Saturday Learning Series - Postmodernism (Part 2)

Professor Stephen Hicks deconstructs the progressivism that is postmodernism (Continued from Part 1).

Progressive Socialist Hypocrisy

Recently I had an epiphany about socialism yesterday.  I have a former boss, whom I would consider a friend, who happens to be a socialist.  He doesn't just talk the talk, he supports co-ops of all kinds, he votes socialist and always takes the socialist/progressive side in any argument or discussion.  He's consistent.  He's also a nice guy, to be fair.  But yesterday I noticed something that I've seen in other socialist people I've known and I think the consistency is enough to say it's a pattern. It may not be universal, but certainly it is common among those of the socialist/progressive ilk.

By way of background, for decades the socialist crowd here in Toronto have argued for more public transit.  Toronto has a great transit system..for 1973.   They've argued that we should move away from cars and to public transit.  It's better for the environment, it's more egalitarian, cheaper than roads, blah...blah...BLAH.

Downtown Toronto has a relatively decent coverage of subways.  The suburbs, not so much.  But since the socialists all live downtown in the city core area, they've suddenly become fiscally conservative.  They think spending money on more subways is an expensive boondoggle.  Instead, those in the suburbs, which represent a pretty significant population, should be satisfied with more surface routes - light rail like streetcars, or buses.  

I've had to commute from the suburbs.  It's dreadful - the driving is bad, and the light rail commute was cramped, prone to breakdowns, slow, and just basically inadequate (to be kind).  But the socialists have the transit they want.

And there's the epiphany.  It isn't really about helping others, it's about helping others collectively, until they get what they want, and then the taps get turned of.  Socialism for me and not for thee. Hypocrisy.

I am honestly not surprised, but it's good to have some empirical evidence to back up what we all know.  As for me being two-faced on public transit, I'm all for more roads, but in most cities there's no will for that option.  Anything to reduce gridlock is welcome respite. In a recent post I also pointed out that working from home and telecommuting will reduce the need for mass transit and more roads.  But we're not there yet. So no real hypocrisy, but if you want to challenge me on that, I'd be happy to expound on it.

Damn Straight

There's some coarse language in this, but is it ever correct.  As an aside, I learned what SJW means, as I saw it three times today, including in this video, and I had to look it up.

The perverse backwardness of progressivism

Progressivism, perversely, is regressive and backwards.  In a great post about the marvelous accomplishments of the 20th century and beyond, Yevgeniy Feyman claims out that the Golden Age is Now and points out the most every great advancement of the last 100+ years have come as a result of capitalism.  Feyman argues that technological progress comes from the economic freedom that market economies both provide and enable.

Simply put, technological progress is the key to these gains—and market economies have liberated, and rewarded, technological innovation.

People are not just living longer, but better—sometimes with government’s help, and sometimes despite it. Even people in the developing countries of Africa and Latin America are better educated and better fed than ever before. Hundreds of thousands of children who would have died during previous eras due to malnutrition are alive today. Here, we can thank massive advancements in agricultural production unleashed by the free market.

Progressives believe that markets need deeper regulation, that no one should be allowed to succeed too much and that success is a zero sum game where those who are successful must be achieving only at the expense of someone else.  Such a notion is absurd.  Centuries ago when someone was busy inventing the water mill, they were not making anyone's life more difficult by doing so.  They were in fact making it easier to cut lumber, grind flour and do numerous other tasks - thus enriching everyone's lives.  

Feyman points out many of the advances that have helped millions if not billions of people and notes that they come not from those who oppose technological progress but those who embrace it.  Free market capitalism embraces it.  What progressives are progressive about is social progress, a Utopian equality of outcome rather than a real equality of opportunity to which America and a few other countries are much closer to achieving.  

Progressives come down on the anti-business side of every issue - more red tape, more taxes, more superfluous climate protection are all prime examples of wanting to slam the brakes on progress.  Oh sure, progressives believe that they are helping humanity by taking these positions, but their belief is a blind and ill-considered belief.

Equality of opportunity is a much more worthy goal than equality of outcome.  Someone who wants to do nothing or very little all day will not achieve the same success as someone who wants to achieve something.  What drives that achiever is the opportunity to benefit from their hard work.  But they do not only benefit themselves.  Finding a cure for cancer will likely help even the lazy guy in our example.  The lazy guy benefits from the innovation because a cure he had nothing to do with now is available to him.  Take away the incentive to succeed and the cure does not get found.  In fact you lower the bar and encourage the achiever to become someone who does only what is necessary to survive and stop pursuing his dream.

Viewed another way, the removal of the incentives progressively halts technological progress and causes complete stagnation at some point. Everyone ends up equal, but in a less able society.  How anyone can call that progressive is incomprehensible.

Celebrity Culture Dampens Reality

If Lady Gaga is more important to your life than the price of gas, taxes, liberty, education or a job, give your head a shake.  Unfortunately there are a lot of people who hang on every word of a celebrity, whose only qualification for celebrity is the ability to play guitar, sing or act.  Sometimes they really don't even possess those skills.  Via PJM : Col.Allen West and the hipster doofus-ification of America.

Celebrity does not equate to moral authority.  Their voices on issues outside their area of talent at best should be met with skepticism as to their knowledge of the subject they are speaking about.  Unfortunately in the real world, celebrity equates to influence.  When real heroes - doctors, soldiers, engineers, pastors, factory workers, firefighters, police, scientists, etc.* - go mostly unheard.

By the way, there is nothing hip about progressivism.  The word progressive is a contrived way to make their ideas sound like progress.  Typically when they say progress, they mean social progress. But:

• Social progress is not the same thing as technological progress.  Progress in fighting cancer is a good thing.  Progress in granting government more power at the expense of individual liberty, is a bad thing.
• Social progress is clearly not always a good thing - for example legalizing cocaine might be considered social progress but really it's devolution. 
• Some areas of society do not require improvement.  While improvements are always possible, many things work very well and do not require full changes, where tweaking, at best, is required.  Taking away the Second Amendment is a full change that isn't desireable, enforcing existing gun laws is a better option but that wouldn't qualify as progress in the eyes of progressives.
• Social progress is uni-directional.  Not only do progressives not want to go back if their ideas fail (indeed they will argue we didn't go far enough), often society cannot go back once a new social policy (e.g. gay marriage) has been enacted.  A can of worms once opened cannot be closed. 
• Progressives put their agenda ahead of consequences.  If they can't prove their ideas represent an improvement, they just shout louder than those who question their agenda and call them names in order to denigrate their opposition.  Real debate is not possible.

*I'd add teachers to that list if there weren't so many of them who were hipster doofuses.  Teachers deserve respect, but they also require better vetting.

The NFL analogy

Imagine if you will that the NFL, instead of postponing the Minnesota Vikings vs. Philadelphia Eagles game this weekend until Tuesday (?), it had actually declared a winner and assigned scores.  The game instead of being played on field would have been decided by bureaucrats.  Why bother to play the game if the winners can be pre-determined by fiat.  It's a little more blatant than pressuring the referees to make calls that favor one team over the other, which would still be wrong.

Now imagine a commissioner that believes every game should result in a tie.  A commissioner that felt the teams should spread around the skilled players more evenly.  What's the incentive for players to play hard or at all in that case?  

That's progressivism and it exists in your government America.  It is antithetical to successful teams, successful players and successful plays in football.  Why would it be any different in the real world?

No need to draw that analogy out.  Just remember every vote for an expanded government is like a vote for a bigger commissioner's office and that means more power that can be abused now or in the future.