Our Moral Betters (tm) are intellectual morons. Their idea of the Progressive Utopia is in reality a gulag hell-hole.
The Era of Expert Failure
by Arnold Kling
Diversified knowledge required in the modern economy requires relying on experts, but imbuing these experts with political authority has disastrous consequences.
.....
I have faith in experts. Every time I go to the store, I am showing faith in the experts who design, manufacture, and ship products.
Every time I use the services of an accountant, an attorney, or a dentist, I am showing faith in their expertise. Every time I donate to a charity, I am showing faith in the expertise of the organization to use my contributions effectively.
In fact, I would say that our dependence on experts has never been greater. It might seem romantic to live without experts and instead to rely solely on your own instinct and know-how, but such a life would be primitive.
Expertise becomes problematic when it is linked to power. First, it creates a problem for democratic governance. The elected officials who are accountable to voters lack the competence to make well-informed decisions. And, the experts to whom legislators cede authority are unelected. The citizens who are affected by the decisions of these experts have no input into their selection, evaluation, or removal.
A second problem with linking expertise to power is that it diminishes the diversity and competitive pressure faced by the experts.
A key difference between experts in the private sector and experts in the government sector is that the latter have monopoly power, ultimately backed by force. The power of government experts is concentrated and unchecked (or at best checked very poorly), whereas the power of experts in the private sector is constrained by competition and checked by choice. Private organizations have to satisfy the needs of their constituents in order to survive. Ultimately, private experts have to respect the dignity of the individual, because the individual has the freedom to ignore the expert.
These problems with linking expertise with power can be illustrated by specific issues. In each case, elected officials want results. They turn to experts who promise results. The experts cannot deliver. So the experts must ask for more power.....
Original article in PDF:
http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/policy-report/2012/2/cpr32n5-1.pdf
Liberals are liars in the most existential meaning of that concept. They lie to themselves and they prefer their own lies to the truth. This is the core evil in socialism, which is where the lies become institutionalized at the highest level.
But we are not strangers to this. We have 100 million dead to prove that socialism is evil and cannot function.
Socialism by its very nature, at its heart and core, is a system of lies. That society will have more equality is a lie, That the economy will grow faster and be give the average worker more prosperity is a lie. That government will be competent, efficient, evenhanded and careful to obey all of its laws and regulations is a lie. In order for the socialist society to function, it must create and support a myriad of overlapping lies. But it is a truth about human nature that government imposes a type of morality on its citizens. So, when government is built on lies, telling lies and believing lies permeates society. Thus, one of the hidden costs of socialism is how corrosive it is to personal character and morality.
This is not my own theory, but comes from someone who lived it. Václav Havel was a playwright, author, the first president of the Czech Republic (1993–2003) after the Czech–Slovak split.
He wrote a famous essay, The Power of the Powerless (the social and spiritual consequences of socialism)
“The principle involved here is that the center of power is identical with the center of truth.” Havel warns that socialist regimes create and enforce their own truth to maintain power. As time goes on, this truth diverges from factual truth and it increasingly forces those who support and depend upon the power of the regime to corrupt themselves to sustain the artificial truth.
In the end, people not only lie to each other, but they start to lie to themselves.
see:
http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=clanky&val=72_aj_clanky.html&typ=HTML
bkmk