``All data indicate that the more objectively educated people become today, the more likely they are to trust the state as a means of social salvation. You can map this demographically. The higher the level of education, the more the inclination toward socialist thinking. Why is this? Hayek might say that it has something to do with the hubris of intellectuals who believe that they can concoct a better social order in their minds than the one that freedom can create. Mises might draw attention to the resentment on the part of intellectuals, that they are not as valued by society as entrepreneurs or sports stars. Rothbard might point out that intellectuals are drawn to the state as a way of legitimizing their ideas and securing their financial well-being.”-Lew Rockwell, President and founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the First and the Next 25 years
If the Glorietta 2 blast turns out to be an accident instead of a ghastly terrorist activity, then our observation, which had earlier demystified the political complicity largely sold by politicians and media and bought by the politically obsessed public, appears to have been validated.
Like in the financial markets, this simply shows how the fickle public easily embraces oversimplified explanations to issues bereft of logical arguments. And naturally, when an issue is stripped of the political equation, the public’s attention simply gravitates to the next controversy. Easy come easy goes.
It never ceases to amaze how we never seem to realize of mainstream media’s implicit principal role of SELLING SENSATION, with politicos and their affiliates serving as their feedstock--where the heavily promulgated notion of a “collectivist” political economic renaissance can be seductively acquired from the simplistic exercise of “virtues based governance” or from the leadership “game of musical chairs” or from a bigger “welfare based system”. Since the said solutions appear to be so easy to achieve, isn’t it a wonder why such “appealing” formulas has been paradoxically so elusive…since time immemorial? Yet, for most analysis, selectively choosing on facts to prove assertions on such premises rather than objective appraisal manifests of how we never seem to learn from history or even from developing trends.
For us, any present gains derived from such dynamics are likely to be short-term in nature and illusory. Without the attendant material reforms in the country’s deeply entrenched system of a political “semi-feudal” patronage framework to a culture of entrepreneurship, we are unlikely to see our version of “Shangri-La” or an end to such controversy focused political leadership cycles. Today’s affluent modern nations have existed mostly not due to a single particular leader, but through its economically empowered people. We recall
Besides, since it is mainstream media’s business to sell controversies, hence there will always be controversies to be found. Moreover, as information gets diffused via the non traditional channels aided by advances of technology, controversies are likely to permeate to wider range of issues and to flourish even more. Again like in the financial markets, today’s environment can drown you with an ocean of information, yet, what matters aren’t the superficialities of the sensational, but of the substance. Author Steven Landsburg says it best, excerpted from his book More Sex is Safer Sex, The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics (highlight mine)…
``The problem with the news is that it tends to be reported by journalist majors. That’s probably better than letting them design bridges, but it does call for a certain skepticism on the part of the reader.
``Even when the facts are right, the interpretation can be very wrong—especially on hot button issues like racial profiling or outsourcing, where prejudices run deep. If you want to know what’s really happening, a little economic analysis can go along way.”
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