Certainty: A Malady of the Forlorn

“We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.” –Eric Hoffer

Sometimes the behaviors that cause us the most grief aren’t obvious. An especially harmful habit, for example, is an attitude of certainty. It is a habit that creates problems.

Intolerance. When you’re absolutely certain you’re right about something, it means anyone who does not hold the same view has to be wrong.

Something you have probably noticed about those who are hysterical about “catastrophic climate change” is their dead certainty that it is already happening and that it is entirely the result of human activity. Every extreme weather event proves that climate change is here and humanity is the guilty party. The climate change alarmists latch on to assertions such as “settled science” and “consensus,” both of which are variations of certainty. As with leftist attitudes in general, the possibility that they might be wrong never enters their minds. There is a total absence of doubt.

The climate change alarmists despise all who do not share their certitude. They refer to those people not as doubters or skeptics but with the hateful epithet “deniers.” Skepticism about man-made climate change is equivalent to asserting the Holocaust is a myth. Their knee-jerk certainty about this and other issues has ended long-term friendships and even split family bonds.

Arrogance. Certainty and arrogance are joined at the hip, and arrogance stems from an ignorance of complexity. Complexity is a feature of every element of reality. No human brain, no computer, no matter how powerful can come anywhere close to grasping or dealing with the immense number of variables and interrelationships present in the earth’s atmosphere. Being certain about something so complex verges on insanity. That applies as well to any other complex system, such as the economy, life, or society. There is little appreciation for the limits of human knowledge. What we know is a trillionth of what we don’t know.

It’s ironic that the most arrogant people know next to nothing about that of which they are certain. And what they do know is typically only one side of an issue. As John Stuart Mill wrote, “He who knows only his own side of a case knows little of that.”

Hatred of our history has become a habit on the left. Anyone who hates our history ignores its complexity. Our Founding Fathers, for example, like all other human beings, were not perfect. During their lifetimes they committed both good and bad deeds. Their good deeds, however, were some of the most beneficial ever. To villainize such people is naïve and narrow-minded.

Anyone who has an attitude of certainty has to be unaware of just how many times in history humans have been abysmally wrong. Decades ago, for example, all physicians believed that ulcers were caused by stress and worry. None hold that opinion now. That’s just one of a myriad of notions that were once believed by everyone but are now believed by no one. Think about that: from everyone to no one.

On the left and in the media the rejection of complexity often appears as a reliance on “experts.” There are countless “experts” on every topic, and they do not all agree. It’s the easiest thing in the world to “expert shop” until you find one who will say what you want said. It’s the media’s favorite way to hide its biases.

Democrats have been writhing in deep anguish since Donald Trump won the presidency. They and their experts had convinced themselves that Hillary Clinton was certain to win and that a Trump victory was impossible. They were dead wrong, and they still can’t accept it. Their certainty has been like salt in their wounds.

To be certain about everything is a miserable way to live your life. Awareness of complexity leads to humility. Humility is like gratitude; it’s impossible to be truly happy without it. ____________________

◼ Certainty: A Malady of the Forlorn September 12, 2019

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 rossecon@gmail.com.

A Fellowship of Losers

Marxism — never has there been anything so destructive yet so alluring … to the modern Democrat.

If you’ve wondered where the beliefs of the modern Democrat Party originated, the answer can be found in 28 pages. They comprise The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848.

The Communist Manifesto is the greatest monument to erroneous thinking but profound persuasion in the history of thought. Marx was an extremely talented propagandist. He was a grossly incompetent economist.

A theme of the Manifesto is that oppression permeates all societies. Initially it was about the oppression of workers (the proletariat) by owners (the bourgeoisie). Now leftists view all societal relationships through the prism of oppression — only the placeholders change: one race against another, Palestinians versus Israelis, male versus female. (“The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production.”)

The world is divided between the oppressors and the oppressed. This view provides the foundation for identity politics and also makes it easy to accuse people of racism.

Some of the Manifesto’s most famous quotes demonstrate how influential it has been on leftism and today’s Democrat Party:

Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains! (Also etched on Marx’s gravestone.) A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Communism. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages … the exploitation of one part of society by the other. Modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. The theory of the communist party may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. The communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.

