tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7882649314519648932024-02-06T20:49:51.066-08:00Ross EconObservations on politics, economics, society and life from the perspective of an economist, author, former economics professor, and octogenarian life-enjoyer.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.comBlogger129125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-52158664797202055842023-03-23T14:52:00.005-07:002023-03-23T14:55:40.165-07:00Good news sucks for climate cultistsThere's a war against happiness. Climate alarmists bury good news and exaggerate bad news. They have made up their minds to be miserable, and they're determined to take the rest of us down with them.
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For example, have you heard that over the past 30 years, there has been a 14-percent increase in the Earth's green vegetation? Deserts are getting smaller, and forests are getting lusher. That gain even has a name: "Earth Greening." Not surprisingly, 70 percent of it stems from the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere! Zaichun Zhu, one of the scientists who measured the greening, says it's equivalent to adding a new continent of green vegetation twice the size of the mainland United States.
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The benefits of the increased vegetation are widespread: "It means more food for insects and deer, for elephants and mice, for fish and whales. It means higher yields for farmers; the effect has probably added about $3 trillion to farm incomes over the past 30 years, so less land is needed to feed the human population and more can be spared for wildlife instead." We've given a raise to all commercial farmers around the world. Increased supply eventually results in reduced prices.
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The connection between increased carbon dioxide and increased plant growth is a perfect example of "negative feedback" in that the added vegetation from Earth Greening takes CO2 out of the atmosphere. A physicist friend of mine reminds his students, "We live in a negative-feedback world. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here."
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Nevertheless, every single catastrophic climate prediction idiotically assumes a world of positive feedbacks, a world of runaway changes. The renowned physicist and climatologist Richard Lindzen says he knows of not a single large-scale positive feedback in the physical world or the biosphere. Insofar as that's true, it annihilates the entire argument of the climate catastrophists.
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There are billions of examples of negative feedback in the physical and biological worlds, yet positive feedback is what climate catastrophists stake their predictions and reputations on. If you know of an example of a large-scale long-term runaway change, what is it?
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Ironically, negative feedback is doing its own "carbon capture" and "sequestration" thousands of times more effectively than humans do deliberately. And it's doing so without massive subsidies or carbon taxes.
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Changes occur everywhere, constantly, but changes never continue in the same direction indefinitely. That's kind of interesting if you think about it. Why can't any given species grow until it covers the globe? Answer: negative feedback.
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Some other good news you may not know about if you rely on the media and catastrophists is that snow cover in the northern hemisphere is now at a 56-year high (for this time of year). The population of polar bears is increasing and is currently estimated to be over 30,000. You won't learn that from Al Gore.
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We are currently ten years into a "global warming hiatus." The climate-change cultists are falling all over one another trying to explain why that pause means absolutely nothing about long-term warming. That they have so many excuses shows that the Earth's climate is extremely complex and impossible to effectively model or predict. There's no way they can know how long the hiatus will last. Their list of excuses does not include Earth Greening. That would require saying something nice about CO2.
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Unlike the Earth's climate, Earth Greening was an easily predictable outcome of the CO2 increase. Life itself is carbon-based. Commercial greenhouses pump in additional CO2 to stimulate plant growth.
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The alarmists' hysterical hostility toward carbon dioxide shows their ignorance and tunnel vision. They are willfully blind to anything beneficial deriving from CO2, a compound essential to life itself. When someone doesn't tell the whole truth, he's lying.
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/03/good_news_sucks_for_climate_cultists.html"target="_blank"><b>Good news sucks for climate cultists</b></a> American Thinker - March 22, 2023
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-52487953460468090722023-01-12T13:04:00.002-08:002023-01-17T14:37:36.121-08:00It just gets harder and harder to live free in CaliforniaLegislation passed by California's Legislature six and a half years ago (!) is finally being implemented. Its title is "California's Short-lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Law," or S.B. 1383 for short. (S.B. stands for senate bill.) Its primary purpose is to reduce human-activity methane emissions. The legislation is supposedly going to slow climate change by diverting 75 percent of organic waste from landfills and redirecting 20 percent of edible food to "food-insecure" Californians.
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Advocates for the regulations assert that "methane is a climate super-pollutant 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide." That could be true, but only on a molecular basis. What's deliberately left out of that claim is that carbon dioxide constitutes 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, while methane amounts to only 0.00017 percent. Thus, the number of CO2 molecules is 235 times the number of methane molecules in the atmosphere. While it's possible that methane is more powerful as a greenhouse gas per molecule, there are simply not enough methane molecules to have a measurable impact on the Earth's atmosphere.
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If you google the question, "Is there evidence that methane contributes to global warming?," all you'll find are assertions and speculation, not evidence. That shouldn't be surprising. Evidence is rarely in evidence when it comes to global warming catastrophism. The alarmists are happy believing naïvely that correlation equals causation.
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Furthermore, it never seems to occur to California politicians that California is not the world. The world's population is currently about eight billion. California's is about forty million, which accounts for only 0.5 percent of the global population. Even if California achieved "net zero" methane generation, how much would that reduce global methane? Whatever success California made in reducing methane would quickly be neutralized by circulation in the Earth's atmosphere.
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There are numerous questionable assumptions and unanswered questions inherent in S.B. 1383. Some of the organic waste that now ends up in landfills decomposes just as compost does. Meanwhile, many consumers dispose of their uneaten food in garbage disposals. Is there a net difference between disposing and composting in terms of methane generation? If so, how much of a difference?
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The California Legislature's contribution to the rest of the country is to demonstrate what not to do. If methane needed to be reduced, the most effective route would instead be through innovation and the free market, not coercion. Half the methane generated from human activity in California comes from cows. Ironically, an increasing amount of their waste is being captured and converted into renewable natural gas. That's true as well for landfills.
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In that same vein, I recently spoke to the manager of a supermarket where my wife and I usually shop. His supermarket and (he believes) others in town already send their unsold edible food to the local food bank. Any spoiled produce goes to a local pig farmer and has for many years. It's a win-win for all involved and therefore happens voluntarily.
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A curious term in the title of the legislation is "short-lived." It's there because the "residence time" of methane in the atmosphere is approximately nine years. Residence time is the average time it takes for a molecule to break down and be removed naturally from the atmosphere. In comparison, the residence time for carbon dioxide varies from 20 to 200 years.
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The law all but reimposes the draft. The following excerpts are from the informational instructions provided by the authorities:
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Businesses and apartment complexes must provide collection containers for compost and recyclables to employees, contractors, tenants, and customers.
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Annually provide educational information about the requirements to compost and recycle including how to sort properly among the three waste streams.
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Periodically inspect recycling and compost containers and inform employees if contamination is found.
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Who is going to collect the edible surplus food and see that it finds its way to "food insecure" Californians? Logistically, it's not that easy. Who's going to assure that the unsold food hasn't spoiled? Will anyone be held accountable?
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Because enforcement of S.B. 1383 is only just starting, very few Californians are aware that arrogant politicians and bureaucrats are once again stealing their freedoms for bogus reasons. When that finally hits home, many Californians will not be happy. Will they rebel? It could be fun to watch. To survive and keep your sanity in California, it helps to have a wry sense of humor.
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/01/it_just_gets_harder_and_harder_to_live_free_in_california.html" target="_blank"><b>It just gets harder and harder to live free in California</b></a> - American Thinker January 12, 2023
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-64339172764503177172022-10-28T16:26:00.013-07:002023-01-15T13:20:44.699-08:00Religions in disguiseThere are two broad categories of religions — admitted and disguised.
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Admitted religions principally include Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. Religions in disguise include environmentalism, Marxism, globalism, and greenism, as well as other isms too numerous to list.
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Traditional religions don't hide the fact that they're religions. They know they are belief systems based on faith.
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Religions in disguise never admit to themselves and others that they are faith-based belief systems. They self-identify as being "scientific" rather than faith-based.
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Viewing themselves as non-religious is a central element of their worldview. They are, in fact, extremely hostile to the concept of religion. But when it comes to their own religions in disguise, they've morphed into the truest of true believers. Irony of ironies, they've become what they hate.
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Not being honest about their religiosity, even to themselves, forces them to live a lie. The worst person you can lie to is yourself.
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Disguised religions have many of the trappings of traditional religions, but they are grotesque caricatures of traditional religions. They have all the bad aspects of regular religions and none of the good. Traditional religions are primarily positive, while the disguised versions are primarily negative. They are far more intolerant, doctrinaire, and dogmatic.
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They even have their own versions of sacraments — abortion, wokism, and sustainability, for example. Organic is their version of Kosher. Recycling is their way of doing penance. For them, producing, transporting, and using fossil fuels are sins. Donald Trump is the devil.
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The religions in disguise have an inconsistent attitude toward evil. When it suits them, they deny that mass murderers and child-molesters are evil, but they have no problem believing that oil companies and Republicans are evil.
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The disguised religions ridicule and ostracize anyone who doesn't share their doctrines. When the COVID lockdowns became a kind of fanatical crusade, "non-vaxxers" lost jobs. Masks became a modern "outward sign of inward grace." They attempted to force conformity on the entire world.
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The religions in disguise are fervently eschatological, more than Christianity ever was. They truly believe that carbon dioxide will cook the planet and cause mass extinctions.
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There's a propensity in human nature toward religion and a belief in God. Denying religion and the existence of God is not a simple matter. Nature abhors a vacuum, and that applies as well to <i>human</i> nature.
