Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: Politics

  • Village Idiot or Village Midwit

    Time was when our phraseology suggests a belief in one idiot per village. Then came the internet and Facebook. The postings bring suggestions that we have more than one idiot per village. Fortunately, the internet is available, so we can hopefully download a measurable definition, and then use the old bell curve to find out if idiots are actually so common.

    So a search for ‘clinical definition idiot’ led me to this website: https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-is-the-difference-between-a-moron-imbecile-and-idiot.htm This is the fourth sentence (emphasis added):   “Those with an IQ of 0 to 25 (an IQ of 100 is average) were called idiots, 26 to 50 were called imbeciles and 51 to 70 were called morons. “

    That makes idiots pretty darned rare – the likelihood of encountering an idiot is the same as that of encountering someone with an IQ of 175 or more. Using a 15 point standard deviation, the chance of encountering an idiot is 0.0000287105%. ( https://iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx )

    So, taking the definition and the probability, it doesn’t look like idiots are something we encounter daily, or even monthly. We don’t have a great increase in village idiots. I think the problem has to be village midwits – so here’s what I get for a definition of midwit: “Noun. midwit (plural midwits) (neologism, chiefly Internet slang, mildly derogatory) A person of middling intellect; someone who is neither particularly dumb nor notably intelligent, especially if they act as if they are smarter than they are.” Again the emphasis is added. I think the problem is that we have a lot more people who “act as if they are smarter than they are.“

    So I assume midwittery begins with an IQ of 108 (half a standard deviation above the norm) the chart tells me that 30% of the population will score above 108. If I arbitrarily put the cap on at 115, I have a group that includes 14% of humanity – and that’s basically one out of every 7 people I encounter.

    I don’t believe we have more village idiots than ever before – but we do have more opportunities for education. According to the Census:

    “In 2022, the highest level of education of the population age 25 and older in the United States ranged from less than high school to advanced degrees beyond a bachelor’s degree.

    9% had less than a high school diploma or equivalent.

    28% had high school as their highest level of school completed. 

    15% had completed some college but not a degree.

    10% had an associate degree as their highest level of school completed.

    23% had a bachelor’s degree as their highest degree.

    14% had completed advanced education such as a master’s degree, professional degree or doctorate. 

    When we add those numbers – 15, 10, 23 and 14 – we come up with a total between 62 and 63% of Americans (over 25) who have attended college. That’s five out of every eight people.

    When 5/8ths of the adult population has attended college – and 47% hold one level of college degree or another – perhaps there is nothing particularly elite about attending college. Sometimes we’re just one more village midwit. I’m not certain that village idiots aren’t less harmful than village midwits.

  • Karl Marx Didn’t Start Communism

    The settlers on the Mayflower were committed to live communally (https://drcarolehhaynes.com/index.php/articles/culture/history/488-communism-rejected-on-thanksgiving ). “One of the more familiar stories in American history is the disastrous experiment in a communal social and economic structure in the Plymouth Colony from 1621-1623.  The communal lifestyle in the colony resembled a socialist society. 

    The colony’s storehouse, houses, gardens, and other improved land were all shared. No one could own private land or work at a private business because of their business deal with their investors. The colonists collectively cleared and worked the land. Many worked hard to provide for their families and lay up stores for the winter while others sloughed off, knowing they would receive equal shares from the single pot regardless of how little they worked. 

    Anger and resentment grew among those who did the lion’s share of the work so they became less willing to work. As a result, the colony could not produce enough food to feed everyone.

    After two years of living under communism, only a few of the original Plymouth colonists were still alive. By 1626, to avoid an extinction of the colony and provide a solution for repayment to their investors, a new system with private property rights and the right to keep one’s production — free enterprise – was implemented by Governor William Bradford, one of the signers of the Mayflower Compact and the second elected governor of the colony. Each family was assigned personal plots of farm land according to family size and the common storehouse was abolished. Immediately men and women returned to the harvest fields and produced a large harvest. 

    Land ownership became a priority of the early settlers. For more than 50 years colonial villages tried to survive under the common ownership system without success.”

    The basis for communal ownership among the Hutterites is often cited as Acts 2:44 “And all who believed were together and had all things in common.” And Acts was written a long time before Karl Marx.

    Frankly, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” sounds nice. The problem is that we elect leaders whose abilities are small, but whose needs are huge. New England was settled under communism, and succeeded only when the communal ownership was abandoned.

