s no evidence of modern medical miracles, because science tells us these things don’t happen. (Note: I’m not even saying I personally believe in the “Miracle of the Sun” or a lot of the reports of faith healings, etc. But my point is that Hitchens and currently living atheists are fooling themselves if they think they would rationally believe in Christianity, if only Jesus had come in 1930 and performed His miracles then. No, people today would be dismissing the “myths” written down 80 years ago.)
Finally, let me address the part of Hitchens’ critique that I personally thought was very good (i.e. the most difficult to answer):
To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can’t take your sins away, because I can’t abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn’t offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There’s no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It’s just a part of wish-thinking, and I don’t think wish-thinking is good for people either. It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can’t actually do. You’ll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty.
So to repeat, I think this final excerpt I’ve quoted is indeed a good critique of Christianity. I have trouble with it myself, and so do plenty of people who go to Sunday school every week. I don’t have a glib answer, but here are some observations:
==> Although it’s not an outright contradiction, Hitchens’ paragraph above does contain two objections that sort of cancel each other out. On the one hand, Hitchens is complaining that God demands the impossible of us. On the other hand, Hitchens complains that God allows Jesus to satisfy His demands on our behalf. So one way to interpret that is Hitchens’ approach: God is a tyrant who is impossible to please, and at the same time who is a moral monster and doesn’t hold people accountable for their actions. Or, we could interpret it the Christian way: God is infinitely just and so tells us the way to live a perfect life, but He is also merciful and knows we could never do it on our own. So, He became a man Himself in order to accomplish it on our behalf.
==> There’s a strain in Hitchens’ comments that I find quite often in the loud atheist camp, along the lines of, “If I took the Bible seriously, it would make God a monster. Therefore I don’t believe in Him.” Well, that’s actually not a very scientific approach, now is it? It’s akin to people rejecting quantum mechanics because they find it repugnant. I agree that it’s a challenge to Christians who claim their God is loving and good, if we could show that the Bible demonstrates God to be a sadistic tyrant. But very often I see atheists going further and thinking they’ve somehow demonstrated that there must be no God after all, since he “clearly” would have intervened in the 1940s.
==> If you are in a close relationship with someone–I’m thinking like a spouse or child–and that person truly does something wrong that hurts you, what is the best way to move forward? Assuming you want to maintain that relationship, the very best thing that can happen is that the person is really sorry about it and then…you both pretend that it never happened. If you don’t do that–if instead you carry the memory of that offense around for the rest of your life–then the relationship is irreparably harmed. If the person who wronged you can’t forget it, can’t “forgive him or herself,” then s/he will go through life wracked by guilt. That’s not “mentally or morally or intellectually healthy.” So if you at least understand what I am talking about here in a human context, then the doctrine of Christian redemption through Christ should be less foreign.
Guest Post: Ron Paul’s Delegate Strategy
Editor’s Note: John Connolly is a computer whiz, camera guy, and generally a jack-of-all trades who is staying at my house for a couple of weeks while in town on a business trip. He was mentioning to me his recent experience as a temporary precinct chairman in Washington State. I asked him to write it up, and the below is his tale…–RPM
By John Connolly
This 2012 election season is wrought with churning up failed campaigns, where they first appear to gain the confidence of the Republican community but we soon see those candidates dashed against the rocks of negative campaign ads and poor debate performances. Rick Perry takes the cake in that regard I suppose. The pattern of holding a debate and taking a vote, state after state I thought was a great process. I still do sort of, but I now understand why Ron Paul continues to play the Cool Hand Luke role through this process.
I never really understood the hoopla over the difference between winning a straw poll and adding delegates to your satchel of support. I look back a few weeks ago and I reminisce on how confused I was. If straw polls don’t count, then why count them? Back then, a few weeks ago, I thought, “Well, maybe it is just a good way to put your finger up in the voter air and detect the strongest wind of change.”