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When you deny religion and the existence of God, that space wants to be filled — whence come environmentalism, Marxism, globalism, and all the other isms. But there's a problem with those religions in disguise. When you have no traditional god, you're left to become your own god.
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Being your own god results in arrogance. Contrast that with Christianity. If you follow the Bible, you cannot be arrogant. The Bible teaches humility and gratitude, as do most other traditional religions.
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The religions in disguise have nothing that compares to the Ten Commandments of the Bible. Those commandments are meant to make humans moral, humble, faithful, and honest. The religions in disguise pay little attention to morality and no attention to honesty.
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Our country's founders were primarily religious and Christian. They were opposed to a state religion. The Constitution they created included religious freedom. That freedom is as vital today as the other freedoms — speech, assembly, right to bear arms, and freedom of the press.
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The opening words in the First Amendment are "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Hundreds of billions of dollars have been expended by federal, state, and local governments because of environmentalism and the hysteria of climate change. And it's not just the money they spend. They do even more damage with the laws and regulations they force on us, such as trying to prevent us from enjoying the huge benefits of fossil fuels. Being their own god is not enough for them. They demand to be ours, too. Once we have exposed the religions in disguise for what they are, it will be game over for them.
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/10/religions_in_disguise.html"target="_blank"><b>Religions in disguise</b></a> October 28, 2022
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-6806684353944084322022-09-30T12:19:00.001-07:002022-09-30T12:23:15.257-07:00The unbearable miseries of DemocratsDemocrats and the Left have a long and ever-expanding list of concerns: climate change, white supremacy, rising sea levels, non-organic vegetables, insufficient diversity, COVID, systemic racism, population growth, pronouns, Fox News, Donald Trump, and now, Giorgia Meloni, just to name a few.
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Conservatives, on the other hand, have relatively few concerns, such as individual freedom, economic growth, law and order, secure borders, sanctity of life, the importance of families, and the U.S. Constitution. These are values conservatives have treasured since at least the founding of our nation.
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There are also qualitative differences between the concerns of liberals and conservatives. Unlike those of the Right, the concerns of the Left are negative. Theirs are also without substantive foundations, clear definitions, logic, or evidence. They are unrecognizable exaggerations of reality. Compared to Democrats, conservatives are worry free.
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The frequent additions to their long list of anxiety-causing concerns suggest that the Democrat Party suffers from a kind of collective attention deficit disorder. Democrats and the Left occupy a world fraught with peril, a world in which happiness is impossible.
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The anxieties of Democrats lead to enormous costs for the rest of the population. Their hysteria regarding fossil fuels is one of countless examples. Their restrictions on drilling, fracking, and the cancellation of pipelines have caused a doubling of natural gas, gasoline, and diesel fuel prices. Partly because natural gas is the main raw material for fertilizer, food prices have also risen substantially.
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The supposed threat of climate change is a favorite issue the Left uses to fan the flames of anxiety. It’s an all-purpose specter that has been highly effective in frightening millions, especially children. The Earth’s climate is an extremely complex subject, but Democrats conveniently ignore that fact. They abide by W. C. Fields’ famous dictum, “Never smarten up a chump.”
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Similarly, COVID and the accompanying lockdowns typify the Democrats. It is now clear they grossly exaggerated the threat of the virus and abused it for the largest and most destructive power grab in U.S. history. They coerced us all to behave in absurd and repressive ways -- masks, social distancing, untested and dangerous vaccines, and horrible isolation. The fear of COVID resulted in many more deaths than COVID itself. The lockdowns were crimes against humanity. Those responsible should be punished as criminals.
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The Democrat Party has until now been adept at exploiting fear wherever it can to increase its power and control. Individual and societal choices are better based on courage than fear. As Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
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The time is ripe to rid ourselves of the miserable fearmongers.
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNqDWQJvDCJeEhaMhufnQl6zK09DOXXAd9SEZ5TS2c13IjN7yTYaAZqpgtJpyaB182POtU3U_TuXPoBfsPJaY5BXGyY7YZ_dFHJiYekRTzByRa45qB575e5JmMk3SKzsaJYNFol_rd6zR0b4wxVsKhG2mu43VTg5tj14-1BGPDpIGjybpW9_Ln4Kbk/s600/241039_5_.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNqDWQJvDCJeEhaMhufnQl6zK09DOXXAd9SEZ5TS2c13IjN7yTYaAZqpgtJpyaB182POtU3U_TuXPoBfsPJaY5BXGyY7YZ_dFHJiYekRTzByRa45qB575e5JmMk3SKzsaJYNFol_rd6zR0b4wxVsKhG2mu43VTg5tj14-1BGPDpIGjybpW9_Ln4Kbk/s400/241039_5_.jpg"/></a></div>
Image: ◼ <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/legalcode"target="_blank"><b>Enough Project</b></a>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/09/the_unbearable_miseries_of_democrats.html"target="_blank"><b>The unbearable miseries of Democrats</b></a> At American Thinker
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-56923373794955860722022-07-29T15:51:00.008-07:002022-09-30T12:20:28.957-07:00The one point that can get people off the global warming obsession train<br><br>
<blockquote>The dose makes the poison. ... All things are poison and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone is the thing that makes it not a poison.
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—Paracelsus, 1493–1541, credited with being the father of toxicology</blockquote>
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Climate alarmists play the "hide the magnitude" game. If they didn't, they would soon be out of business.
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Politely ask a few of your friends how much of the air they're breathing is CO2. I've done that, and the typical answer, when I can get one, is twenty percent or more. (Most people have no idea and would rather not guess.)
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Climate alarmists rarely talk about the actual quantitative composition of our atmosphere. The impression they give is that (1) a substantial part of the air that surrounds us comprises carbon dioxide; (2) that the proportion of carbon dioxide is increasing rapidly; (3) that the increase is primarily the result of human activity, mostly from burning fossil fuels; and (4) that if CO2 continues to increase, it's game over for humanity. Recently, the rhetoric has escalated from "climate crisis" to "climate emergency."
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The actual magnitude tells a very different story. Carbon dioxide constitutes four one-hundredths of one percent of the air we breathe (or 400 parts per million). That is an extremely tiny fraction of the atmosphere.
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What constitutes the rest of the air around us? Seventy-eight percent of the air we breathe is nitrogen, 21 percent is oxygen, 0.9 percent is argon, and 0.1 percent is other gases. The other gases include methane (0.00017 percent); nitrous oxide (0.00003 percent); and water vapor, which varies from 0 to 4 percent.
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How can such a small magnitude of CO2 be dooming humanity? Furthermore, how can climate change alarmists be absolutely, positively certain that if CO2 continues to increase, it will be lights out for life on Earth?
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During the Cambrian period 500 million years ago, CO2 constituted over 5,000 parts per million of the Earth's atmosphere. Then, 150 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, CO2 was 1,700 parts per million, more than four times what it is now. Life thrived during those periods. How can 400 parts per million be a threat to our existence?
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Before humans started burning fossil fuels about 200 years ago, CO2 made up 250 parts per million of our atmosphere. It has been growing at about one part per million per year for the past 150 years. In other words, a very small magnitude is growing at a very slow rate. Is there any reason that rate will accelerate when it hasn't in a century and a half?
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If the tiny magnitude were more generally known, people would want explanations. It defies common sense that such a small magnitude could be responsible for certain catastrophic changes. The least we ought to be is skeptical.
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The catastrophists have not been asked to explain because they have successfully suppressed widespread awareness of the magnitude of CO2 in the atmosphere. If more people were aware of the actual percentage, there would be far less global warming panic. More people would stop listening to the doomsayers.
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/the_one_point_that_can_get_people_off_the_global_warming_obsession_train.html"target="_blank"><b>The one point that can get people off the global warming obsession train</b></a> at American Thinker July 29, 2022
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-67855988627176770822022-07-13T15:21:00.002-07:002022-09-30T12:21:45.073-07:00There's got to be lots of Biden buyer's remorse out there nowThe Biden administration has been a disaster from day one. All sentient persons know it, even those in deep denial.
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Before Biden became president, our economy was humming along, as it usually does. To keep it working well, the main requirement was to keep out of its way and to keep bureaucrats and politicians in check. Joe Biden did the exact opposite and we're all paying an enormous price for it.
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The millions of Americans who voted for Biden cannot be surprised about how it's turned out. Joe Biden had a fifty-year history of being an embarrassingly incompetent and corrupt politician. His voters were willfully blind to that reality. How many of them lament voting for him?
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Anyone who voted for Biden-Harris enabled this disaster. We are now saddled with two and a half more years of deliberate damage done by this administration. The policy choices made thus far have been so harmful that even Democrats are looking for ways out. However, there is no obvious way to end the destruction until 2024, thirty months from now. A President Harris would just be more of the same.
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Democrats and the media pretend there's still a possibility that Biden will run for a second term. There is no way that will happen, but they have to go through the motions so as to keep him from being a lame duck this early in his first term.
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Democrats ought to be furious at their party leaders, and many of them are. Those leaders are responsible for Biden and Harris being in the White House. Joe Biden was supposedly the best they had. But he has been the worst president in our country's history, and all the other candidates would have been just as bad or worse.
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For the past many years, the Democrat bench has been a totally uninspiring, unimpressive, motley collection of losers. Now they're even talking about having Hillary run again in 2024.