The following are some of the specific policy goals listed in the Manifesto:

A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

The opening and most famous words of the Manifesto are, “A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism.” For several decades after the Manifesto was published not a single country converted to communism. Communism did not take root until 69 years later, in Russia, of all places. Marx predicted that communism would occur after the highest stage of capitalism had been reached, not in an impoverished, feudal economy such as early-20th-century Russia. China adopted communism in 1949, North Korea in 1948, Cuba in 1959, and Venezuela in 1998.

The Manifesto and Das Capital are not about how communism works. They are, rather, about why a market economy cannot work. “Internal contradictions” such as “declining rates of profit” and “increasing immiserization of the bourgeoisie” were already locked into place and would guarantee capitalism’s demise.

Marx was possibly the first “globalist.” He argued that workers should realize their interests lie with their fellow workers throughout the world. He believed patriotism was a trick to distract workers from their true loyalties.

Marx’s magnum opus was Das Kapital. It is three volumes in length. It was, in part, an attempt to refute Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, or simply The Wealth of Nations. More than coincidentally, Smith’s book was published in 1776, the same year as our Declaration of Independence. Although he was a Scot, Smith deserves to be thought of as one of our Founding Fathers.

Smith did not invent the free-market system, but he provided an explanation of how one works. He was correct in almost everything he wrote, and his insights are still relevant to our economy today. Smith advocated voluntary exchange; Marx believed in force.

The U.S. and England followed Smith’s advice. The freedom and economic growth it has made possible have far exceeded anything else in human history.

Marx wanted the “state” to make choices. That model for organizing society has led to the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, and Venezuela.

What Marx wrote was wrong when he wrote it, and it is wrong now. Nevertheless, today’s Democrat Party prefers Karl Marx to Adam Smith. Everyone needs to recognize that there is no real difference between Karl Marx and Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. ____________________

◼ A Fellowship of Losers August 29, 2019

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 rossecon@gmail.com.

There’s Always 2024

Question: Why are the Democrats so crazy? Answer: Donald Trump.

On every issue the Democrats have gotten more extreme — on immigration, abortion, health care, everything. To anyone in his right mind their policies and objectives are unrealistic, unaffordable, and wildly unpopular. They might work on some other planet, but not on Earth. What explains the party’s hard-left turn? The concise answer is … Donald Trump. His policies and demeanor are far beyond the party’s ability to cope. He has cast a spell on his opponents. They can’t stop thinking about him and that keeps them from thinking about anything else.

Perhaps the primary unintended consequence of the Democrat’s hard-left turn is a huge increase in clarity. That’s definitely not going to help the Democrats. Their inability to deal with Trump has caused them to reveal more than ever before who they really are. They have always managed to hide their true nature from voters in the past. That’s over.

An ancient proverb says, “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.” In this context “mad” has two meanings: angry and insane. It could also be said that whom the gods would destroy they first make hate. Hate is not a formula for winning friends and influencing people or, more importantly, increasing your voter base.

Democrats’ visceral hatred for Trump generates much of their ugly behavior. They perceive reality through a prism of contempt for him.

Amazingly, Trump does not return their hatred. He is not fazed or distracted. He maintains his happy warrior attitude, and that frustrates the hell out of his opponents. He’s the energizer president. It is a sight to behold.

Democrats despise any Trump accomplishments, such as robust economic growth, simply because the person they hate accomplished them. They cannot allow themselves to enjoy anything positive happening to the country if Trump is in any way associated with it. What a sad state of affairs. Trump supporters are having the times of their lives while his opponents are miserable.

One of Donald Trump’s good fortunes is the opponents he’s been blessed with, both in regard to quality and quantity. A dilemma for the Democrats is the sheer number of their presidential candidates. Trump is the first president in history who has two dozen challengers (if they can be described as such). The Democratic Party has what you might call an embarrassment of riches — emphasis on embarrassment. The Democrats have the largest number of strange people ever assembled in a single party.

A handicap for the Democrats and the media is their lack of self-awareness. That prevents them from learning from their mistakes. They seem totally unware and unconcerned about how silly they’re making themselves look.

Consider for the sake of discussion that there are three voting groups: left, middle, and right. The pivotal battleground for the future of American politics will likely occur in the middle. Those are the voters who care relatively little about politics and therefore pay much less attention. (That might also make them the smartest.)

What do these voters think about what’s happening with the Democrats? Are the Democrats behaving so strangely that even this part of the population can’t help but notice?