To clear it up a bit, delegates are earned in a caucus method this way:
A state is divided into hundreds of neighborhoods called precincts. Often times a precinct can be 5 or 10 people big, or they can be 500 to 1000 or more. The GOP determines how many delegates maximum can represent a given precinct (based on population size and other factors). Each precinct chooses a handful of delegates to represent their neighborhood. They vote most often with a quickly made paper ballot or show of hands after all the people who would like to volunteer to be delegates gives their speeches on why they want to represent the precinct and what presidential candidate they would like to vote for. Some precincts have no turnout and they have by that fact no representation. In some precincts, the number of people willing to be delegates is below the threshold set by the GOP. In those cases, all of them that want to, get to.
All those who are elected as precinct delegates go to the county convention. The same process then happens at the county level, meaning that the precinct delegates select from their ranks a smaller number of delegates to go on to the state convention.
Then again, at the state convention, the county delegates in turn select those who will go to the National GOP Convention. This year it is in Florida.
I hope this is clear. This is important to the story.
OK now back to my example.
On March 3rd, the state of Washington got its turn to dredge up supporters, count the straws as well as deliver precinct delegates. In Washington it is a long and drawn out process as it is in several other states. It was their first ever “caucus only” election cycle.
So I went to my precinct meeting place where many precincts also met. That is called a Precinct Pool. Since this was the first time Washington did not hold a primary this thing was packed with confused voters whose constant refrain was, “I don’t know what is going on here but I will do what I can to vote.”
Meanwhile, I could tell by the type of constant contact from the Ron Paul campaign, they were not at all confused. They know well, what all this is about and how they can use this caucus process to their advantage. In my precinct they did.
Precinct 304 had 19 preference voters. When we signed in—many people thinking this was just a formality of the registration process and not the “straw poll” itself—the form asked us to list, by our names, our presidential preference. Lo and behold this was our straw poll vote! Several folks did not know that, so they had to go back and fill in the blank as they were hoping to vote in secret. This was not the primary they were used to.
After we all signed in, the GOP representative gave the instructions for delegate selections. It was almost straightforward, but even still, three people left the building between the sign-in straw poll and the delegate selection process. I think they may have thought the straw poll was all they needed to participate in. Or maybe they did not have enough of a conviction to “waste” their time with the “arduous” delegate selection process. As I would soon learn, these people who walked out early may have either been wise or foolish – more on that in a minute.
In precinct 304 there were only 16 people that stayed for the delegate selection and only 15 voted. I remember the one elderly woman who sat there the whole time and then turned in a blank delegate ballot. She appeared to be as confused as can be. I can still see the blank stare on her face. Maybe she was just having a bad day. Who knows?
As we were about to start, we had to select a chairman. My wife nominated me without asking and before I knew it, there was a second and a vote and I was handed the GOP official delegate papers. Mind you this was my first time ever doing this and Roberts Rules of meeting order are not etched in my brain!
So I followed the instructions of the GOP representative and held a vote for the secretary for this meeting. We now had the “leadership” to select the delegates.
Out of the 16 people sitting there only four wanted to be delegates. We only had three slots that the GOP said could be filled. I decided to add my name since that was legal and this was my one shot to really support Ron Paul. Something those three people who left after the original straw poll vote never got to consider. Now we had five delegate candidates. No more jumped at the chance.
The goal was for everyone to vote for the three delegates that most represented their views. The five of us took turns giving our modest but impassioned speeches for what we stood for and who we would vote for.
First was the diehard Gingrich supporter. Then there were two on the fence, one Paul-Romney and one Paul-Santorum that spoke of their desire to see the change that Paul would give, but would concede to their alternate choice if that is all that was available. The fourth speech was a diehard Ron Paul fan. He admitted to the vote for Obama in ‘08, and would not be “snookered” again. He studied the Constitution and became engaged in searching for the soul of liberty the last three years and no other candidate would suffice.
Then it was my turn. I was a pro-Bush fan back years ago, until I awoke one morning to TARP and the rest is history for me. Given that the field narrowed to the current four presidential candidates, I was a Ron Paul diehard too. I got my chance to tell how the Fed was created and how they create money out of thin air and why it is a hidden tax and how his foreign policy is so miss understood. It was a moment.