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Relatively few voters actually voted for Joe Biden. Most voted from a basis of intense hatred — primarily of Donald Trump, but also of Republicans in general.
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Why do Democrats hate Trump so much? The main reason is his effectiveness in defeating the Democrat agenda. They hate him because he's not a John McCain, Mitt Romney, or Mitch McConnell. They hate too the fact that he's not a wimp. Conservative Republicans love fighters; progressive Democrats love spineless weaklings. Trump is a plain-talking, take-no-prisoners fighter and the opposite of an establishment swamp creature.
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Trump knows how to get things done. He got things done despite the most resistance ever experienced by an American president. Democrats lied about him and sabotaged him from the very beginning.
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The Democrats got their wish. They prevented Trump from winning a second term, at least for the time being. To accomplish that they sold their souls. The party is paying, and will continue to pay, a high price for doing so. It is hemorrhaging voters. Democrats now realize that November will bring electoral carnage in its wake. One of the truest of all adages is "cheaters never win."
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/theres_got_to_be_lots_of_biden_buyers_remorse_out_there_now.html"target="_blank"><b>There's got to be lots of Biden buyer's remorse out there now</b></a> at American Thinker July 13, 2022
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-23685148178411526832022-06-24T15:09:00.002-07:002022-09-30T12:22:31.107-07:00The left's marching ordersThe Communist Manifesto is a 28-page pamphlet published in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
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It's not economic insights that makes The Communist Manifesto so popular, but rather the attitudes that it fosters. Its legacy has been extremely inviting to those with a particular mindset.
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The founders of Black Lives Matter are self-avowed Marxists. Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the group, has said this about her and her fellow founders, "We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories."
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If you read Manifesto, you will feel that you are reading the marching orders for the modern Left, that you are reading what all leftists have sworn allegiance to. It is virtually a complete list of their grievances — victimhood, religion, borders, the family, private schools, and private property. Marxism is like an addiction for leftists. The reason it has been able to do so much damage is that it has been so alluring to so many people for so many years.
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The Communist Manifesto tells those people what they want to hear, especially those people who would rather blame society or the system instead of taking personal responsibility.
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In common with today's leftists and progressives, The Communist Manifesto reflects attitudes of resentment, bitterness, envy, victimhood, and arrogance.
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The Communist Manifesto is above all utopian. In his book Ameritopia Mark Levin reviews previous utopian literature — Plato's Republic, Thomas More's Utopia, Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, and Marx's Communist Manifesto. Levin begins his book as follows: "Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology."
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There is a proclivity in human nature to believe that society and individuals are capable of perfection, that if we only had the proper economic and political system heaven on Earth would be ours.
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The Manifesto contains no details regarding what would replace the existing foundations of our civilization. That's a common attitude among utopians even to this day. For them all that's necessary is to knock the pillars out from civilization (especially capitalism) and trust that everything will then be glorious.
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As is true with modern leftists, Marx had a monocausal view of the economy and society. The demise of capitalism would mark the end of societal problems. His theories are perfect examples of wishful thinking or what is now referred to as "confirmation bias." Unfortunately, the fact that he was wrong about everything has not reduced his appeal. Marxism is a hydra-headed monster impossible to kill.
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The Manifesto is almost comical. Marx claimed to have gotten to the bottom of history once and for all, e.g., "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." He asserted that economic structures determine virtually everything else ("dialectical materialism"). He maintained that he had discovered not just the themes of history but the actual laws of history. Knowing with absolute certainty the laws of history was supposed to allow him to predict the future with confidence.
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Marx's objective in The Communist Manifesto was not to discover truth but to start a revolution. If you're trying to recruit an army of revolutionaries, you can't be mealymouthed. Being certain makes your followers believe they are on the right side of history. It helps as well to be simplistic, e.g., to stress that populations consist of only two groups, the oppressed and the oppressors. Marxism is a simplistic ideology designed to appeal to simple-minded people.
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<center>____________________</center>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/06/the_lefts_marching_orders.html"target="_blank"><b>The left's marching orders</b></a> at American Thinker June 24, 2022
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-17111957375620228992022-05-10T15:08:00.006-07:002022-05-24T15:14:22.951-07:00Abortion: moral clarity can be a powerful forceThere is no issue that divides Democrats and Republicans more deeply than abortion. It is, after all, a matter of life and death.
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How can liberals, Democrats, and the left be such enthusiastic supporters of something that is, at best, a necessary evil? Why are they so protective of unlimited abortion and paranoid about placing any restrictions whatsoever on it? How do they manage to feel so positive about something that is so profoundly negative?
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Although liberals give every indication that they believe that abortion is a virtuous and morally neutral act, they also reveal that they are not comfortable with that position. You will rarely hear liberals say they are "pro-abortion." They use various cowardly and misleading obfuscations such as "a woman's right to choose" and "reproductive rights." If they have any conscience at all, they have to be conflicted. If you've ever tried to have a polite discussion about abortion with a liberal, you know that it turns ugly fast.
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The abortion enthusiasts have hijacked the word "choice." That word is far too general and anodyne to substitute for the reality of abortion. They're not "pro-choice"; they're pro-abortion. Why can't they just say that?
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The very name "Planned Parenthood" is itself a grotesque fraud. Planned Parenthood is an organization dedicated to the prevention of parenthood, not the planning of it, either for the birth mother or for a couple eager for the chance to adopt.
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Right-to-life advocates do not believe that the location of an unborn child is equivalent to ownership. An abortion is not morally equivalent to an appendectomy. There is no dispute about who owns your appendix. An appendectomy or the removal of a malignant tumor prolongs a life; an abortion ends a life.
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A pregnancy is usually the result of a choice to have sex. Because you did, you now have another human being developing inside your body. The fact that you irresponsibly had sex with someone you were not married to does not give you the guilt-free option of ending the life you started. Roe v. Wade made abortion legal. It did not make abortion either moral or admirable.
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Ronald Reagan said, "We cannot diminish the value of one category of life — the unborn — without diminishing the value of all human life."
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It is not just unborn children who pay the price for abortion; we all do. The number of abortions committed, as well as the ho-hum way abortion is viewed, does more than anything else to numb our sensitivities about the sanctity of life. There is probably nothing else that has led to the coarsening of our culture as much as the occurrence of millions of abortions.
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A debating tactic that liberals like using is to point out that conservatives are against abortion but favor the death penalty. They think it shows that conservatives are inconsistent and hypocritical. Their smugness, however, is undeserved. It demonstrates their refusal to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. A fetus is as innocent as anything can possibly be, and an unborn child is not in any way equivalent to a convicted murderer.
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For too long, Planned Parenthood has been getting away with the lie that it is something other than what it is — primarily an abortion provider and promoter. Furthermore, it discourages adoption. You may as well ask Dr. Kevorkian for pregnancy counseling as to ask Planned Parenthood. Pro-life taxpayers are sickened by the reality of their tax dollars being used to support such a despicable organization.
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We hear the chant, "black lives matter." That's true, but it is usually in reference to blacks being killed by police officers. It would be good to keep in mind that the number of black lives ended by abortion is thousands of times greater than the number of black lives ended by police officers.
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We who are saddened by the fact that over a million abortions are committed each year in the U.S. can fight back in a number of ways. Let's no longer let the abortion advocates get away with their rampant language cowardice and distortions. Let's vote for politicians who promise to stop public funding of Planned Parenthood. Let's vote for politicians who aren't afraid to speak the truth and say what they believe. Let's make it clear that abortion is not just another form of birth control. Let's make it absolutely clear that adoption is infinitely superior to abortion.
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Moral clarity can be a powerful force.
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<center>____________________</center>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/abortion_moral_clarity_can_be_a_powerful_force.html"target="_blank"><b>Abortion: moral clarity can be a powerful force</b></a >May 10, 2022
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07644590413461553573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-34599347146053813192022-05-04T14:21:00.002-07:002022-05-04T14:29:15.929-07:00Follow the evidence, not the 'science'A frequently heard piece of advice over the past few years is "follow the science." "Science" is a word the left loves to corrupt and then use to control the narrative.
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A more useful suggestion is "follow the evidence." "Evidence" is far easier to understand, measure, quantify, define, and follow.
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During the COVID lockdowns, government authorities such as Anthony Fauci stole our freedoms from us on the basis of "science," but with virtually no solid evidence. He and his minions didn't even bother to look for evidence. Shooting from the hip, they based their various mandates on simplistic, ill-founded assumptions that we now know were totally false. They continued to enforce those mandates for more than two years, long after it was clear they were useless and doing immeasurable harm. They refused to entertain any disagreement. To admit they had been mistaken all along was out of the question.
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Masks are a prime example of how wrong simplistic thinking can be. It is easy to believe that masks can reduce the transmission of an airborne disease. However, regarding COVID, abundant evidence proves that they do not. Nor is there any real evidence that "social distancing" or wiping down surfaces reduces the number of cases.
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Anthony Fauci claims that he and science are synonymous. Can he claim that he and evidence are synonymous?
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Whenever someone tells you to follow the science, ask to see the evidence. If good evidence is lacking, be very skeptical.
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Let evidence be the arbiter.
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<center>____________________</center>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/follow_the_evidence_not_the_science.html"target="_blank"><b>Follow the evidence, not the 'science</b></a> May 4, 2022
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07644590413461553573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-60978303854773728492022-04-07T14:26:00.006-07:002022-05-04T14:28:47.416-07:00The one place where you can really make a differenceJordan Peterson's sixth "Rule of Life" is "Set your own house in perfect order before you criticize the world."