Through their constant attacks, Democrats hope to separate Trump from his supporters. All indications are that the opposite is happening. They are more bonded to him than ever. It is Trump supporters who are most aghast at the behavior of the Democratic Party and who are put off by the constant criticism and negative press.

Trump pays absolutely no attention to the advice of his opponents, for example, “Stop tweeting,” “Don’t meet with dictators,” and “Stop giving your opponents insulting nicknames.” That’s like telling Samson to get a haircut.

Trump is playing three-dimensional chess. His opponents do not know how to play that game and are not interested in learning how. Their inability to understand what he’s doing leaves them gobsmacked, muttering to themselves with only their hatred to comfort them.

Jonathan Chait, a leftist columnist, recently titled a column, “Democratic Presidential Candidates Need to Stop Taking Unpopular Stances.” You don’t say! Unfortunately they are too far gone to heed that advice.

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◼ There’s Always 2024 July 13, 2019

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 rossecon@gmail.com.

A Grotesque Political Party

The Democrat Party has descended into weirdness, emptiness, and obsession.

The United States has a long tradition of reliance on a two-party political structure. For that structure to function effectively both parties need to be competent and responsible. Unfortunately, that is not the case now.

The lineup of Democrat presidential candidates currently stands at 25 and growing. Conrad Black has aptly described them as “unelectable non-entities.” The long and growing list is more like a tower of babel than a collection of credible leaders. Evidence of that is that leading the race currently is former senator and vice president Joe Biden.

Beyond the confines of the Democrat Party the reaction to Biden’s candidacy is typically, “Is this a joke?” Joe Biden? The guy is a goof. He is known primarily for his gaffes, flip-flops, plagiarism, and unwelcome advances toward women. The very fact he is leading the race is a sad indictment on all the other candidates.

The unreality of all the candidates’ policy positions, e.g. the Green New Deal, sanctuary cities, open borders, unlimited taxpayer-funded abortions, should be obvious to all sentient beings.

Democrats label all Trump supporters as racists, just as Hillary Clinton labeled them all “deplorables.” Trump supporters are seen as homogeneous members of a collective. It’s another variation on the Party’s addiction to identity politics and also a good definition of bigotry.

I don’t know about you but I don’t appreciate being labeled a racist by people who’ve never met me and know nothing about me. Racism is one of the ugliest of all slurs, one that is almost impossible to defend against. It is a Democrat proclivity that will surely shrink their voter base.

Furthermore, what is their definition of a racist? It must include every person who’s ever had a fleeting thought of racial differences. That’s the only way you could get tens of millions of “racists.” The entire party has become a bunch of Jussie Smollett clones.

Why do they rely so much on accusations of racism? Because it works, because they have nothing else, and because they have no shame.

Democrats also have the annoying habit of making wild, unsubstantiated exaggerations. Three examples are the significance and prevalence of “white supremacy,” “Russian meddling,” and “voter suppression.” Such accusations are never defined and never quantified.

The dearth of leaders for the party is nothing new. Consider who their previous nominees were — Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. What a strange collection of characters. To paraphrase William F. Buckley, “I’d rather be governed by the first 24 names in the phone book than any of these people.”

Hillary Clinton was an incredibly bad candidate. Why was she nominated? Amazingly, it was because she was the best they had! We can thank our lucky stars she’s not president and Bill is not the “first gentleman.”

Nancy Pelosi is currently the most powerful Democrat. She is the face of the party (as well as the hands). Is she someone who will inspire independents to become Democrats? Democrats love her. Conservatives can barely stand to look at her.

The most incompetently managed, crime-ridden cities in the country are run solely by Democrats. If they can’t run cities why would anyone want them to run the country? Those cities should be seen as canaries in the coal mine.

“Impeach Trump!” Would you mind telling me for what, specifically? Could you name just one of his “crimes and misdemeanors?” They’ve offered nothing but a bunch of vacuous accusations, e.g. he’s “unfit” to be president.

The Mueller report took 22 months and could not find any collusion or obstruction. It was based on something so flimsy and ludicrous it should not have taken more than 22 minutes to evaluate and reject. Even now the Democrats cannot let go of it.

To Democrats way of thinking the very thought of Donald Trump being president is simply too horrible to contemplate. He has driven the Democrats to distraction.

As Victor Davis Hanson wrote recently, “One way of envisioning the Democratic obsession with Trump is as an addiction.” Unfortunately, there are no rehab programs for political parties.

