Welcome to Keith Knight. Don't tread on anyone in the
Libertarian Institute. Here is my latest article at the
Libertarian Institute titled In Defense of Humor's Progressive
Myths. In a blog post last month,
Doctor 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's what Cowen said.
Michael Humor, 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 Doctor Tyler Cowen
onto the Libertarian Institute podcast to discuss his objection
to Humor's progressive myths. He politely declined.
I'd like to address Doctor Cowen, who has an open
invitation onto my podcast to defend himself anytime.
I don't know what metric Cowan uses to differentiate productive
books from unproductive books. Let's assume productivity can be
categorized as increased efficiency, attempting to pursue
a given end, accounting for opportunity costs and benefits.
This book cost $12.00 on Amazon, is 245 pages, and is a complete
refutation of the progressive ideology on economic,
philosophical, empirical, and historical grounds.
Humor provides readers with the very low cost education
progressives pretend to offer us.
Progressive ideas are widely embraced 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 progressive, along with George W
Bush and Barack Obama. Today, all four presidents
drastically increase the size and scope of government under
the guise of helping the vulnerable masses.
Every basic tenant of progressivism has been fully
embraced 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 of Teddy Roosevelt's antitrust laws.
Universal school choice with the plan to fully voluntarize all
education. Privatization of food stamp
programs. Abolition of 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, Doctor Cowan, your time is
not being wasted when, for a monetary cost of $12.00 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 Humor's research is summarized for readers like me.
Humor's ability to save people time is astounding.
You could spend 1000 hours watching mainstream news and
never learn about the important empirical evidence humor brings
to light. On page 189, humor 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 Doctor Anthony Fauci on 60
Minutes in March of 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 Humor'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 de bamboozled from the wealth destructing,
divisive death cult of progressivism is higher than it
otherwise would be. When we have professors with pH
DS debunking progressive conspiracy theories regarding
the economy, race, American history and gender, The
economist should be quick to ask, compared to what?
How are people usually persuaded?
White papers that are read only by peer reviewers and policy
wonks? Online videos, academic books,
blog posts, tweets? What is the right way to
persuade people out of 12 years of progressive indoctrination,
followed by four years of progressive ideas dominating
universities, followed by a life where the entire corporate press
defends every welfare policy and regulatory department under the
sun? Many people will be persuaded by
progressive myths for three reasons.
First, social proof or the tendency for humans to do what
others are already doing. The more people who
unapologetically hold the anti progressive position, the more
people will feel welcome to embrace anti progressive ideas
such as free markets or decriminalization of all
economic activity between consenting adults.
Second. Authority or the human tendency
for people to trust those with a high social status.
Having a published, well documented book by a PhD
philosopher increases the legitimacy of his thesis in the
minds of many that progressivism is primarily a mythical belief
system. Third, the documentation is so
overwhelming in the economic section alone, it is very likely
to drastically increase the amount of insecurity
progressives hold in their positions, thus decreasing the
confidence they have in silencing critics.
Humor takes the poor get poorer concept and simply verifies if
the evidence proves or disproves this.
From page 146 of Progressive Myths 2007 Treasury Department
report tracked individuals from 1996 to 2005.
It found that 58% of people who started out in the bottom
quintile of income earners in 1996 had moved up to a higher
quintile by 2005. In two sentences, humor debunks
the generational wealth conspiracy theory that almost
every progressive believes. Consider his debunking of the
Rich Don't Pay taxes myth from page 155.
In case you're wondering about the notorious top 1% of income
earners, despite comprising only 1% of the population, they
shoulder 1/3 of the entire net tax burden.
Yes, the book is persuasive and likely to persuade people who
already see progressive mascots like Bernie Sanders and
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez as complete sellouts.
Allen asks whether or not we need narratives like the Black
Lives Matter movement. Refuted Need.
It's not a matter of needing X, it's a matter of is X true, and
will more people understanding X to be true be beneficial to
readers and the general population?
The Black Lives Matter movement rioted, looted and assaulted for
months in the summer of 2020, victimizing innocent and
powerless people when they were mad at the US government police
force. Conservatives on the other hand,
when they were mad at the government, flew to Washington
DC and stormed the Capitol building, taking on the most
powerful people in society responsible for so many ills.