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You determine your life primarily by the choices you make. Some choices are "meta-choices," the ones that impact numerous other choices.
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One of the meta-choices is what share of your time you devote to your micro realm versus your macro realm.
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The micro realm of your life includes your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors — those with whom you directly interact, as well as your job and other personal uses of your time.
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The macro part of your life includes society at large, the economy, climate change, politics, people distant from you, and people you don't know.
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In which of those two realms, micro or macro, do you want to live? You have a limited amount of time and energy. Whichever realm you choose has what economists call an "opportunity cost." (The MIT Dictionary of Modern Economics defines "opportunity cost" as follows: "Perhaps the most fundamental concept in economics, the opportunity cost of an action is the value of the forgone alternative.")
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There is an enormous difference regarding the level of control you have in the two spheres. Obviously, you have the most influence and impact on those closest to you. Influence is like gravitational force, inversely proportional to the square of the distance. Also, consider the relative populations. You are a significant part of your micro world. Like it or not, you are a tiny and insignificant part of your macro world.
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There is also a big difference in your relative knowledge about the two realms. Your macro realm is vastly more complex than your micro realm, and the choices you make there are more prone to error. We all know people who have strong opinions concerning issues they know almost nothing about.
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Virtually all your power resides in your micro realm. The person closest to you is yourself. Focusing on a small sphere of influence is an aspect of individual responsibility. It is a way of thinking and behaving that shows the difference between progressives and conservatives. Conservatives love being personally responsible. It's part of the price of freedom.
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Unfortunately, individual responsibility is just too big a burden for some people. Personal problems are often too difficult and painful to face. To focus instead on an "urgent" macro issue is a favorite self-deluding tactic of progressives. Their selected macro issue is typically one dire enough to blind them to the cost of hiding from themselves. It enables them to deny the high opportunity cost to themselves of neglecting their own unsolved personal problems.
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<center>____________________</center>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/the_one_place_where_you_can_really_make_a_difference.html"target="_blank"><b>The one place where you can really make a difference</b></a> April 7, 2022
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07644590413461553573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-40047952549268544042022-03-25T15:30:00.025-07:002022-03-29T12:18:26.025-07:00The left hates competitionCompetition makes numerous areas of our lives more efficient, from the economy to education to the search for truth.
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In the economy, competition is the single most powerful force for progress and innovation. A good way to entice customers away from your rivals is to make a superior product. "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door."
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The Nobel Prize-winning economist George Stigler called competition "the patron saint of the consumer." Competition pushes producers to provide consumers the most for their money — a combination of keeping prices as low as possible and keeping quality as high as possible. It pushes them to be efficient. Producers who fail to be efficient don't survive. Competition means survival of the efficient.
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The degree of competition determines the crucial balance of power between consumers and producers. Vigorous competition puts power in the hands of consumers. Its absence puts producers in control.
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A good way to appreciate the value of competition is to look at its polar opposite: monopoly. Monopoly means consumers have only one producer to choose from. One choice amounts to no choice. Under communism, all producers are monopolists. The state has a monopoly on every aspect of life.
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Because it lacks competition, a communist economy is extremely inefficient and always becomes dysfunctional. Cuba and Venezuela, for example, can barely feed their populations.
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No economy is automatically or organically efficient. Efficiency requires incentives. Those don't exist under communism. A free-market, voluntary-exchange economy provides an abundance of incentives. The profit motive is one example. The more efficiently the owners of a private business operate, the more profit they will take home at the end of the year. It's similar to the way a fantail keeps a windmill pointed into the wind.
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In an otherwise efficient economy like ours, public schools are as dysfunctional as they would be under communism. That's because the public-school establishment has been so effective in blocking competition in education.
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Public schools fit most of the characteristics of monopolies. Teachers and their unions have power, while students and their parents have almost none. If more competition were introduced, the power imbalance would be reversed. The increased interest in "school choice" — vouchers and charter schools, for example — are reasons for optimism.
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Competition among ideas is what makes free speech and robust debate so vital. Debate is, in fact, competition in search of the truth. The left's cancel culture is about destroying competition and establishing a monopoly of ideas. Leftists think they've already discovered the truth, so there's no reason to continue the search.
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Conservatives love a society that rewards the efficiency of competition. Leftists hate it. They love communism instead.
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<CENTER>_____________________________</CENTER>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/the_left_hates_competition.html"target="_blank"><b>The left hates competition</b></a> March 24, 2022
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i></span>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-87275984509950968492022-03-05T15:16:00.011-08:002022-03-29T12:16:27.427-07:00Is the Democrat Party terminal?The Democrat Party is on the wrong side of every single issue — borders, law enforcement, parents vs. teachers, inflation, Critical Race Theory, school choice, cancel culture, lockdowns, masks, individual freedom, gasoline prices, pipelines, wokism, unrestricted abortions, and a president who has dementia, just to name a few.
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Does the party have a death wish? We have all known persons who are self-destructive. That behavior can afflict groups as well as individuals.
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The Democrat Party and the left foster self-hatred. They believe that our country is irrevocably racist and is destroying the planet by using fossil fuels.
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The Democrat establishment and most of its voters are racked by guilt. Unless they join a monastery, they have no choice but to participate in the system they believe is destroying our future.
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The Democrats have lost their self-preservation instinct and their will to live. Just look at the party's lack of concern about its hemorrhaging loss of support among its traditional bases — blacks, Hispanics, Asians, mothers, and independents. The breadth of the damage is unprecedented. In all likelihood, the party is too far gone ever to regain its former status and influence.
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The party's problems are deep-seated, rooted in the sick nature of what it has become. The United States has been a two-party country throughout its history. Will that be enough for the party to survive in some form?
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The Democrat party is headed for election losses of monumental proportions this November. When that happens, what will be the party's response?
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The Democrats are stuck. Most of the party leaders who got them into this mess will still be there after the election. Self-awareness and accountability are definitely not what the Democrats are known for. They will not get the message.
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<center>______________________</center>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/is_the_democrat_party_terminal.html" target="_blank"><b>Is the Democrat Party terminal?</b></a> - American Thinker March 4, 2022
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i></span>Ron Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18421721244127961805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-62565990197453878712022-01-23T14:58:00.003-08:002022-03-29T12:15:25.327-07:00Biden and Harris are a cancer on the Democrat partyThe Democrat Party has maneuvered itself into an insoluble problem. By whatever means necessary the party managed to get its candidates into the White House. However, it will turn out to be the costliest victory ever for a political party.
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How did Joe Biden and Kamala Harris become the Democrat nominees? At the beginning of the 2020 Democrat primary season, there were 24 presidential hopefuls. As each was vetted, various kinds of disqualifying information surfaced and, one by one (starting with Harris), they fell by the wayside. It became obvious that none was presidential material.
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The last two standing were Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Because Sanders is an unrepentant socialist, the Democrat party knew he had little chance against Donald Trump. That left the non compos mentis Joe Biden.
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Once Biden nailed down the nomination, he had the chance to choose a running mate. Because of the priorities of the Democrat party, it was a relatively simple choice, based on a single consideration—identity politics.
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Despite her empty list of career accomplishments, Kamala Harris satisfied two of the party’s victimhood categories—black and female. Her success in the Democrat party happened by way of who she “knew” rather than what she knew. Her sole “qualification” was the only one they cared about—identity, a la identity politics.
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In selecting candidates, competence and achievement never crossed the minds of the party establishment. The Biden-Harris administration is what happens when a political party deems merit irrelevant.
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You may recall that in 2008 Barack Obama retrieved Biden from the Democrats’ dumpster to be his running mate. Identity politics was not as important then, and Biden was ideal for another role always expected of a running mate—don’t outshine the person at the top of the ticket.
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Biden and Harris are incompetent, bumbling, empty suits who haven’t the earthliest idea what they’re doing. They are a disgrace to the offices they hold. They have no beliefs and no vision. Joe Biden has never had good judgment, and now adding to that is his advancing dementia. Kamala Harris has never had a thought or utterance worth remembering. About the best that could be said about her is that she does not have dementia, not that it matters. She is a nitwit in service of the party’s monomaniacal identity obsession.
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It’s impossible to imagine what the atmosphere in the White House must be like these days. The people there experience firsthand the man who isn’t there, the dead president walking. It would be fun to see the looks they give one another. Their “leader” is the proverbial crazy uncle in the basement, except this crazy uncle isn’t in the basement, he’s in the Oval Office.
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To survive, the Democrat party must rid itself of Biden and Harris. If both remain in office, the party implodes, taking many of its cronies down with it. Numerous leftist institutions—mainstream media, teachers’ unions, Black Lives Matter, climate alarmists, and universities, have a symbiotic relationship with the party and they will all suffer.
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The Biden-Harris administration is nothing short of a malignancy that will fester and spread for three more years. The party has no easy solutions. Amputating Biden and Harris may not even solve its deep-seated problems. Any moderate Democrat replacement such as Tulsi Gabbard wouldn’t have a prayer against the party’s uncompromising, far-left base. There is not a single alternative Democrat politician who is noticeably better than Biden or Harris, whether it be Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Debbi Wasserman Schultz, Bill de Blasio, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, or Al Sharpton. All on the Democrat bench are plagued with political comorbidities.