     

  • Economic Activity or Pocketknife Swaps?

    I noticed that Tim Walz has explained that EBT (once known as Food Stamps) creates $1.80 in economic activity for every dollar that goes out. Economic activity is a term that doesn’t necessarily mean what it seems. An old rancher described it as swapping pocketknives – “I spend ten grand buying a herd bull from my neighbor this year, next year he spends ten grand buying a bull from me.” That’s economic activity – each needs a herd bull, and they pay each other an inflated price to (hopefully) raise the value of their livestock to other potential buyers.

    I took a class in economics back when I was a college freshman – the professor opened the first class by explaining no Republican had ever got better than a C in his class, then went on to explain Keynesian economics. I understood why – The Motley Fool describes Keynesian economics: “The United States has had a complicated history with Keynesian economics. While Keynesianism has frequently been used during downturns, the jury is still out on its long-term effectiveness.” https://www.fool.com/terms/k/keynesian-economics/

    Not all “economic activity” creates wealth – pocketknife swaps merely create the illusion of value. John Maynard Keynes theorized that “government intervention is needed to stimulate demand and stabilize the economy, particularly during recessions.” While Adam Smith held that a free market would provide full employment (meaning employees would accept the wages offered), Keynesians held that government spending would increase demand. I’m pretty sure that the amount of government spending we have means we’re all Keynesians. No other choices in a world filled with deficit spending.

    To Adam Smith, labor and the accumulation of capital were key components of economics – and Karl Marx basically agreed when he defined capital as dead labor (there are a lot of custom rifles built on old Mauser military actions, with new barrels and stocks added – pick your own example if you like). A pocketknife swap neither includes labor nor the accumulation of capital. It does include the illusion of value.

    I figure the SNAP program increases labor (some share of producing and processing food) and accumulation of capital (though that may go more to Sam Walton’s heirs). But I’m skeptical whenever a politician uses the words ‘economic activity.’ After all, I ended a career one floor above the economics department.

  • Irish Democracy – Not The AI Search Definition

    Looking for information online is getting a bit harder – a search for “Irish Democracy” yields this commentary from search assist: “Irish democracy refers to the system of government in the Republic of Ireland, which is a parliamentary representative democracy. This means that the government is elected by the people and is accountable to them, with powers divided among the legislature, executive, and judiciary to ensure checks and balances.” Artificial Intelligence at its finest – you have to scroll down to get to https://www.econlib.org/the-pros-and-cons-of-irish-democracy/ which begins with “If regular democracy isn’t doing so well, maybe it’s time to fall back on “Irish Democracy.’ That’s what Yale political scientist James Scott calls the passive resistance of a society that doesn’t like what its rulers are doing to it. In his book “Two Cheers for ­Anarchy,” he writes, “One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called ‘Irish Democracy,’ the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.”

    Perhaps it was best phrased by Heinlein: “I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.” Another of his reminders is: “Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.”

    Henlein died in 1988 – and still made the observation “Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth stupid fumbling.” The thought could describe my neighborhood in 2025.

    Still, when legislators reduce the choices we can make through voting – and our elected officials have done that, Irish Democracy becomes the only alternative. We do need to be careful that we do not accept Irish Handcuffs – the technical definition is a drink in each hand, but the hazard is holding on to something, refusing to set it down, and for that reason being compelled to inaction.

  • Thoughts On Tattoos

    I can’t claim to have a body free from tattoos. Mine came in 2009, when the radiation folks were zapping the body to kill off any remaining cancer cells. They added the tattoos to help sight in the radiation into the right areas. While my tattooing seems to have been successful, I still harbor some resentment – they should have at least given me a beer or two first.

    I’m reading of a politician in Maine who got an SS tattoo while drunk in eastern Europe. That is the sort of bad judgement I can understand. His excuse was being a young, drunk soldier. I learned differently as a kid – Dad was retired Navy, CWO4 (Chief Warrant Officer) and spent a career at sea without tattoos, and as a small boy I saw lots of tattoos, and heard stories of the problems associated with them.

    I think the petty officer with the big tattoo was named Carillo – but the story came to me at least 70 years ago, so their may be some factual flaws. Carillo’s story went back to 1941 – he was Guamanian, and had taken a month’s leave to visit his family on Guam. Yeah, that month – December, 1941. When World War II came to the US, he was an American sailor on Guam – and, lacking any other way of avoiding capture, ditched his dungarees for native apparel. Unfortunately, he had a tattoo showing the gunboat Panay on his chest.

