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Ugh, Commerce

Entry 2249, on 2022-11-18 at 12:50:09 (Rating 3, Politics)

We should all try to grow and mature as we get older. If I look back at my old opinions I am somewhat embarrassed at some of the stuff I used to believe. Even going back the mere 20 years I have been writing this blog, I can see old posts which I probably wouldn't fully agree with any more.

It's not so much that everything I used to believe was wrong, and I now believe the opposite, it's more that my old beliefs were naive and simplistic, and my new ones have far more nuance, and still include some of the older beliefs, but balanced with a more mature and reasonable outlook.

In my defence, I do have to say that I did go to university, and was poisoned by the idiocy of the predominantly leftist nonsense which is often espoused there. Of course, it has got far worse in the decades since I was a student, but there is no doubt I was influenced by the very unbalanced opinions there.

Now I work at a university, so why have I escaped from this attitude? Well, ironically there was one lecturer I encountered as a student who specialised in skeptical analysis of paranormal phenomena. He taught me that nothing can be taken at face value, and that we should be suspicious of basically everything we hear and see, whatever the source might be. His emphasis was on paranormal psychology, but the principle can be extended to everything.

And this is what we need more of, because people today are far too easily persuaded by the most common sources of misinformation, especially the media. You might say that there are far worse sources than that, and I would agree in many ways, but it is the subtlety of the mainstream media which makes it particularly dangerous.

It's easy to ignore some nutter at a protest, or on Facebook, saying the world is about to end because of the judgement of God, or something similarly outrageous. But it is far more difficult to detect the more subtle misinformation in the media, such as the constant mention of a climate crisis. I would say that climate change is a problem, but not a crisis.

I saw another classic example of subtle misinformation today. The headline for a report on the missile which recently hit Poland said something like this: "Russian-made Missile Hits Poland". Superficially it looks like it was Russia which was directly to blame, but it looks far more likely that it was a Ukrainian missile which was involved.

Note that a lot of Ukrainian weapons were actually made by the Russians, because they used to be "friends", so the headline is technically correct, but it is also deliberately misleading. Also note that I am not supporting Russia in any way for its part in causing this war, but I would like to form my own opinions based on facts rather than be told what to think through media propaganda!

So we do need to be skeptical, and to be ready to change our opinions and attitudes, and given the number of older people still believing similar BS to what I did when I was in my 20s, I do wonder whether there is much chance of that ever happening.

But there is always hope for people to change, even after many years of being naive supporters of currently politically correct causes. Take "rock star" and "social activist" Bono as an example. He has been a supporter of trendy causes for years, and has had many of the same old tedious leftist anti-establishment views as a result.

Recently, he said this: "I ended up as an activist in a very different place from where I started. I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that's not true. There's a funny moment when you realize as an activist: the off ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce. It's entrepreneurial capitalism."

This thought resonated with me particularly because I have also been deeply suspicious of capitalism in the past, and have only more recently realised that, despite its obvious problems, it is the best system of production and wealth generation we have.

It's easy to be critical of a system which is so consistently denigrated by so many prominent individuals and groups. Ironically these same people often rose to prominence because of their success within that exact same system of capitalism, but the hypocrisy there usually escapes them.

It really does seem that capitalism works, as long as there is some control over the worst excesses of big business, and in situations where markets don't work for the benefit of society, so why be so critical? Why not look at the good and bad points of capitalism, and compare them with the same for competing systems, like socialism? Why not look at situations where those two systems have been used in the past. Do that, and capitalism doesn't look so bad!

I should make a critical point here: that is that most successful societies are based on elements of both capitalism and socialism, although most Western democracies (the most fair, happy, safe, and advanced societies on the planet) are, to varying extents, essentially capitalist in nature.

So I don't really see this post as being a pro-capitalist rant, or anything like that. It is more a request for people to be flexible and open to changing their ideas. After all, if Bono can do it, then everyone should be able to, and he now supports ugh, commerce!

Comment 1 (7338) by Anonymous on 2022-11-22 at 10:39:09:

I'm just trying to understand who this diatribe is aimed at. Does anyone disagree with the value of commerce?

Comment 2 (7340) by OJB on 2022-11-22 at 22:34:30:

Well, clearly Bono used to doubt the value of commerce, and is still unsure about his thoughts about it, hence the word "ugh" used in conjunction with "commerce".

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