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It will be interesting to watch the Democrat Party as it tries to extricate itself from this self-inflicted political nightmare.<br>
<center>____________________</center>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/biden_and_harris_are_a_cancer_on_the_democrat_party.html"target="_blank"><b>Biden and Harris are a cancer on the Democrat party</b></a> - American Thinker
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-86230802499229397202021-12-31T15:01:00.001-08:002022-03-29T12:10:53.620-07:00American Thinker Archives<br><br>
◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/why_leftists_want_to_turn_your_kids_into_weaklings.html"target="_blank"><b>Why leftists want to turn your kids into weaklings</b></a> December 15, 2021
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/gratitude_and_the_left.html"target="_blank"><b>Gratitude and the left</b></a> November 23, 2021
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/the_lefts_intellectual_chaos.html"target="_blank"><b>The left's intellectual chaos</b></a> October 21, 2021
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/lockdown_lessons.html"target="_blank"><b>Lockdown lessons</b></a> August 4, 2021
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/the_education_establishment_selfdestructs.html"target="_blank"><b>The education establishment self-destructs</b></a> July 28, 2021
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/07/now_is_the_time_to_get_serious_about_nuclear_energy.html"target="_blank"><b>Now is the Time to Get Serious About Nuclear Energy</b></a> July 17, 2021
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/the_inscrutable_left.html"target="_blank"><b>The inscrutable left</b></a> July 1, 2021
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/the_damage_done_by_probability_blindness.html"target="_blank"><b>The damage done by probability blindness</b></a> June 17, 2021
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/remember_when_leftists_were_obsessed_with_selfesteem.html"target="_blank"><b>Remember when leftists were obsessed with self-esteem?</b></a> May 22, 2021
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/righteous_recycling.html"target="_blank"><b>Righteous Recycling</b></a> April 28, 2021
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/its_time_to_revisit_emthe_road_to_serfdomem.html"target="_blank"><b>It's time to revisit The Road to Serfdom</b></a> March 9, 2021
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/the_big_difference_between_democrats_and_republicans_.html"target="_blank"><b>The big difference between Democrats and Republicans</b></a> February 4, 2021
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/the_pandemic_is_history.html"target="_blank"><b>The pandemic is history</b></a> September 9, 2020
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/09/media_dereliction.html"target="_blank"><b>Media Dereliction</b></a> September 22, 2013
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/06/the_larger_lessons_of_the_irs_scandal.html"target="_blank"><b>The Larger Lessons of the IRS Scandal</b></a> June 6, 2013
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/04/we_interrupt_your_vacation_fun.html"target="_blank"><b>'We interrupt your vacation fun for this important announcement...'</b></a> April 17, 2010
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/02/president_incompetent_1.html"target="_blank"><b>President Incompetent</b></a> February 18, 2010Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-31768639696190903872021-12-16T15:10:00.005-08:002022-03-29T12:19:33.916-07:00Why leftists want to turn your kids into weaklingsThanks to leftists, we are doing lasting harm to our children: we are making them into weaklings. It is an insidious form of child abuse, done in plain sight. We are denying them the most important trait necessary for living happy, successful, and meaningful lives: courage.
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Life is difficult. It's impossible to sail through life on smooth seas. Loss, frustration, heartbreak, struggle, disappointment, and suffering happen to everyone.
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We see widespread panic on college campuses these days about "micro-aggressions." Students openly admit they can't tolerate things that even they grant are micro.
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At our local university (Humboldt State), students are provided therapy dogs to help them cope with the stress of finals week. I was born too soon.
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We are teaching our children to report being "triggered." We are teaching our children that they're entitled to live lives free from hurt feelings. We are turning our children into crybabies ill equipped to deal with real life.
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Jordan Peterson says, "If you over-coddle people, you make them dull and narcissistic."
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Unfortunately, it's easier to make children spineless than to make them brave. "Tough love" is much harder to give than wimp love. Wimp love isn't love; it's cowardice.
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The left's efforts to weaken our young people have been going on for decades. Why? Weak children become weak adults, who willingly obey vaccine and mask mandates and other senseless dictates meant to crush our freedoms.
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A power struggle is raging between America's ruling class and individual Americans. There's only so much power to go around. It's a zero-sum game. For the left, power is what it's all about. It's a fight to the political death. It's a fight we must win and one we can win.
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Thankfully, individual courage is the enemy of the ruling class, as are freedom, the family, religion, and truth. They are the keys to victory because they all empower the individual American at the expense of America's ruling class.<br>
<center>____________________</center>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/why_leftists_want_to_turn_your_kids_into_weaklings.html"target="_blank"><b>Why leftists want to turn your kids into weaklings</b></a> - American Thinker December 15, 2021
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-73507046601032531202021-11-23T14:37:00.009-08:002022-05-04T14:40:43.822-07:00Gratitude and the leftApart from lying about everything, leftists are insufferable ingrates.
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Leftists spend their lives complaining. Their list of grievances is endless. They are never happy even when they get their way.
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If you're an American citizen alive in the 21st century, you've won the lottery. You are so much more fortunate than your forebears that it's hard to list the ways.
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Someone born in America in 1900 had a life expectancy of 47 years. Someone born today can expect to live to 80, an increase of 70 percent. In 1900, 30 percent of all deaths in the United States happened to children less than five years of age. Now only 1.4 percent of deaths happen to children five or younger.
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In the 19th century and earlier, very few people had indoor plumbing. Think about that.
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Physicians back then had few if any treatments to prolong life. Antibiotics were not developed until the early 1940s.
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Commercial air travel, so common today, barely existed before 1950.
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Until Edison invented the incandescent light bulb, ours was A World Lit Only by Fire.
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How many on the left, how many young leftists especially, have any grasp of their blessings? Where is their gratitude?
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Leftists never give the slightest thought to their incredibly good luck. They take it for granted.
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The ungrateful mindset of the left is that of spoiled brats. There are few things as disgusting as someone who is quite fortunate but who disguises himself as a victim and whines about his lot in life.
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Does anyone believe that leftists are sincere when they celebrate Thanksgiving?
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Dennis Prager has argued the following:
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The mother of happiness is gratitude, and the mother of goodness is gratitude. It is so powerful, gratitude, that it is not possible to be happy if you are not grateful, and it is not possible to be a good person if you are not grateful.
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Leftists are devoid of gratitude. What else so clearly explains their dishonesty and wretchedness?
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<center>____________________</center>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/gratitude_and_the_left.html"target="_blank"><b>Gratitude and the left</b></a> November 23, 2021
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07644590413461553573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-28956519277310741122021-10-21T15:34:00.002-07:002022-05-24T15:37:08.208-07:00The left's intellectual chaosIn our country today, chaos is on the rise. Everywhere we look, we see craziness and absurdity. We're dumbstruck.
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Our southern border has been erased, shoplifting has been decriminalized, parents are domestic terrorists, the police should be defunded, most college campuses are mini–North Koreas, merit and excellence have no value, our children are taught to despise their own country, Joe Biden is president, and the most important thing in the world is a vaccination.
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The cause of such strange leftist behavior is intellectual chaos. The left simply does not think well. To make choices, leftists use emotions and feelings rather than reason and logic.
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Leftists are doing everything they can to obliterate civilization, whether it's Shakespeare or law and order. If they reject the wisdom of the ages, what are they left with? Starting from scratch?
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Leftists simply hate civilization, one of the countless things they hate.
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It is far harder to go from chaos to order than from order to chaos. It takes far longer to create civilization than to destroy it. Not recognizing the importance of civilization signals a disordered mind.
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The left makes a mess of language. Leftists distort the meanings of words and rarely define the words they use. Douglas Murray observed recently that the left has its own secret dictionary — "equity means discrimination, fairness is unfairness, and justice actually means revenge."
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Without clear and consistent definitions, ordered thinking is impossible, leaving intellectual chaos to fill the void. If you eliminate borders in one part of life, you diminish respect for borders everywhere. Borders, physical and mental, are necessary parts of order.
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How is it possible for leftists to advocate socialism when the objective truth is that socialism leads always and everywhere to misery and tyranny?
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Dennis Prager often reminds us that truth is not a left-wing value. Postmodernist leftists argue there's no such thing as objective truth. They teach that "truth" is a self-serving fiction of the oppressors. However, if truth does not exist everything is permitted. There are no boundaries to what can be thought or believed. Everyone has his "own personal truth." Reality is whatever one wishes it to be.
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The left is like a bull in a China shop. A bull neither knows nor cares about the damage it does. Leftist politicians have that same attitude. A bull should not be in a China shop. Leftists should not be in control of our country.
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<center>____________________</center>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/the_lefts_intellectual_chaos.html"target="_blank"><b>The left's intellectual chaos</b></a> October 21, 2021
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07644590413461553573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-47088142760663472992021-08-04T15:38:00.005-07:002022-05-24T15:41:02.631-07:00Lockdown lessonsBe wary of experts. Most of their advice during the pandemic has been wrong and harmful. Experts’ knowledge is typically compartmentalized. They are not “big picture” thinkers which is why they fail to consider collateral damage. The lockdown may have reduced the number of COVID deaths, but it has increased the amount of depression and number of suicides, especially among those age 18 and younger. The postponement and cancellation of medical appointments have resulted in thousands of premature deaths.
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Respect your own common sense as well as your instincts. Thinking has been on vacation since the lockdowns were imposed. Keep in mind that your leaders’ objectives are often the opposite of yours.
