Posted on 06/22/2003 11:29:39 PM PDT by Sir Gawain
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One of the unfortunate results of government-controlled education has been an emphasis on what to think instead of on how to think. Basic principles of clear thinking are fundamentally lacking in most educational systems around the world. And one result of this is the failure to think in terms of fundamental principles.
In reading children are often taught the "look see" method. They are shown words and taught to remember them. In phonics, old fashioned as it is considered, they are taught how to dissect words and pronounce them from their individual components. They see each syllable, and putting them all together are able to form a word. Under the "look-see" method unless they know the entire word already they are at loss. One result is a lack of desire on their part to read.
When it comes to thinking itself the same methods are used. Instead of looking for fundamental principles and building their thought patterns upon them they are merely taught specific facts. The integration of those facts is left missing. And this is directly linked to one of the reasons it is so difficult to explain how a free society works. The fact remains that freedom and reason are intertwined and people who can't think are willing to turn over everything to the state. For them life is a series of complicated and unrelated phenomena crying out for someone to take charge of it all and make it make sense.
One clear indication of this problem arises when we talk about various political or economic issues. A good example is that of price controls. Some locality or nation may be having problems with the supply of a specific good or commodity. The supply doesn't satisfy demand and prices rise as a result. There is political pressure to find a solution through price controls. This measure appeals to people who don't understand the fundamental reasons for price changes and who don't understand that in tinkering with the price system they distort human responses to the shortages. The result is merely a prolonged crisis that undermines its real solution.
A good economist could sit down with a person and explain to them that prices are signals. Censoring that information through price controls changes buying habits. Lower prices tell the public that supply is plentiful. The resulting lower profits for producers tell them that there is no clear advantage in upping their production. So with price controls the problem, instead of being solved, is dragged out over longer and longer time periods. And if the same type of short term "solution" is applied to what will be a growing list of problems then ultimately the entire system is doomed to collapse.
All in all it's not a very difficult concept to grasp. But invariably I find the same thing happening each time this chain of logic is exposed to someone. They will say something along the line of: "Yes, that makes sense when you talk about bread. But what about milk?" You explain the workings of the price system using copper as an example and they want to know how this applies to tungsten or coal.
They fail to grasp the essentials and concentrate on the non essentials. They fail to see the principle but instead are focused on unimportant specifics. The precise metal used is irrelevant. In fact the same is true regardless of what commodity is used. It doesn't matter if you're talking food, minerals, or services. The underlying facts about the nature of economics remains the same.
This fallacious form of thinking is endemic. It takes various forms but it's the same error repeated over and over.
That the principle remains the same regardless of the individual components is something that people have trouble seeing. You use copper as an example and they fail to realize that it doesn't make a difference if you change to tungsten, aluminum or steel.
The more intellectual among us usually grasp this point fairly quickly. The basic principles, they understand, do apply if you change the specifics within the category. So it doesn't matter what grain you're talking about or what mineral for instance.
Instead they fall for a more subtle forms of the same erroneous thinking. Take for example a debate regarding a specific policy. One nation follows a policy which distorts individual incentives and creates unintended consequences. The same policy is now being suggested somewhere else—say Bristania as an made up example. The intellectual, who fails to think in terms of essential principles, will dismiss the Bristania example. They might say something along the lines: "Well, that was Bristania but we don't live in Bristania do we?" Of course the locality is as irrelevant as the commodity. The economic principles are what remained the same and they are not dependent on location either.
Living, as I did for many years in Africa, I witnessed the same type of poor thinking. African leaders merely dismissed the failures of policies they wanted to pursue when those failures took place in Europe or Asia for instance. Socialism, they acknowledged, failed in Europe. But they didn't live in Europe, they lived in Africa. This wasn't merely socialism they were pursuing but African socialism. They were under the illusion that principles change depending on who it is that is taking a specific action.
