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Tue, 11 Jul 2006

Progressive but with economics

I found out from a friend of a friend that he's been introducing me as someone who "Used to be one of us (that is, progressive) but he read a book on economics." Perhaps he means that I got corrupted? I think it is rather that I saw that progressive goals are being subverted by secondary progressive agendas. A classic example is "doing good" versus "feeling good". Is it more important to actually help people? Or is it more important to feel like you're helping people? The secondary progressive agenda (to which I no longer subscribe) is to feel like you're helping people. I think that progressives, like conservatives, are genuinely good people. They actually want to help people. Trouble is that their agendas conflict with their goals.

So if I'm a progressive but with economics, that implies that progressives are without economics. I think they're not accidentally ignorant. I think they're purposefully ignorant, because they love their agendas more than their goals. Basically, they don't care about economics. This makes them, unfortunately, like spacefarers who don't care about physics, or seafarers who don't care about navigation. You can't help poor people until you understand why they're poor. To those who don't know: poor people aren't poor because they have no money. They're poor because all their choices in life suck. Giving them money doesn't automatically solve this problem for them. It might give them a few better choices, but for example, money won't cure a mental health problem, or a substance addiction problem, or an abusive spouse.

posted at: 04:30 | path: /economics | permanent link to this entry

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