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◼ A Grotesque Political Party June 14, 2019

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 rossecon@gmail.com.

Intellectual Poverty on the Left

You may have noticed that conservatives are blessed with an impressive lineup of intellectual heavyweights. Liberals have none, literally none. A few of those on the conservative side are Thomas Sowell, Victor Davis Hanson, Dennis Prager, Shelby Steele, Jordan Peterson, and Mark Levin.

Thomas Sowell is an economist, ex-Marine, Hoover Institution scholar, and the author of over 30 books. If you’ve never read one you don’t know what you’re missing. Two of his classics are Knowledge and Decisions and The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. He is well known for his many pearls of wisdom which he terms, “random thoughts on the passing scene.” Those now can be found on Twitter.

Jordan Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and Hillsdale College. He is best known for his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Several million copies have been sold. It was even a number-one bestseller in Sweden. If you read that book you will understand life better, and if you follow the rules you will be a better person. The book is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Jordan Peterson is possibly the wisest man alive. Fortunately for the rest of us he shares his wisdom through his books, interviews, podcasts, and seminars. Peterson is despised by the left. That says much more about them than him.

Besides his columns, daily radio show, and books, Dennis Prager is the founder and frequent contributor to Prager University. Prager U presents concise, thoughtful five-minute lectures on a weekly basis, and recently reached a milestone of two billion views. His latest book is The Rational Bible: Genesis.

Victor Davis Hanson is a former professor of classical Greek history and is also a scholar at the Hoover Institution. He writes columns usually once or twice a week and appears on Fox News about as often. The amount of logic and historical perspective he includes in his columns is mind-boggling. His latest book is The Case for Trump.

Mark Levin is founder of the Landmark Legal Foundation, the author of several best-selling books, host of a daily radio show and a weekly hour-long interview show on Fox News. His just published book, Unfreedom of the Press, is the number one best seller on Amazon. Levin never leaves you wondering what he believes.

Shelby Steele is another scholar at the Hoover Institution and the author of The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America, and Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country. His essays appear regularly on the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages.

You cannot name a single liberal who has anything approaching the above credentials or intellectual output. Why? There are a number of reasons.

Liberalism is fundamentally about feelings rather than thoughts. Also the left focuses on intentions, the right focuses on results and the ways by which results are achieved.

An advantage of making intentions your goal is that once you choose and announce them, you’re done. No need to follow up to see if your intentions were realized. No need to consider second or third order effects.

Leftism is about force, conservatism is about freedom and voluntary exchange. The use of force needs no theory or ideology. Anyone willing to rely on force to accomplish his or her objectives doesn’t really need to understand how the world works.

The mindset of the writers listed above reflects what is written in Ecclesiastes, “And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven… and I gave my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly.”

The foremost source of the left’s intellectual poverty is arrogance. Arrogance kills curiosity. Those on the left feel they already know all they need to know. They have nothing left to learn or to bother thinking deeply about. Ironically, they feel intellectually superior to conservatives.

A prerequisite for being a serious thinker is curiosity. It requires being curious about how things work — society, the economy, human nature, for example. Curiosity is the incentive for doing the hard work of study and serious thought.

The left also feels morally superior to any of our predecessors. Conservatives, on the other hand, possess a deep respect and reverence for the wisdom we’ve inherited from, for example, the Greeks, the Bible, Shakespeare, and the Founding Fathers.

Isaac Newton famously said, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Even Newton needed to know what those preceding him had discovered. On the left there’s no gratitude for the wisdom endowed to us by our forebears. Rather than gratitude there’s disdain, another reflection of their arrogance.

The opposite of arrogance is humility. As Isaac Newton also recognized, “What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean.”

A 2018 study reported in the Journal of Positive Psychology entitled “Links Between Intellectual Humility and Acquiring Knowledge” found that Intellectual humility (IH)

was associated with a variety of characteristics associated with knowledge acquisition, including reflective thinking, need for cognition, intellectual engagement, curiosity, intellectual openness, and open-minded thinking.… These links may help explain the observed relationship between IH and possessing more knowledge.

The entire study, by Elizabeth Krumrei-Mancuso, Megan Haggard et al., is worth reading.

As long as the left holds on to its arrogance it will never match the richness of the right’s intellectual offerings. It’s another reason why being a conservative is a whole lot more fun than being a liberal.

Fossil Fuels Phobia

Democrats always wind up hurting those they ostensibly care about.

