Books I Haven't Read 1: The Vision of the Annointed

[Guest]

I'm beginning to wonder what Scratch would be if Dr. Peterson just ignored him

I'd love it, stemelbow. I hope that he does this--that he vows to never respond to me, rather like what he does with Kevin Graham.

Because, in that event, Scratch would be able to malign and slander me without even the slightest fear of contradiction.

He would be in absolute ecstasy.

You can start by condemning the needlessly vicious and agenda-driven attack on Kishkumen.

Shades of the Rodney King beating! Where did this vicious and agenda-driven attack on Kishkumen occur? Can anybody supply a reference? Is there video? Do the doctors hold out any hope for Kishkumen's recovery?

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[_Droopy]

That's enough to discredit anything he has to say. But ever since he was proved wrong about the role of the CRA in the housing crisis, along with his subsequent refusal to admit being proved wrong, that did it for me.

The degree to which your own hermetically sealed internal thought world has come to dominate your ability to negotiate the real external world about you is alarming.

The facts regarding the CRA and the longstanding "affordable housing" initiatives began in the late seventies are now so well understood as to be nearly banal. Your shocking ignorance of that evidence and those facts, and your willingness to call liars anyone, not the least one of intellectual and scholarly eminence as Dr. Sowell, who holds principled, systematic and coherent views different than yours, yet again speaks loudly of what can only be described as your moral shallowness and intellectual insecurity.

Good heavens, Kevin, can't you have an intelligent, informed debate with anyone on anything?

[_Droopy]

And you pretend to wonder, Kevin, why other people attack you personally (Alma 41:3).

[_Droopy]

Let's try another one, Gad (and whoever wishes to participate, but you'll have to bring your own matches)

Two books from the libertarian/modern conservative perspective that I consider core reading for anyone, but also leftists who wish to understand the philosophy and evidential background of conservative economic thought, are two classic works by Henry Hazlett, Economics in One Lesson, and Man Vs. the Welfare State.

Even if one chooses not to accept the arguments therein, these works are key to understanding the nature of the theory and application of free market economics, limited, constitutional government, and their relation to the cultural, political, and moral viability of a free society.

Who here has read them, and what is your analysis?

[_Droopy]

I'm surprised Droopy hasn't stepped in to give an intellectually serious lecture on -- something.

To the likes of you, Kish, and Scratch?

To what purpose?

[_Droopy]

I know enough about Sowell to know nothing he says can be trusted, the same way I know nothing John Gee or William Schryver say can be trusted. There is no need to read whatever books they come out with when you know the authors are not interested in what's actually true. They're only interested in their agenda. Sowell's agenda is to get more funding from rich Right Wing interest groups by pumping out more nonsense for the FOX News talking points,

Its not at all difficult to see why, Kevin, you have credibility problems in two areas, the first being intellectual substance, and the second being intellectual integrity.

and Gee and Schryver's agenda is to deceive their audience on Book of Abraham matters.

Never, never in my life have I ever seen one man so surrounded by liars, shills, and frauds. Graham is one lone island of intellectual rigor and honesty in a sea of sham and mendacity. Conservative, libertarian, and LDS. All the same.

What would we do without him?

[_Droopy]

It pains me to say this Kevin, but you are right regarding Sowell. The Community Reinvestment Act had absolutely nothing to do with the housing crises--that fact is absolutely indisputable.

Actually, its easily demonstratable both empirically and historically as a matter of conceptually obvious cause and effect relationships and a basic knowledge of how the laws of economics work.

The assertion that the CRA played a role in the housing crisis is just as indisputably false as the assertion that the facsimiles published in the Book of Abraham are a correct interpretation of Egyptian.

How seamless and easy it seems to be for a leftist to slide effortlessly from one intellectual enormity to another. Combine leftism with anti-Mormonism (not at all a problem, as the existence of this board indicates) and the the entire personality begins to list to port.

[_Droopy]

Yes, and wasn't Sowell the same guy you corrected as to whether government can create wealth? I believe you emailed him and he conceded the point.

No, he didn't, not at all. He told him that in some, rare and unique cases, the concept of "wealth" can be understood to have been created by government activity. But even here, the fundamental reality remains that all wealth understood to have in some sense been "created" by government has in no sense been "created" in the manner in which private sector productive economic activity creates it. All "wealth creation" by the state is really nothing more than wealth shifting; it is wealth that has been shifted from one use or resource allocation to another, and it is not, and cannot be, anything other than that, by definition and by logical necessity.

Government "wealth creation" does not increase the size of the economy. There is wealth "creation," at different points as wealth is transposed from one place and use to another, but no economic growth.

The CRA argument is hopelessly untenable, and yet if you pick up one of his books and flip to the index you'll find dozens of pages that talk about it.

Because he's a distinguished economist and rigorous thinker who knows what he's talking about, and you are not. You are also a textbook populist leftist without the slightest idea regarding the nature of free market economies and the dynamics of human action that govern them, while he is a conservative/libertarian with a deep background in economics, political philosophy, and political economy.

You are also an enemy of liberty, while he is its champion.

The CRA is a favorite punching bag by Right Wing know-nothings and the only reason they think the CRA is to blame is because of dishonest hacks like Sowell.

You pile irony upon irony upon irony without restraint. It becomes difficult to process after a while.

[_Gadianton]

No, he didn't, not at all. He told him that in some, rare and unique cases, the concept of "wealth" can be understood to have been created by government activity....it is wealth that has been shifted from one use or resource allocation to another, and it is not, and cannot be, anything other than that, by definition and by logical necessity.

If wealth can't be created by the government due to "logical necessity," then there are no unique cases where in some sense, the government creates wealth.

Whether or not government spending can create wealth is ultimately an empirical question, there are no constraints of logic that prohibit government intervention from creating wealth. In fact, you only screw yourself by logically constraining government intervention to reallocation, because if that's the case, then government intervention can't diminish wealth either! You can't blame government intervention for hurting the economy!

Oh wait, I can hear you scrambling to change your position to: the law of conservation of wealth holds during government intervention, but after the intervention, the effect can be negative, thus crashing the economy. Well, if that's true, then the converse is a possibility as well. In other words, we've caught you red-handed playing a semantics game to score a rhetorical point rather than make an intellectually serious point about economics.

[_Droopy]

I dedicated a threadto this nonsense a while back, but droopy was reduced to dismissing every authority I presented as some Liberal hack who probably works for moveon.org, huffingtonpost.com, or one of the many other left-leaning websites he is afraid of. That is all his response amounted to.

That's actually not what happened. Besides the standard leftist spin sites you normally use, such as the Huffpo, Center for American Progress, utterly obscure, unknown leftist blogs, and the Workers World, your sources for your entire defense of this government created nightmare was cobbled together from the very government agencies and government insiders, such as Ben Bernake, who were at the very center of the debacle and who had no intention nor incentive to come clean. You provided not a single, independent scholarly or investigative journalistic non-government source that did not already have their fingers deep in the housing market collapse pie.

Why? Because government insiders invested in covering their backsides were the only sources you could find with the appearance of respectability without going to openly ideological sources who's bias would be obvious.