I See Dumb People: Occupy Everywhere!

When deciding what on earth to write about today, I found this. Read it. Now isn’t that hilarious? Normally, I would just have a hearty chortle upon reading something like this, and nothing more would come of it. I have nothing against Nic Carter. I don’t even know who the guy is. He’s probably a perfectly nice person but he has found himself in the unfortunate position of linking to me as an example of some popular delusion he thinks he has identified.

My pride is hurt. I feel I need to rebut. While I agree with a great deal of the sentiment of Nic’s article, some of his arguments exhibit the combination of being both meretriciously false and mind-bottlingly impertinent. There really isn’t much you can say about things like “proactive efforts such as Obamacare, …(and) …the economic stimulus (which averted another Great Depression)” or “the true issue of global economic competition” that doesn’t come across as yes-no, yes-no. It is also very hard to criticize in the first place because I am rolling in such fits of hysterical laughter that I can’t think properly.

You simply cannot argue with people who believe that government should create jobs, for example. I don’t think it’s too far fetched to assume that Nic believes this. If he does not, then I apologise, but if he does, then this is why he is wrong. If you are really adventurous, then this is why he is really wrong. You can find just about every rebuttal to socialist nonsense on Mises.Org, if you type in the right buzz word. Any readers who are interested in such things should look around. Try ‘affordable housing’, ‘social justice’ or ‘minimum wage’. I have no idea what you will find; these are just off the top of my head.

We can develop this into a fun little game. Pick some contentious political or economic issue. I will tell you what Nic thinks about it, and Ludwig von Mises will tell you why he’s wrong. Well, Ludwig von Mises must be a right-wing crackpot then, right? And it should also work the other way around, right? Nic should be able to tell you what I think, and then Keynes, or Proudhon, or Gramsci would tell me why I’m wrong. I don’t think Nic could accurately predict anything von Mises or I think. He linked to my article as an example of “common themes that have been relentlessly espoused by the conservative critics such as Ann Coulter”. Case in point. Read this. Think that is conservative?

This is my real issue. Nic probably does think I am a conservative, whatever he means by that. He compared me to Ann Coulter, for goodness sake. His line of thought follows that I must therefore oppose the Occupy movement, frequent Fox News and worship Rush Limbaugh. None of these are accurate. I think the Occupy movement is seriously misguided, but I don’t oppose it. I will watch Fox News but I will not take it seriously (The same goes for the BBC, which is far worse) and I think Limbaugh is a dope.

Impulsive categorization of this kind blurs the bajeezus out of any rational political discussion. Epithets fly everywhere, and the candidates may as well shout ‘Shut up you liberal!’, ‘No, you shut up you conservative!’, despite the fact that neither fit these bills, and both may actually have something interesting to say. I certainly think I have something interesting to say. Bear with me on this, and, if you like, try and attach a pointless political epithet to my argument. What do you think von Mises would say? There are just endless hours of fun to be had!

I think that Occupy Wall Street has touched on a serious and obvious issue that eluded the majority of the Tea Party. While the infrastructure that allowed for the financial catastrophe was undoubtedly created at the level of federal government by a politically corrupt drive for affordable housing, this does not excuse the behaviour of those bankers who exacerbated the crisis. Either they knew that the CDOs were bunk and they took advantage of their federal underwriting to profiteer, furthering the feed of misinformation in the market, and worsening the crisis when it came, or they didnt know they were bunk and are totally negligent.

Are these crimes? Technically, I don’t know, but I think they should be. They should also be guarded against in the future. If this requires regulation, then so be it. However, equally theoretically criminal, and equally not likely to be actual technical crimes, are the actions of the generations of politicians who created the environment which allowed this to happen in the first place. Hence I agree with both the Tea Party and Occupy, and I just wish they would drop the bits they are wrong about so that they can agree with each other.

Is that what you thought I would say? Does that fit the conservative bill? If you have read anything I have written previously for this publication, you might have been on the right track. What strikes me about Nic linking to my previous post is that I would have thought he would agree almost exactly with the overall message, even though he may have been agitated by my sarcastic quip at the 99% rhetoric. (I am no fan of Rhetoric)

So why doesn’t he? As I mentioned, I agree with him on at least some of the things he says. More on that in a moment, but first, I think I can explain what Nic has done.

Nic has found an idea,

“There is nothing wrong with amassing wealth—but there is something wrong with bankrolling elections and generating federal favours for the super rich’

And later,

“The electoral, ‘democratic’ process is a sham, and the two-party system no longer offers a choice. Republican or Democrat, the same corporate and special interests get re-elected every year.”

It’s a good idea. I think I like his idea. Unfortunately, he has then assumed an intrinsic association between this idea and an entire ideology of which it may form a part. However, it may instead form a part of any number of other ideologies because there is no necessary and intrinsic association whatsoever. Nic’s assumption to the contrary has resulted in him regurgitating a whole swathe of other ideas that have nothing to do with what he wanted to talk about.

It is possible to have ideas independent from ideologies. The Tea Party and OWS share ideas, yet they undoubtedly do not share ideologies. Since I too share this idea, I support them both, as far as they propose this idea and not something else.