The Democrat Party’s Green New Deal is nothing but a pipe dream. Its only value is to serve as a reminder of the party’s fossil fuels’ lunacy.

Fossil fuels are an issue that sharply distinguishes Democrats from Republicans. Republicans consider fossil fuels a blessing, Democrats consider them a curse. Democrats openly advocate leaving our fossil fuels in the ground beyond the reach of humans. The radical environmentalist group Greenpeace is waging a “keep it in the ground” campaign.

The Democrats protest every attempt to increase the supply and reduce the prices of oil and gas. They fight fracking, pipelines, offshore drilling, and development of ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Reserve). They have advocated special taxes on fossil fuels (the “carbon tax”), and arbitrary mileage requirements for cars and trucks. Fracking is banned in the entire state of New York. They guilt-trip everyone for their so-called “carbon footprints.”

Fossil fuels provide a wide array of benefits to humans. Those benefits are nothing short of profound — warmth, mobility, illumination, cooking, air-conditioning, just to name a few of the more obvious ones. Fossil fuels are not a minor blessing, they are a gigantic blessing. Without them our living standards would be a fraction of what they are now.

Fossil fuels are the raw materials for a mind-boggling array of products. Natural gas, surprisingly, is the primary ingredient in the production of nitrogen fertilizer, a major factor in “the green revolution.”

When oil and gas prices are low the benefits reverberate throughout the economy. Oil and gas prices can be thought of as “super prices,” prices that affect thousands of other prices. (Other examples of super prices are exchange rates and interest rates.)

Energy is a major cost for businesses and industries. For individuals low oil and gas prices are the equivalents of a pay raise or tax reduction. Democrats claim to be champions of low and middle income groups. Their disdain for the enormous benefits of low prices shows them for the frauds they actually are. Judging by their policies Democrat politicians are economic sadists.

California is an example of what happens when Democrat policies are pursued without opposition. Gasoline prices in the state are typically a dollar per gallon higher than those prevailing in the rest of the U.S.

Another way fossil fuels are a blessing is their sheer abundance. Humans have been enjoying the benefits of fossil fuels for over 200 years and yet the known recoverable reserves are greater than ever before.

Although the physical quantity is no greater than it was at the beginning of that period, our ability to identify and recover what’s there has increased exponentially, basically because human knowledge and technology have increased exponentially. As R.W. Emerson put it, “invention breeds invention.” Amazingly, known reserves are increasing faster than they’re being depleted. The once common concern known as “peak oil” looks silly in hindsight.

The two main factors contributing to the abundance of oil and gas are fracking and horizontal drilling. Fracking makes possible the recovery of oil and gas from shale formations which are common across the globe under both land and sea.

For example, the Permian Basin in southwest Texas is now responsible for a third of all the oil and gas produced in the U.S. Although once a major source of production, it had reached a peak in the early 1970s. With the advent of fracking it is now the world’s most productive oil field, recently surpassing Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field. A bonus is that oil from the Permian is “sweet” (meaning low sulphur), making it less costly to refine.

Three new pipelines connecting the Permian Basin to the Gulf are scheduled for completion next year. Their combined capacity will be more than 2 million barrels a day.

The abundance of oil within our borders provides us foreign policy flexibility. We can get along just fine without Iranian and Venezuelan oil.

An often underappreciated advantage of fossil fuels is that they are “energy dense.” Solar and wind energy are anything but energy dense because sunlight and wind are not energy dense.

Relying on solar panels to power a thousand homes requires 32 acres of land. Additionally, that land will be taken up for as long as the power is generated. The grotesque solar panels and windmills will be visible for who knows how long. Windmills kill more birds every year than oil spills ever have or ever will.

A major challenge with so-called renewables is storability. The electricity generated by solar and windmills often does not match when it’s needed. Oil, gas, and coal are relatively easy to store and match availability with need. For automobiles, gas tanks are cheaper and last longer than batteries. Filling a gas tank is more time efficient than charging a battery. Time is the scarcest resource.

An oil or gas well requires an opening in the ground approximately one foot in diameter. After the well is completed the drilling rig can be taken away and used again elsewhere. Horizontal drilling reduces the necessary footprint even further by increasing the area reachable from a single well.

Fossil fuels are relatively easy to transport. Oil is a liquid, natural gas is, of course, a gas. Because of those characteristics both can be transported to ports and refineries via pipelines. Pipelines are much cheaper and safer than the alternatives, e.g. trains, ships, and trucks.

