For those of us unwilling or unable to spend a hundred thousand dollars and four years of our life at university only to be turned into a race-baiting, economically illiterate Bolshevik, Michael Huemer gives us the economic and philosophical education I wish I would have had in school.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/huemer-cowen/
by Keith Knight
In a blog post last month, Dr. Tyler Cowen listed a number of books he is currently reading, and specifically mentioned a book which I think is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time. Here is what Cowen said:
“Michael Huemer, Progressive Myths. Michael is a very smart philosopher, but this book seemed like a waste of time to me. Will it persuade anyone? Do we need Michael writing seven-page essays rebutting various claims of the BLM movement and the like?”
I invited Dr. Tyler Cowen on the Libertarian Institute podcast to discuss his objections to Huemer’s Progressive Myths; he politely declined. I’d like to address Dr. Cowen who has an open invitation onto my podcast to defend himself anytime.
I don’t know what metric Cowen uses to differentiate productive books from unproductive books. Let’s assume productivity can be categorized as “Increased efficiency attempting to peruse a given end accounting for (opportunity) costs and benefits.” The book costs $12 on Amazon, is 245 pages, and is a complete refutation of the progressive ideology on economic, philosophical, empirical, and historical grounds.
Huemer provides readers with the very low cost education progressives pretend to offer us!
Progressive ideas are widely embrace by both Democrats and Republicans since it allows politicians to increase their power and social status under the guise of helping society while using involuntary investors (taxpayers) to bear the cost of their programs.
This is why presidents such as Republican Teddy Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson can historically be categorized as progressives, along with George W. Bush and Barack Obama today. All four presidents drastically increased the size and scope of government under the guise of helping the vulnerable masses.
Every basic tenet of Progressivism has been fully embrace by both parties for more than a century. If Republicans or moderate democrats were not progressive, we’d see the following:
- Drastic decreases in government spending year after year (we of course see the opposite regardless of which party is in power)
- Abolition of numerous regulatory agencies
- Abolition Teddy Roosevel’ts anti-trust laws
- Universal school choice with a plan to fully “voluntarize” all education
- Privatization of food stamp programs
- Abolition Franklin Roosevelt’s minimum wage
- Abolition of Woodrow Wilson’s income tax
- Abolition of Woodrow Wilson’s Federal Reserve
- Abolition of the Department of Education
No Dr. Cowen, your time is not being wasted when for a monetary cost of $12 and an opportunity cost of roughly 8 hours (1.5 days of school), you get to see through a century of lies being promoted by the most powerful people on earth.
My time is not wasted when decades of Huemer’s research is summarized for readers like me.
Huemer’s ability to save people time is astounding. You could spend a thousand hours watching mainstream news and never learn about the important empirical evidence Huemer brings to light. On page 189, Huemer addresses a claim few if any are familiar with:
“How could masking possibly increase the spread of disease?…Most people also wear the same mask repeatedly for many days, so pathogens may accumulate in the mask. This is a particular problem with cloth masks, which many people wore during the pandemic; indeed, one study found that cloth masks caused a nearly sevenfold increase in the risk of influenza-like illness, compared to wearing no mask.”
He mentions this after quoting Dr. Anthony Fauci on 60 Minutes in March 2020:
“Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks…There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”
Consider Huemer’s refutation of the entire concept that ‘billionaires” are people with bank accounts hoarding billions of stationary dollars:
“Jeff Bezos, for example, does not have $200 billion sitting in a bank account. Rather, he owns a large stake in Amazon. When you read that Bezos is worth $200 billion, that is based on the current Amazon stock price and the portion of the company that he owns.”
Having the opportunity to clearly see the world around you at a microscopic cost is not a “waste of time.”
Ever since I lost my crystal ball I’ve been unable to see the future and determine what will persuade who and to what degree.
I can say with a high degree of confidence that the chance of humanity being debamboozeled from the wealth destructing, divisive death cult of Progressivism is higher than it otherwise would be when we have professors with Ph.d.’s debunking progressive conspiracy theories regarding the economy, race, American history, and gender.
Be seeing you
MCViewPoint 