In an article I wrote on this phenomenon I noted that water, in Africa, doesn't flow uphill. The principle of gravity remains the same regardless of where you are on the planet. Water flows downhill in Europe just as it does in Africa or South America. It doesn't matter what day it is. It doesn't matter who draws the water or spills it on the ground. It is a principle that is true across our world. The laws of economics remain the same as well. Changing the race of the meddlers tampering with the intricate machinery of markets won't change the inevitable consequences. These principles stay the same whether we are talking about this century, the last one or 2000 BC.
Keep the discussion in the same class of entities and the intellectuals will follow your logic. Apply the principles to another class and you lose them. They think that basic principles may work for one class of entities but not for another. They might, for instance, acknowledge that property rights works for the care and maintenance of homes, cars, or even crops. But somehow they think the same thing is untrue if applied to rhinos, cheetahs, or water. But whether it's a mineral or an animal is almost as irrelevant as whether you are talking about copper or brass.
Left intellectuals, these days, concede that markets are effective at supplying televisions, bagels, or Hondas. But they can't conceive of how they could work with medical care, education or highways.
They have failed to grasp the fundamental principles. The world, to them, is one of unrelated entities floating about without any discernible laws behind them. Like the school child who is taught to read through the "look-see" method they have failed to grasp the principles that help us understand the world in which we live. Instead of each word existing in isolation from every other word they see each problem as existing in isolation from every other problem. And that means they are unable to see how basic concepts apply across categories, irrespective of the unimportant specifics. For them each problem is entirely a new one and they grabble with each one forgetting what was learned from other experiments in the past. Sure communism failed, but call the same economic system environmentalism or sustainable development and they'll line up once again behind the jack-booted troops marching us into oblivion.
They keep making the same mistakes over and over because they fail to see the interconnectedness of the issues. These are not isolated problems. They are merely manifestations of the same problems. And using different versions of the same failed "solutions" won't work merely because you are applying them to different specifics.
Jim Peron is the owner of Aristotle's Books in Auckland, New Zealand, and the executive director of the Institue for Liberal Values, Auckland (www.liberalvalues.org.nz). He can be reached at esteem@orcon.net.nz. |
Wish I could have presented the construction as this author did.
The Left's "rank and file" are mostly well-meaning but under-educated or under-equipped intellectually. The Left's "vanguard elite," the group that winds up at the levers of power, knows precisely what it's doing. Friedrich Hayek nailed this in The Road To Serfdom, in particular the chapter "Why The Worst Get On Top."
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
Mr. Peron almost had me, until we got to this part. He's giving us the equivalent of "Look See" for pricing. (BTW it's "Look Say" -- another strike against him.)
Take water, for example. Sure, there are some similarities between the pricing of water, and of something like copper. But there are also very significant differences -- and they're most certainly not "irrelevant."
For example, the same water we drink here in Colorado Springs is treated and used by up to five other communities before it even leaves the state. As a result, we have certain restrictions on what we can do with water that are simply not sensitive to pricing. The downstream communities must have their allocations, regardless of how much or little we pay for our water.
Water law, in fact, is a devilishly complicated business, wherein the rights of downstream users must be taken into account, regardless of what a pricing structure has to say about it. That Mr. Peron does not recognize this is damning.
Also, it is not at all clear how one applies "pricing principles" to something like a rhinoceros or a rain forest or a body of water. The market would most certainly bear the destruction of any or all of these things -- but the market does not answer the question of whether these things can or should be destroyed.
Indeed, on those questions, I believe Mr. Peron would agree that the fundamental principle in those cases is not market forces, but the preservation of what is an undoubted good. A market/pricing approach might be a good strategy (or not) -- but it is merely an overlay to the more fundamental principle or preservation. The theoretical fellow who buys the rights to the rhino population would be rightly condemned if he decided to cash out by selling the species into extinction.
Alas, Peron seems to have fallen afoul of the very thing he criticizes in "Look Say:" Instead of looking for fundamental principles and building their thought patterns upon them they are merely taught specific facts.
As it turns out, he is apparently trying to pass off his own "specific fact" as a fundamental principle.
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