Unfortunately, protesters and lawsuit filers do everything in their power to obstruct pipeline construction. Completion of the famous Keystone Pipeline that goes from Canada to the Mississippi River is currently on hold because of one judge’s order. Fortunately, the Trump administration recently submitted a new permit application for the pipeline so it may once again be back on track for completion. Democrats love talking about the need for more investments in “infrastructure,” but anytime it goes from talking to doing they’re missing in action.

So why do Democrats think that fossil fuels are a curse and that we should even cease using them altogether? There is only one reason they offer — the possibility of man-made climate change.

The choice we face is between enormous current benefits that are 100 percent certain compared to the possibility of climate disaster decades in the future. Keep in mind the disaster is a prediction, not a certainty. It is not even a probability, at least not one that has been quantified. Something in the future cannot be certain, especially not decades in the future.

At this point the possible connection between CO2 and climate change is a theory, not a proven fact. The predictions are based entirely on computer models which have been dismal failures in predicting past climate changes. Climate alarmists don’t even offer a clear definition of “climate change.”

Democrats believe that all the benefits we derive from fossil fuels can be derived by developing “alternatives,” the so-called “renewable resources.” Renewable and non-renewable are how they define good and bad. It’s not that simple. In the real world every choice has advantages and disadvantages.

The Democrats’ hostility toward fossil fuels leads them to all kinds of counterproductive policies. Their ethanol mandates result in forty percent of all the land used to grow corn being devoted to ethanol production. Currently that’s over 34 million acres in the U.S. alone. That has the secondary effect of reducing the supply and increasing the prices for food available for humans and other animals, once again exposing the Democrats willingness to punish those they profess to care about.

Ethanol does serious harm to small gasoline engines. (Do not put it in your lawnmower.) Gasoline is oil-based, ethanol is water-based. Mixing them and keeping them mixed is problematic.

Ethanol produces only about two thirds as much energy per gallon as does gasoline. That difference reduces mileage about one to two miles per gallon, ironically at the same time the government is increasing mileage requirements. In light of the abundance of fossil fuels, using farmland to produce energy is a terrible idea.

To deny humanity the enormous blessings of fossil fuels is ridiculous. The Green New Deal proves that the Democrat Party is not serious. The party that was once serious has detached itself from reality.

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◼ Fossil Fuels Phobia April 25, 2019

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 rossecon@gmail.com.

There’s Something Rotten in Academia

The deterioration of American higher education is a national tragedy. Regarding the current admissions cheating scandal, Alan Dershowitz, who was a Harvard Law School professor for over forty years, said, “It is the tip of a very, very deep iceberg.” Too true. A vital societal institution has become deeply corrupted and obscenely overpriced.

Increased price, decreased value

College tuition has increased at rates far beyond prices in general. Since 1980 tuition has increased 260 percent vs. 120 percent for the general price level, according to the Department of Education. That discrepancy is not an accident. It has been deliberate and devious.

Like sellers in general, colleges “charge what the traffic will bear.” In a number of ways they have increased what the traffic will bear. One such way is selling the idea that everyone needs a college education. That, of course, is absolutely wrong and a huge misallocation of resources has resulted from making everyone believe it’s true.

There is, of course, method to this madness. The Democrat Party is the most enthusiastic proponent of the “everyone ought to go to college” mantra. It is typical of the Party’s “one-size-fits-all” mind-set. Bernie Sanders’ campaign issue of “free college for everyone” is another big step in that direction. The Democrat habit of calling everything a “right” is one of their favorite government-growing deceptions. The last thing we need, however, are more taxpayer subsidies going to higher education.

Since almost everyone in academia is a Democrat or a leftist, it’s an effective way to transfer wealth to their friends and supporters. It is as big a “conflict of interest” as you could ever find.

Academic/government loan sharks

Another way what the traffic will bear has increased is the enticement and easy availability of student loans. Total student debt is now nearly one and half trillion dollars and climbing. Students leave their college days long on debt and short on knowledge. It often takes them decades to repay and causes major life distortions — delayed marriage, child bearing, home purchases, etc. Having those loans forgiven by way of bankruptcy is virtually impossible. Higher education and its big government enablers have become the world’s biggest loan sharks.