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Never take radical action without overwhelming evidence that it will work. The authorities took all manner of drastic actions and weren’t the least bit interested in offering evidence and they still aren’t. Unelected bureaucrats, who know nothing about us, dictated how we live our lives down to the tiniest details. The authorities coerced hundreds of millions of people to wear masks. They assumed that would reduce transmission. There is now evidence that masks are worse than useless.
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Be extremely reluctant to commit sweeping violations of the Constitution. The Constitution is our country’s greatest asset and our north star. Ignoring it or trampling on it is never a good idea. The Constitution is what makes us who we are. We ought to treat it like the treasure it is.
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Always consider both costs and benefits and make best-effort projections of both. The costs of virtually every aspect of the lockdown were more than the benefits, usually far more.
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Calculate probabilities when making choices. “Expected value” is an action’s benefit or cost multiplied by the probability of it happening. For anyone under age 50, the probability of dying from COVID was minuscule, i.e., about one one hundredth of one percent.
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Many of the actions taken in the lockdown were unprecedented. There are probably good reasons they had never been done before. “Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread.”
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Monomania is a killer. For eighteen months now the assumption has been that absolutely nothing compares to the importance of COVID-19, that the rest of life must stop no matter what.
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Be suspicious when someone is obsessed with forcing you to do something, i.e. getting vaccinated. Ask yourself, “What’s actually going on here?” Always be skeptical.
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Have the courage and honesty to admit to being wrong and have the discipline to change course. Few mistakes in history have persisted as long as those related to the lockdown. Face saving was all that mattered.
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Don’t allow hatred of Donald Trump to dictate your behavior. We could have prevented thousands of deaths if not for the insane objections to ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and vitamin D. Why those drugs and vitamins? Because they had been recommended by Donald Trump. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have been used for decades with no notable side effects and cost next to nothing.
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Florida and Sweden didn’t impose lockdowns and COVID death rates there have been lower than states and countries that did. They were the equivalent of control groups and ought to at least make everyone suspicious of the effectiveness of lockdowns.
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Bias is a hidden distortion of facts and information. Be aware that bias is more pervasive than ever in this era of everything being politicized.
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Is safety more important than freedom? Sad to say, freedom has lost its value for far too many Americans.
<center>____________________</center>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/lockdown_lessons.html"target="_blank"><b>Lockdown lessons</b></a> August 4, 2021
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07644590413461553573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-7464069288327249742021-07-28T15:41:00.006-07:002022-05-24T15:45:54.959-07:00The education establishment self-destructsAs Mark Twain put it, "First God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."
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Until a few months ago, most people admired public school teachers. Not anymore. Teachers have declared war on students and their parents.
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What teachers have done is part of a bigger picture, and it's not pretty. They have chosen to join professional sports, the media, higher education, and big corporations in a woke crusade against their own country and its traditions. Ironically, they have done as much damage to themselves as they have to the country.
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In his Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith wrote, "The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgement with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of division of labor."
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In other words: Stick to your knitting! Instead, teachers, school boards, journalists, actors, athletes, and CEOs have all decided it's their job to instruct the rest of us on how to remake our economy and culture.
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Again, to quote Adam Smith, "[c]onsumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the customer."
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Public school teachers, however, work not for their customers — i.e. students and parents — but for school boards, the government, politicians, and their unions.
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In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman wrote:
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If one were to seek deliberately to devise a system of recruiting and paying teachers to repel the imaginative and daring and self-confident and to attract the dull and uninspiring, he could hardly do better than to imitate the system of requiring teaching certificates and enforcing standard salary structures that has developed in the larger city and state-wide systems.
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Needing only a push from us, public education is a rotting tree ready to topple.
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The traditional definition of socialism is "government ownership and operation of the means of production." Public schools are owned and operated by the government. Our public school system fits that definition of socialism. Socialism always fails, and public schools fail for the same reasons.
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Society has no greater duty than educating each new generation. Leaving it in the hands of government is a horrible mistake.
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Public school teachers did not deserve the respect we gave them. It was possible only because of a lack of transparency. One positive result of teachers destroying the respect they had is that it's exposed who they've been all along. Their recent behavior has, at last, made the gravity of the situation crystal-clear and given us the resolve to do something about it.
<center>____________________</center>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/the_education_establishment_selfdestructs.html"target="_blank"><b>The education establishment self-destructs</b></a> July 28, 2021
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07644590413461553573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-23604089615233301352021-07-18T14:00:00.013-07:002022-03-29T12:24:58.697-07:00Now is the Time to Get Serious About Nuclear Energy<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">If we altered our attitudes about nuclear energy, it would be a game-changer. <a href="https://t.co/pMziZUFgWe">https://t.co/pMziZUFgWe</a></p>— Ron Ross (@RonRoss88802732) <a href="https://twitter.com/RonRoss88802732/status/1417602600371843076?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 20, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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While no other “carbon free” method of producing electricity comes even close to nuclear energy, climate change alarmists refuse to even consider the option.
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If you do an objective benefit-cost analysis of nuclear energy compared to the so-called “green energies” of solar and wind you learn that green energies have serious time and space limitations. For example, you learn that with solar and wind there is a disconnect between when they’re produced and when they’re consumed. Nighttime and cloudy days happen, and the wind does not always blow, but the need for electricity goes on.
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The only solution to those limitations is reliance on batteries. Batteries, of course, have their own problems. It takes at least an hour and usually eight hours to charge an electric vehicle’s batteries. It takes only five minutes to fill your gas tank.
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In a recent <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/solar-powers-land-grab-hits-a-snag-environmentalists-11622816381"target="_blank"><b>Wall Street Journal article,</b></a> “Solar Power’s Land Grab Hits a Snag: Environmentalists.” Samantha Gross of the Brookings Institution writes, “An energy system based on renewables is still an industrial-scale system, with large generation and transmission projects that people don’t necessarily want in their neighborhoods.” Mojave solar farms essentially displace the animals that were living there. Indian tribes have also protested against the projects. Several of the largest projects in the planning stages are in jeopardy of cancellation. In contrast, for access, oil and natural gas require only a 12-inch hole in the ground.
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There is also a locational disconnect between the producers and users of solar and wind energy. For oil and gas, the most efficient logistical solutions are pipelines.
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Top Articles 10 Reasons to Question the Election Are Masks About to Become Permanent? Classroom Cameras Won't Stop Big Education. This Will. COVID Authoritarianism Has Changed Our Polity Read More Isn't It about Time to Stop Lobbing Ridiculous Accusations at Trump? The Left's Contempt for the Masses COVID Authoritarianism Has ChangedOur Polity COVID Authoritarianism Has Changed Our Polity
Democrats hate pipelines. On his first day in office, with no justification given, Joe Biden stopped cold the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline and, along with that, its thousands of high-paying jobs. We’re left with a half-completed pipeline along with rising gasoline and natural gas prices.
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Wind and solar have become popular not because of any actual advantages but because leftists think and act like teenagers. They’re ruled by emotions. They fall madly in love for the flimsiest of reasons. For teenagers that lunacy doesn't last long. For environmentalists and their Democrat enablers, that emotional attachment can and often does last for decades. As Milton Friedman famously observed, “There’s nothing as permanent as a temporary government program.”
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Still another policy disaster Democrats have foisted on us is ethanol. It is the most land greedy of the “green energy’ alternatives. Ethanol is a witches’ brew of politics, taxpayer confiscation, mileage reduction, and small-engine destruction.
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We’re creating giant land footprints in a futile attempt to reduce our “carbon footprints.” Land footprints are real problems in the here and now. Carbon footprints are unproven, hypothetical problems in the distant future.
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We now devote fully one-fourth of our corn-growing farmland to the production of ethanol. If we returned that land to growing food and fodder we would significantly reduce prices and the benefits would be felt far and wide.
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An important ingredient of economic efficiency is that “resources flow to their highest valued uses.” Employing farmland to produce energy rather than food is a gross violation of that principle. Using valuable farmland for energy production is asinine.
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Coercion is also a necessary part of the ethanol fiasco. In California, it's illegal to use ethanol-free gasoline on public roads. You can buy ethanol-free gasoline for your lawnmower at only a few locations and at prices even higher than California’s already highest prices in the country.
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Federal mandates require virtually all gasoline to include 10 percent ethanol. There is pressure to increase that to 15 percent. Even the 10 percent gasoline reduces mileage because ethanol produces only 70 percent of the energy produced by gasoline.
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Ethanol takes more energy to produce than it produces. It’s done for political, not logical or economic reasons, and we are less prosperous because of it.
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California is obsessed with so-called “zero-emissions” transportation, i.e., electric vehicles. The state passed numerous laws, regulations, and subsidies in pursuit of that objective. But EVs are not currently free of carbon emissions. Fossil fuels (coal and natural gas) generate most of the electricity needed to charge their batteries. If nuclear energy generated that same electricity we could honestly say that EVs generate “zero-emissions.”
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Even Elon Musk admits that there is not enough electricity generating capacity to allow widespread conversion to EVs. The only way there could be enough capacity is by resorting to nuclear power.
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The last remaining nuclear plant in California is at Diablo Canyon and has been operating since 1985. It is the single largest power station in the state, generating ten percent of California’s electricity. Because of the state’s hostility toward nuclear power, it is scheduled to close in 2025. No one knows what will replace that generating capacity. It certainly will not be wind and solar. Cutting electricity generation by a tenth when the state already has barely enough electricity is criminal recklessness.