Now everyone knew where each of us stood. In the end even though Ron Paul only obtained 6 out of 19 straw poll votes from my precinct, the delegate ballots turned in what I never expected. Both diehard Ron Paul supporters became delegates alongside the Gingrich supporter. The “on the fence” people lost out. So Ron Paul gets little better than 25% of the straw poll in our precinct and yet gets 66% of the delegates to his name. I know this is just one small precinct, but I wonder based on the Ron Paul supporter enthusiasm how common this story is.
Then I hear of one report where another precinct had 8 people, 7 Romney fans and 1 Paul fan. They only had room for one delegate. They voted in the Paul person. That is 13% of the straw poll for Paul, yet 100% of the delegates.
If this is a pervasive trend, and based on the way Ron Paul supporters turn up to take the lead in these elections, it could very well be that Ron Paul is racking up delegates under the radar. How far off could the supposed delegate counts really be? The media is doing their own calculus, but Ron Paul is collecting real names and real numbers based on real votes and real delegate appointments. They are publishing reports vastly different. And they may be a slight skew, but they don’t want to lie to themselves, as they need to know where they are strong and weak as well. As I am editing this very article the report for the Clark County Nevada Caucus turns in a Ron Paul domination of about 2/3rds of the delegates and all 14 Clark County delegates were awarded to Ron Paul delegates. Still think Ron Paul is unelectable?
I contend that it is far more likely that Ron Paul has almost as many real delegates as Romney nationally, if not more, and if the media ever reported it, this whole fabricated concern of electability becomes an obvious and obnoxious deception and the establishment could be severely squashed this time around. Similar to a Ronald Reagan trounce but far more drastic.
Sure, I am biased toward Ron Paul because I no longer want to have my dollar tied to nothing and worth less with every passing year, so you could say I am just spinning anecdotal evidence in his favor. But the numbers are the numbers in my precinct and the numbers widely reported appear to be assembled through the same funny math that they use to deliver the unemployment news monthly.
So what about the straw poll and its power to persuade? In some strange esoteric way my three colleagues that left the process early and hundreds of thousands like them are having an effect since the media is weighting their straw vote so heavily. They are helping to sway the general public in the direction of the straw poll results which are not the means by which a candidate is elected in many states. It is misinformation at best but more like propaganda in reality. And when they do report the national delegate count, they are not telling the truth. The truth is Washington will not award their state delegates for a couple more months. And if you think the delegates at the state level will mimic the straw poll, you may want to think again.
Subsequent states are voting based on those straw polls and inaccurate delegate numbers rather than the real data that is not available until states like Washington hold the county caucus and then the state caucus.
What if Ron Paul actually wins Washington and other caucus states for real? How heartbroken will the closet Ron Paul supporter be when they find out they could have avoided wasting their vote on an establishment candidate.
If you are not asking for voting advice, please feel free to move on to your next web destination. But if you want help, as many appear to need it when you look at how this is all playing out, my suggestion is to vote for the person who you know will defend the causes as you deem appropriate. Keep your conscience clear. And if Obama makes it back in, then let his party take the blame for socialism. Don’t be so blind that you think voting in a socialist Republican is better than leaving the current Progressive Liberal in office. TARP and overspending RINOs are damage enough.
John Connolly is a software developer and avid sushi eater in Washington State.
Mises Gives Fodder to Conspiracy Theorists
I talk with plenty of people who think a small group of bankers basically run the world–and the odd thing is, I can’t really see a flaw in their argument. (Of course, given my religious views, I would take it one step further.) In that context, check out this passage I just ran across in Theory of Money and Credit, which was originally published in 1912:
The connexion between banking proper and the business of speculation and flotation is similarly loose and superficial. This is the branch of their activities on which the general economic importance of the banks nowadays depends, and by means of which on the Continent of Europe and in the United States they secured control of production, no less than of the provision of credit. It would not be easy to overestimate the influence on the organization of economic life that has been exerted by the change in the relation of the banks to industry and commerce; perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to describe it as the most important event in modern economic history. (262)
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