    In the 21st Century, the Panay is a mostly forgotten little ship – but in December of 1941, she was remembered by Americans and Japanese alike. https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Panay_incident probably provides as good a link to the story as any:

    He had a picture of this little ship inked across his chest – and, as the article says “The USS Panay incident was a Japanese bombing attack on the U.S. Navy river gunboat Panay and three Standard Oil Company tankers on the Yangtze River near the Chinese capital of Nanjing on 12 December 1937. Japan and the United States were not at war at the time. The boats were part of an American naval operation called the Yangtze Patrol, which began following the joint British, French, and American victory in the Second Opium War.”

    The old petty officer spent the war as a POW, and credited the tattoo. The end of his tale was the simple admonition “Never get a tattoo.” There have been tattoos with some appeal – a pig and a rooster tattooed on your heal was said to prevent death by drowning. I knew older people with blue numbers tattooed on their arms – tattoos that spoke of their time in German camps. Still, the old man’s admonition “Never get a tattoo.” held for my first fifty-nine years. And I still think that common decency should have included a shot of rum or a beer before they tattooed sighting markers on my belly.

  • Politics – Where We Disagree

    This morning, I read a quote from Mamdani – the Socialist candidate who seems to have cinched the race for mayor of New York: “We need to ban all guns.” I understand his point – if there were no guns, nobody would be shot (by guns). We can’t argue the point though – it was the big issue that made me cast a Trump ballot in 2016. I knew where Hillarie stood on guns, and had hopes that Trump was closer to my view. Here in northwest Montana, I don’t even need to go into any greater detail to be understood – and in New York, Mamdani doesn’t have to, either.

    Still, I’m not a single-issue voter. Economics – there is a point where borrowing money can lead to increased wealth. I don’t disagree with John Maynard Keynes on this premise. On the other hand, I can’t see how spending money our nation doesn’t have on some of the frivolities that DOGE has cut from foreign aid helps us any. It’s one thing to borrow to fund something that will produce income – and quite another to borrow to spend on a project that just gets us deeper in debt.

    I don’t particularly favor capital punishment – but I do recognize that there are some people wandering around whose misconduct won’t stop for anything less. I’ve researched the behavior of some of the worst in prisons.

    I had a lib come by at the fair years ago – he explained that, since my party had created the all the problems, I should by a raffle ticket to benefit the local democrats. He seemed totally lost when I asked “When have the libertarians been in charge and able to create these problems?” Our disagreements are areas where we don’t see the topic the other side is arguing.

    Abortion – one side argues against killing babies, the other side argues for reproductive freedom. Is it any wonder that, as we talk past each other we don’t find areas of agreement? Does political rhetoric exist only to arouse and anger its own side?

    As the final episode of MASH aired, I drove a U-Haul to Trinidad, Colorado. February 28, 1983. At the time, Mount San Rafael was the only hospital in the US performing transexual surgeries, and the only surgeon doing the work was Stanley Biber. I suppose I started seeing transexuals quite a while before the typical American – hell, I was teaching at the little college in the nation’s transexual surgery capital. I knew that Dr. Biber insisted on a lot of psych and counseling before he uncased his scalpel. I suppose I think that his pre-surgical caution is still justified. The relevant comment is “First, do no harm.” I don’t argue the topic – but I know my views on something I’ve observed for 40 years.

    I’m a fiscal conservative – and I’ve found that arguments against supporting fiscal conservativism usually break down to accusations of heartlessness. It’s hard to discuss the topic – I talk for being able to maintain a strong currency and I’m told that I’m heartless. There’s no convincing when the argument is on different topics.

    I think back to a transexual student’s Southern Baptist parents – depressed that there would be no grandchildren, and his (my student’s) concerns that he wasn’t comfortable as male. The love was there – but the common ground wasn’t.

    I recall a classmate, insisting there was no voter fraud. Using logic, all I had to do was document a single case. I did. The result was anger and discounting the conviction as only one case. We don’t even agree on the rules of debate.

    So I’ll continue to vote against candidates who vote against my interests. I don’t expect them to understand why. As we get more Republicans officeholders, there will probably be more Republicans who disappoint me. Then as we get more Democrats in office there will be more of them voting against my interests. As Milei said, “Viva la libertad! Carajo!”