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Until the past few years, blackouts and brownouts were almost unheard of. What’s changed? The answer is easy to find.
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<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/blackouts-loom-in-california-as-electricity-prices-are-absolutely-exploding_3879750.html"target="_blank"><b>According to Robert Bryce,</b></a> progressive politicians and their enabling voters have created a disastrous combination of “soaring electricity prices and ever-worsening reliability.” What’s bizarre is that it has all been deliberate. The left is obsessed with weaning humanity off its reliance on fossil fuels. Californians are now the proud possessors of the highest income-tax rates, highest sales-tax rates, highest gasoline prices, and highest housing costs in the country.
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California already has laws on the books that mandate reducing “greenhouse emissions” 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050. It is irresponsible to mandate an end to fossil fuel use when there is no viable substitute in place, at least not one they’re willing to entertain. If nuclear energy is off the table, blackouts will become a way of life. California will become a ghost state. Only leftists will be happy.
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Michael Shellenberger, author of best-selling Apocalypse Never, recently tweeted that “the problems of nuclear power are not technological but political.” He added, “I’ve realized just how much of the problem comes down to energy density.” Nuclear energy is the energy densest of all the currently feasible alternatives.
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If we altered our attitudes about nuclear energy, it would be a game-changer. We could reduce our carbon footprint to 1980 levels. We could stop killing birds with our windmills and solar energy sites. We could return all our fertile farmland to food production. And we could eliminate the labyrinth of costly subsidies and coercive regulations, most of which do far more harm than good. We could say goodbye to blackouts and electricity rationing and hello to energy abundance.
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/07/now_is_the_time_to_get_serious_about_nuclear_energy.html"target="_blank"><b>Now is the Time to Get Serious About Nuclear Energy</b></a> July 17, 2021
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-52678440005009430772021-07-01T14:43:00.008-07:002022-05-04T14:45:33.362-07:00The inscrutable leftWhat are leftists afraid of? An easier question would be what are they not afraid of?
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Here is a partial list of their fears: climate change, fossil fuels, Russia, maskless people, Republicans, carbon, death, words, Donald Trump, chemicals, freedom, masculinity, pipelines, meat, nuclear energy, national borders, guns, light complexions, binary genders, GMOs, debate, election audits, live births, utilizing natural resources, voter IDs, fracking, laughter, capitalism, free speech, private property, conservative values, opinions different from their opinions, pronouns, truth, statues, risk, glutens, mass extinctions, human history, order, triggers, rising sea levels, Christians, law enforcement, Israel, and traditions.
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The breadth and depth of their lives are inversely proportional to the number of their fears. The walls close in on them. Their lives shrink to nothingness.
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Among the wisest words ever uttered by a politician were FDR's "We have nothing to fear but fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Leftists believe, "We have everything to fear, including fears beyond imagining."
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Conservatives have trouble understanding the lunacy we see on the left. Having so many fears is a partial explanation. They have so many fears that their brains are depleted, leaving no capacity for rational thought.
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Having so many fears shows they're preoccupied with their own existence, which to them is the center of the universe, a universe they believe is out to get them. Actually, the universe could not care less about them. Life is unfair. Believing they're the only ones whose lives are unfair is self-obsession, plain and simple.
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The school of psychology known as "transactional analysis" argues that any persistent behavior must have a "payoff." A hybrid of psychology and economics, transactional analysis emphasizes payoffs, while economics emphasizes incentives. Is there a payoff for leftists for living fear-based lives? Could there be method to their madness?
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Victimhood is a popular mindset on the left, perhaps the most popular. One payoff of feeling like a victim is that it lets them escape responsibility. Many leftists hate responsibility. Conservatives believe in individual responsibility. That's too tough a challenge for leftists.
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The Democrats view the January 6 trespassing of the Capitol Building as "the worst threat to our democracy since the Civil War." For them, it wasn't just trespassing; it was an "insurrection." Lunacy doesn't obey the rules of logic.
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<center>____________________</center>
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/the_inscrutable_left.html"target="_blank"><b>The inscrutable left</b></a> July 1, 2021
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07644590413461553573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-6014420384261015472021-06-18T14:59:00.007-07:002022-03-29T12:14:32.993-07:00The damage done by probability blindness<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">The Damage Done By Probability Blindness <a href="https://t.co/mCm4aG8IrI">https://t.co/mCm4aG8IrI</a></p>— zerohedge (@zerohedge) <a href="https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1405606599188783106?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 17, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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As Bishop Joseph Butler said in 1736, "probability is the very guide of life."
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The coronavirus has generated more blind fear than perhaps any other event in recorded history. That fear is blind because it ignores easily calculated probabilities.
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The reported coronavirus deaths in the U.S. now stand at six hundred thousand. The population of the U.S. is approximately 330 million. When you divide deaths by the population, the number is less than two-tenths of one percent. As catastrophes go, that is a relatively small number.
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There is a wide disparity of coronavirus deaths among age groups. That fact has been deliberately ignored by the authorities and the media.
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Eighty percent of all deaths have occurred in the over 65 population even though that age group constitutes only 16 percent of the total population. The number of deaths in that group is 464 thousand. The total population of Americans 65 and older is 51 million. Dividing the deaths by that population gives you a probability of 0.0089, or nine-tenths of one percent.
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The number of COVID deaths in the 49 and younger age group is twenty-seven thousand. The total number of Americans in that age group is 233 million. Again, dividing the deaths by the corresponding population gives you a probability of 0.00011, or one one-hundredth of one percent. A probability that small is often described as "not significantly different from zero."
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Comparing the young and old age groups reveals that the 49 and younger age group's risk of COVID death is ninety times less than the 65 and older age group's.
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There has been virtually no difference in policies in regard to various age groups. It has been the costliest application of a "one size fits all" approach ever.
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There would have been far fewer deaths and much less disruption of our lives if the bulk of the attention had been focused on the over 65 age group. Rest homes should have been quarantined. Schools should never have been closed. Masks were unnecessary for anyone 50 or younger.
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If health officials and the media had acted responsibly, they would have informed the public about these probabilities. They haven't even tried because their objective has been to raise anxiety, not reduce it.
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Politicians and public health officials have a very low estimate of the intelligence of the general public and an extremely high (and unjustified) estimate of their own intelligence. They believe their deliberate concealment of facts is admirable.
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We know far more now about the coronavirus than when it began, and what we know is very encouraging. Telling the public the truth, however, would expose health officials and the media for the politics behind their incompetence. They would have to admit that most of the pain and damage they've created has been totally unnecessary.
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/the_damage_done_by_probability_blindness.html" target="_blank"><b>The damage done by probability blindness</b></a>
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>
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If you would like to comment on this or any other American Thinker article or post, we invite you to visit <a href="https://mewe.com/p/americanthinkerforum" target="_blank">the American Thinker Forum at MeWe.</a> There, you can converse with other American Thinker readers and comment freely (subject to <a href="https://mewe.com/terms" target="_blank">MeWe's terms of use</a>). The Forum will be fully populated and ready for comments by midday (Eastern time) each day.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-82160652612169018872021-05-22T15:49:00.008-07:002022-05-24T15:52:24.742-07:00Remember when leftists were obsessed with self-esteem?Why, in a few decades, has the left's obsession flipped from self-love to self-loathing, from pride to shame?
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During the 1970s the "self-esteem movement" commenced. According to Wikipedia:
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The underlying idea of the movement was that low self-esteem was the root of problems for individuals, making it the root of societal problems and dysfunctions. A leading figure of the movement, psychologist Nathaniel Branden, stated, "I cannot think of a single psychological problem from anxiety and depression to fear of intimacy or of success, to spouse battery or child molestation that is not traced back to the problem of low self-esteem."
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As is the case with most obsessions of the left, the self-esteem movement soon faded into obscurity. You no longer hear much about it. The problem was not with the goal of self-esteem. It makes perfect sense that self-esteem and self-confidence are useful in living our lives. The problem was that the left tried to achieve it in its usual simple-minded, ham-handed style.
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We can earn real self-esteem only by overcoming life's challenges and disappointments. In contrast, the self-esteem movement's solution was to make life easier for children and take the possibility of disappointment out of their lives. The results were grade inflation, participation trophies, fear of competition, elimination of standardized testing, trigger warnings, and micro-aggressions.
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Consequently, our characters have grown weak and fragile. Our culture has grown morbidly obese. Universities overflow with "snowflakes" and "safe spaces." Ordinary debate is taboo.
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Human nature evolved to cope with hardships much greater than those we face in today's world. Our instinctual responses to modern life are out of sync with current conditions.
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When there are no hardships such as those we've evolved to endure, one response is to create imaginary ones. When we no longer need to worry about where our next meal is coming from, we invent and exaggerate distant and unproven specters — e.g., "catastrophic global warming." We then overreact to minor problems that our forebears would have laughed at. Psyches built for primitive survival ironically struggle to survive modern-day abundance, comfort, and long life expectancies.
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The left's plan to bolster self-esteem by making everyone weaker did not work. It did, however, help Democrats in their never-ending quest for more power.
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But even creating weakness has not satisfied the left. Leftists not only want us to be weak but also want us to loathe ourselves. A guilt-ridden, shamed citizenry is much easier to control and manipulate. Happy people do not want their lives to be controlled by other people — e.g., politicians. Furthermore, it's far easier to get people to hate themselves than to love themselves.
