Pretending to know everything

Sarah Hoyt fears that Nobody Knows Not'ing.

Ideologically bent information was what kept the USSR quiescent so long. They knew they were hurting, but they thought the rest of the world was worse. How could they know it wasn’t? Most of them couldn’t travel abroad. All they had was the reports of a press who wanted them to believe things a certain way. Which meant they believed what they heard, and they thought bad as things were it was inevitable, and a free market would be worse.

We’re all low information voters. Worse, it’s highly possible the government is a low information government, something more terrifying than their drinking their own ink, even if they’re also doing that.

This is a problem because the idiocy of the government can affect the recovery (which I don’t believe exists) or make the recession (do I hear depression?) worse all without their knowing what they’re doing, and without any clue of which direction they should be headed in.

Like a skier caught in an avalanche things are changing too fast and neither us nor those in charge have any clue which way is up, even though we’re all p*ssing ourselves.

Just knowing how the writing field is changing is insane enough a job. Knowing how the entire economy, all the tech, etc. is changing requires a brilliant mind and more time than any of us has.

I go on general principles and what I know has worked from history: for a country this side, I support less regulation, more freedom and more regional solutions (on the principle that those closer to the problem see it better.)

But do I KNOW for a fact how things are changing? Not on your life.

Which of course means that those who favor centralized government must prove to me why they know more than the rest of us and why they think they have the information to run everything.

Once more we come to malice or incompetence and the answer is “yes”. They are malicious because they favor power for themselves and their cronies, which necessitates central-control which is hampered by ignorance and makes everyone worse off. Which brings us to malice again.

Nobody knows not’ing and I’m tired of their pretending they know everything.