Even Nic and I share ideas! The last paragraph of the Distribution of Lies says almost exactly the same thing as Nic’s second in terms of the mainstream media. It may as well be a paraphrasing. The final two paragraphs of Greed is Good (the title of which is a joke, by the way) would find remarkable favour with OWS. I have heard that Karl Marx had great taste in music, and apparently Martin Luther King was a litterbug. As these are merely incidental facts and not fundamental contradictions, they do not change how I feel about anything in particular. These are similarities in ideas, not ideologies.

The more abstractly you think about this, the more obviously silly these modes of thought become. You would be unlikely to shout ‘shut up you liberal!’ when discussing the best way to cook a steak. But that’s because very few people would use a particular method of steak cooking to back up quantitative easing. These do not seem ideologically concomitant, but then I would argue that no two ideas must be viewed as occupying one and the same ideology. In mistaking potential connections as ideologically necessary we start to take sides for and against everything: economic theory, political movements, steak cooking, whatever…

This is what Nic does. When he talks about the youthful intolerance of injustice and the popular expression of disgust at the state of affairs, I am right with him. But then he starts talking about pseudo-Keynesian monetary theory and how the Tea Party are astroturfed cronies, as if all are one and the same thing. ‘I want it medium rare damnit!’… I’m sure you do, pal.

So what is really the problem here? I think it is ideology in the first place; thoughtlessly accepting ideas because they fit a model that has worked in the past. Taking things on faith is fine, but if you turn around and start using these things in debates then you are asking for trouble. You will be in a much healthier position if you have no such model. That way it is very unlikely that you will thoughtlessly accept ideas.

Does Nic adopt the idea because it suits his ideology? Or does he adopt the ideology because it suits his idea? I don’t think it really matters. Either way, he has an ideology, which means that pretty soon his ideas will come pre-packaged in little plastic boxes. Five minutes in the microwave and you’ll have a tasty rant against globalisation. I hear those go great with steak.

This is why I think I could tell you what Nic thinks about most things. He has demonstrated quite clearly what his ideology is, and he has sallied forth with every epithet he can find. The actual point of his article is extremely interesting, but it is very easy to lose track of it amid the clutter of irrelevant socialist propaganda.

But who am I to speak? Am I such an angel? Obviously, I am not. For all I know I may slip into ideology very regularly. In fact, I think the best possible thing that could come out of this post would be a commenter who points out where I have accepted an idea in an ideological manner; without thinking; because it fits a model.

The difference is that I try not to. If I fail, then that’s a shame, but you can’t ask for much more than 110%. I am perfectly willing to completely change what I think about things. I used to think that if that fell foul of my ideology, I would need to find a new one. Now I think that it is better off not having one at all.

You may object. Clearly I am a libertarian? Possibly, but I have issues with transcendent morality. But I sound awfully Randian? Possibly, but I am staunchly opposed to intellectual property. Friedman couldn’t possibly have said much wrong? He had a terrible conception of economic modelling. If you can pin me down, please say so, and I’ll try my hardest to believe something totally incompatible!

I love the term ‘extremist’, for example used by this silly woman (skip to 3.12). Now I have no idea what she means here. Being funny perhaps? If she is actually applying it to the notion of execution in front of one’s families, then I don’t think she got the joke. Maybe she didn’t; it wasn’t particularly funny. My point is that ‘extremist’ has come to mean anything that does not fit nicely into one of a few very narrow and popular ideological dogmas. I self-categorise as a right wing extremist, a left wing extremist, and probably an upwards and downwards extremist too. We haven’t even gone into the z-axis and I already Occupy Everywhere!

In the sense that she means it, even if she doesn’t understand herself, I think everybody should be an extremist. Try your hardest not to fit into a narrow and popular ideological dogma and you will be doing all right. I certainly consider myself to be an extremist in this sense, outside the realms of popular ideological dogma. And yet this whole thing started because Nic said that I was parroting Ann Coulter. I have far more in common with Nic than with Ann Coulter. I think Nic has seen one thing I have said that he disagrees with and assumed therefore that we must disagree about everything. If I don’t have his ideology, then I must have the other – that nasty, deluded one.

I would encourage Nic, and everybody, to try and Occupy as wide and diverse a political area as they can. It doesn’t mean that you have to have incoherent beliefs, just that you do not use those beliefs you currently hold to exclusively dictate subsequent beliefs that happen to be in exactly the same place. After all, it is the popular spectrum that is incoherent, and I would argue that if you were committed to maintaining as coherent a system of belief as possible, you would by definition Occupy a rather large area as opposed to a single, dimensionless point.

You can lick up everything you want to think from Occupy Wall Street. Or you could take it from Fox News, or the Republicans, or the Democrats, or Ludwig von Mises, or Spongebob Squarepants, or even me.

But then you would have an ideology; it is much better to have ideas.

Finally, I apologise to Nic for being so severe. I propose either that you don’t take it personally and I buy you a beer, or that you do take it personally and start a blogging war that will attract vast readership due to its progressively hostile vitriol.

Or both.