MCViewPoint

Magical thinking is all around us. It is difficult to escape from it, wherever we turn.

Wokesters who favor the minimum wage can typically be relied upon to also champion foreign aid. But this is a downright self-contradiction. For if they were correct in the first of these positions, there would simply be no justification for the latter. People in poor countries, “developing” ones too, could simply be told that the foreign aid spigot was being turned off, and that they should all implement a minimum wage law, and keep raising its level until poverty was eradicated.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/136010897

Walter Block

“Developing” Countries

There is the fact that nations such as Cuba, Venezuela, several in Africa and south Asia, are commonly characterized as “developing.” In some cases, this is an accurate description as to what is really going on. Others of them are stuck in a rut, neither improving nor worsening. Life goes on there as it always has. But in all too many examples, this appellation is the very opposite of the truth: they are actually retrogressing.

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Why, then, call them “developing?” The hope, presumably, is that this nomenclature will affect reality. One might as well call a rainy day “sunny” in the expectation that the weather will change. If there is a dry spell, one might as well do a rain dance in order to impact the climate in that direction.

Ms.

Nor can we ignore “Ms.” in this context. At one time in our past women were referred to as Miss or Mrs. What was this distinction based upon? Marital status, of course. The former were married, the latter, not. But this distinction was seen as invidious by the forces of political correctness. Women should not be defined by marital status. Marriage, presumably, exploited women, and this was one way of reducing the sway of that evil institution.

In any case, no such distinction was made for men. Well, there was Mister for married men, Master for the unmarried ones but very few people even knew about this. The latter had to go, for obvious reasons (as are, now, grandmaster in chess, master bedroom, etc., now under attack).

White and Black

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