Perverse redistribution of income

The unnecessarily high cost of college has caused an enormous transfer of wealth from productive members of society to bloated administrations and overpaid professors. Professors and administrators have incomes far above the mean. Inequality, of course, is one of the Democrats favorite obsessions which they remind us about ad nauseam.

Grade inflation and grade elimination

Besides tuition inflation, grade inflation has lessened the value of what students pay the higher price for. At most universities it’s now almost impossible to receive a grade lower than a “C.” Many universities have abandoned grading altogether. It’s akin to all participants receiving a trophy or not keeping score. That is a huge mistake. Entire universities have become “safe spaces” from the trauma of a bad grade. Grades used to be important sources of incentives and information. No longer. A college transcript provides less and less real information.

Mission creep

As is true in many parts of our culture higher education has been corrupted by “mission creep.” Rather than focusing on its age-old and traditional goal of transferring knowledge from one generation to the next, universities now consider themselves crusaders in charge of saving the world from every imagined kind of catastrophe. Professors and administrators have grossly exaggerated senses of self-importance. The media, of course, suffer from the same affliction.

A more appropriate description of what’s happening in academia is “mission inversion.” Campuses used to be known for freedom of thought, intellectual diversity and open-mindedness. They’ve flipped. They’ve become repressive and intolerant, and even violent against opposing ideas.

College campuses have become bland, monotonous intellectual dead zones. There is total intellectual conformity and a deep fear of and hostility toward differing points of view. They’ve become mini-North Koreas.

The obsession with multiculturalism has resulted in English majors graduating without ever having read anything written by Shakespeare. The very term “Western Civilization” is scorned. “Western civ” used to be a standard requirement of “general education” and still should be.

The proliferation of the so-called “studies” curricula is another way higher education has been diluted. “Gender Studies” departments have no discernable purpose or definition beyond victimology and offering a catalog of reasons for resenting men. What, precisely, is the definition of and mission statement of “ethnic studies?” After graduation what’s been “learned” is of no real value to potential employers and another impediment to repaying student loans. Seeing Gender Studies as a major on an applicant’s résumé is probably a “stay away” sign to most employers.

Abandonment of merit-based standards

The admission-buying scandal has correctly been described as a zero-sum game. The students who were admitted dishonestly resulted in legitimately qualified students being denied admission. However, the population of wronged applicants victimized in that context is dwarfed by the same kind of injustice created by affirmative action and academia’s’ diversity obsession. Affirmative action and diversity goals are race-based selection systems. That is racism pure and simple.

Student snowflakes

Another tragic error committed by spineless college administrators is the coddling of their students. The students are treated, not like adults, but as delicate and fragile orchids. The students’ demands for “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” ought to be ridiculed and ignored, not catered to. Universities are busy creating a generation of thin-skinned, emotional weaklings.

That is a serious disservice to those students. It is no way to prepare them for the harsh and unsympathetic world they will enter after graduation. “Safe spaces” are few and far between in the real world.

Why I left academia

Upon finishing graduate school in 1969 I taught economics for ten years at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California where I still live. There was a combination of reasons why I decided to leave teaching, but the one foremost in my mind was this — I came to the conclusion that about a fourth of the students in my classes were in the wrong place. They were wasting their time, my time, and theirs’ or their parents’ money.

The issue, as I saw it, was their lack of intellectual curiosity. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. We all have different interests. Some were there as a way of delaying adulthood for four more years. (Many of them managed to do that for five, six, or seven years.) There’s nothing essentially wrong with that either, but it ought not be subsidized with taxpayers’ money.

The inevitable result was a decline in the content of the course. A fourth or more of the class cannot be ignored. Even back then the administration would not allow that many students receiving failing grades. It was necessary to simplify the course material.

That lower course quality was a cost borne by the rest of the class. It’s one of the primary results of telling everyone they should attend college. I found it to be an extremely frustrating situation. I decided to switch from teaching economics to doing economics and went into private practice as a wealth manager. That’s what I still do.

I loved my time as a student and as a professor. It pains me to witness what higher education has descended to. I fervently hope that sooner or later it will return to its former heights. In the meantime you can help by ignoring your alma maters’ fund-raising requests.

If you happen to be thinking about going to college, explore your alternatives. Your time and resources might be better spent elsewhere. If you’ve been rejected by the college of your choice it could well be a blessing in disguise. Life is full of those.

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◼ There’s Something Rotten in Academia March 29, 2019,

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 rossecon@gmail.com.