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The left now tells us, in no uncertain terms, that we are despicable people who reside in an irredeemably racist country, a country with a history we should be deeply ashamed of.
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Years ago, leftists' obsession was to instill self-esteem in people who didn't deserve it. Now it's to instill guilt in people who don't deserve it and victimhood in people who don't deserve it. It seems that all they care about is making sure that whatever anybody gets is undeserved.
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◼ <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/remember_when_leftists_were_obsessed_with_selfesteem.html"target="_blank"><b>Remember when leftists were obsessed with self-esteem?</b></a>
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of <i>The Unbeatable Market.</i> Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07644590413461553573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-73828558726213052962021-04-26T15:04:00.008-07:002021-05-17T14:45:48.371-07:00Righteous Recycling <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">Why should leftists bother to make recycling work when their real objective is reached merely by appearing to practice it?</div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">Recycling is a leftist sacrament. It fulfills emotional needs for Democrats. They suffer deep-seated guilt from participating in a materialistic culture that they think results in widespread environmental harm. For them recycling serves as a kind of visible penance. Unfortunately, recycling leads to unintended consequences. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">A recent article in the Eureka, California <i><a href="https://www.times-standard.com/2021/04/10/crv-woes-frustrate-humboldt-county-recycling-centers-customers-retailers/">Times-Standard</a></i> began as follows: </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"></div><blockquote><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">“The CRV situation in Humboldt County is a losing situation for everyone. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">Three major recycling centers in the county have halted all buyback programs for cans, bottles, and glass. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">Customers who pay 5 cents per can at the grocery or convenience store have a nearly impossible time getting that fee back.” </div></blockquote><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">“CRV” stands for California Refund Value. Two out of three of those words are bogus. Refunds have almost ceased and recyclables have little or no value. The program, however, epitomizes California. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">Californians are the truest believers in recycling. Over the decades the state has passed laws that use both force and bribery to increase recycling obedience. One such law pertains to glass, plastic, aluminum cans, and bottles. It requires merchants who sell beverages to charge customers an extra 5 cents for containers up to 24 ounces and 10 cents for containers above 24 ounces. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">The legislation enabling the program is the “California Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act.” It has been in effect since 1987 and is administered by the CalRecycle agency. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">The law requires supermarkets and other beverage dealers to reimburse the 5 or 10 cent deposits to anyone bringing in their containers, no matter where they acquired them. Milk, wine, and distilled spirits containers are exempt from the law. Beverage merchants must pay a fine of $100 a day if they choose not to participate. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">As you might suspect the program has been something of a minor catastrophe. Part of the problem is that in California and elsewhere recycling has all but collapsed, partly because China stopped buying recyclables. The state passed the law based on the assumption that recycling would always be economically viable. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">Wildberries Marketplace, a local supermarket, has chosen to pay the $100 a day fine. According to manager Aaron Gottschalk , “We are here to sell groceries. We are not a recycling center. We felt it was a risk to the safety and sanitation of our store. We just knew we couldn't do it. Did we want to avoid the fee? You bet. But in order to avoid the fee paid to CalRecycle, we would have to fabricate a story and say we were doing something that we were not doing. We weren't going to make that choice and we're paying the fee.” </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">Wildberries, in other words, is being forced to pay a $100 a day fine for being out of compliance with a law that is all but impossible to obey. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">Wildberries is where my wife and I buy most of our groceries. In a conversation with Gottschalk she was told, “Complying would cost us way more than $100 a day. We would have to take every bit of recycling offered to us and then truck it to Crescent City at our expense.” (Crescent city is 85 miles north of the store.) </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">According to CalRecycle 50 retailers in Humboldt County are now obligated to redeem CRV containers in stores. Notably absent from CalRecycle’s list are Walmart, Target, and Winco. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">Most of the Humboldt County designated recycling sites are simply ignoring the rules—they aren’t taking in cans and bottles and they aren’t paying the fines. CalRecycle has been locked down for the past year so there has been no on-site enforcement. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">For all practical purposes, recycling has ceased. It simply is no longer economically viable. Supply and demand have turned against it. The price paid for recyclables is below zero, i.e. you have to pay to get someone to take it off your hands. As is the case with ethanol fuel, recycling can only thrive by way of coercion or taxpayer-funded subsidies. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">Lawmakers in California are aware of the mess they’ve created, but don’t assume they’ll do anything about it that makes sense. North Coast Assemblyman Jim Wood recently submitted legislation that would permit recycling centers to schedule appointments, something that’s currently prohibited. According to Wood, “These modest changes will by no means solve all the problems facing the bottle bill program, but they address a crisis in my district, and hopefully they will help other communities struggling with access to redemption centers.” Exactly how making appointments would solve any of the deeper problems of the program, he did not explain. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">Meanwhile ninety-five percent or more of what goes into recycling bins goes to landfills. That reality is something no one wants to talk about. It would be too upsetting. What we have is faux recycling. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">The left’s use of recycling as visible penance is similar to what Christian theology called “outward signs of grace.” That was an issue Saint Augustine addressed in the 4<sup>th</sup> century. It dealt with the fact that others could not see if you had grace. Recycling is a modern attempt to cope with the same problem. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;">Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor who is currently a wealth manager. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@aol.com" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" style="color: blue; cursor: pointer;" target="_blank" ymailto="mailto:rossecon@aol.com">rossecon@aol.com</a>. </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div><div class="yiv5710986944MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; line-height: normal;"> </div>
Other articles of interest on this topic:
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◼ <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/calrecycles-regulatory-abuse-leonard-lang?trk=public_profile_article_view"target="_blank"><b>CalRecycle's Regulatory Abuse</b></a> - Leonard Lang
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◼ <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/expert-accuses-ca-worst-legal-environment-us-leonard-lang?trk=public_profile_article_view"target="_blank"><b>Expert accuses CA of the worst legal environment in the US</b></a> - Leonard LangRon Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18421721244127961805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-788264931451964893.post-23353539203709676082021-03-10T08:00:00.016-08:002021-03-29T17:33:30.880-07:00It’s Time To Revisit The Road To Serfdom<i>Recently my column "It's Time to Revisit The Road to Serfdom" ran on the American Thinker website. For whatever reason they left out some of the best quotes from the book. For your enjoyment, here's the full text. </i>
<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">It’s Time To Revisit <i>The Road To Serfdom</i></span></b>
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Recently the books <i>1984</i> and <i>Animal Farm</i> have had a rebirth of relevance. They were written by George Orwell in 1949 and 1945.
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Orwell’s books coined words and phrases that have become descriptive of what is happening now—doublethink, Ministry of Truth, Big Brother, thought criminal, Newspeak, and, of course, Orwellian.
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Another book with a similar theme was written in 1944 by the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek— <i>The Road to Serfdom.</i> Hayek was born in Austria in 1898 and spent most of his life in England and America. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.
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Orwell’s <i>1984</i> and <i>Animal Farm</i> are fictional but the dystopias they describe have become disturbingly real.
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Hayek’s <i>Road to Serfdom</i>, on the other hand, is a complete explanation of why attempts to achieve utopias always result into nightmarish dystopias.
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A few of the book’s chapter titles reveal its theme:
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The Great Utopia
Security and Freedom
Why the Worst Get on Top
The End of Truth
The Socialist Roots of Nazism
The Totalitarians in Our Midst
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In <i>The Road to Serfdom</i> Hayek warns us that once on that “road,” society is forced further and further along it. Each step requires an additional step. Eventually we end up as serfs.
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He warns us “that democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something quite different.”
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He warns us about politicians of the Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez type: “There are many people who call themselves socialists. . . who fervently believe in the ultimate aims of socialism but neither care nor understand how they can be achieved, and who are merely certain that they must be achieved, whatever the costs.”
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Specifically, Hayek explains why socialism inevitably evolves into totalitarianism. First, well-intended socialist attempts to perfect a free-market economy lead to unforeseen problems. Then, centralized “solutions” don’t solve those problems, but create larger ones. Partial control is never enough. The end result is tyranny.
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Following the collapse of the Soviet Union some of its former member countries used The Road to Serfdom as a guidebook for what to avoid as they threw off the shackles of socialism.
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The following excerpts from <i>The Road to Serfdom</i> show us Hayek in his own words:
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It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program—on the hatred of an enemy, of those better off—than on any positive task.
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Many a university teacher during the 1930’s has seen English and American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain only that they hated Western liberal civilization.
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The machinery of monopoly becomes identical with the machinery of the state, and the state itself becomes more and more identified with those who run things than with the interests of the people in general.
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Several contributory factors strengthen the tendency of collectivism to become particularist and exclusive. Of these, one of the most important is that the desire of the individual to identify himself with a group is very frequently the result of a feeling of inferiority and that therefore his want will be satisfied only if membership of the group confers some superiority over outsiders.
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Everyone who has watched the growth of these movements in Italy or in Germany has been struck by the number of leading men, form Mussolini downward. . . who began as socialists and ended up as Fascists or Nazis.
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It is hard to believe that those words were written almost 80 years ago. If you want to understand how the worlds of <i>1984</i> and <i>Animal Farm</i> can happen, read <i>The Road to Serfdom.</i>
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This article originally ran at American Thinker.
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<i>Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at <a href="mailto:rossecon@gmail.com">rossecon@gmail.com</a>.</i>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14023852057418281003noreply@blogger.com0