Now do you see why the American establishment pushes the BLM
narrative happily while calling January 6th the worst thing
since the crimes of the Mongolian Empire?
Imagine raising a male child and saying to the child five times a
day you are discriminated against as a male.
You are 50% of the population, yet 95.5% of those killed by
police, 90% of workplace deaths, and the only gender that must
register for military, slavery, conscription and selective
service. You must fight the white male,
Asian woman pay gap with every fiber of your being since Asian
men make more than white women. You must riot and loot every
time a male is killed by the police.
Don't try to improve your skills, don't get on the job
training, don't show up on time or be a good person in general.
The problem has nothing to do with your behavior.
The problem is the system. No sane parent would raise their
son this way, yet it is how progressives wish for women and
non whites to view the world around them.
Thankfully, Japanese Americans didn't take the advice of
progressives, according to Thomas Soul in Civil Rights
Rhetoric or Reality. Japanese immigrants to the
United States also encountered persistent and escalating
discrimination, culminating in their mass internment during
World War 2. But by 1959 they had about equal
the income of whites, and by 1969 Japanese American families
were earning nearly one third higher incomes than the average
American family. Apparently, Indian Americans and
Nigerian Americans have been able to dodge the white
supremacy of America by having income significantly higher than
whites on average. If you had to guess how many
people in general know the following quote from Progressive
Myths, pages 58 to 59, the police killed far more whites
than blacks. Here are some more unarmed
people who were killed by police recently.
Timothy Randall, Tyler Woodburn, Matthew Mitchell, John Ballmer,
Richard Powell and Joseph Nagel. Jeffrey Glover, Klassen
Crawford, Nicholas Roden. Those are all just from the year
2022. How many people saw the Dallas
police murder Tony Temple by suffocating him to death on
camera? How many of your students?
Doctor Cowan can explain the disparity in the response by the
corporate press between Tony Tempa and George Floyd.
Do they even know Kelly Thomas was beaten to death on camera by
police officers who were then acquitted?
Consider that unarmed white woman Ashley Babbitt was
murdered by a black officer on camera and there was not even a
trial, let alone wall to wall media coverage and months of
riots. Had they even heard the name
Justine Damond, the unarmed white woman who was fatally shot
by 31 year old Somali American Minneapolis Police Department
officer Muhammad Noor after she had called 911 to report the
possible assault of a woman in an alley behind her house?
Humor ends with a heroic defense of America in general, giving
Americans of both genders and all races a narrative to unify
us in divisive times. Quoting from page 241 of
Progressive Myths, Why does America have so much power?
The answer is that America makes the most of human talents.
The society does not guarantee you success, but it lets you
compete for success. Granted, not everyone has a
perfectly equal opportunity, but the poor have much more
opportunity in the US then in the vast majority of other
societies today and throughout history.
For those of us unwilling or unable to spend $100,000 and
four years of our life at university only to be turned
into a race baiting, economically illiterate
Bolshevik Michael Humor gives us the economic and philosophical
education I wish I would have had in school.
Yes, Doctor Cowan, we need this book.
I'm not sure why, in the face of a government which spends $6.27
trillion a year, regulates all commercial interaction, taxes
the income of productive people to subsidize parasitic behavior
while provoking a third World War, Cowan would insult Humor's
heroic project of delegitimating the progressive worldview which
got us here. 1 theory is that humor did not take the boring,
predictable establishment approach of Straussianing the
public into his thesis by shrewdly communicating in such a
way that nudges the layman while dog whistling truths only
academics can detect. Humor self published on Amazon,
the company that has done more to improve the living standards
of poor people than any progressive government program
could have ever conceived. By not going through traditional
roots, Humor was able to tell the truth, unapologetically
debunking conspiracies about racism, sexism, and the idea
that the rich are out to get us. I'm eternally grateful for
academics like Jason Brennan, Tom Woods, Brian Kaplan, Scott
Horton, and Michael Humor who speak to the public in
unapologetic terms they can understand on the most important
issues facing the human race. Thanks to everyone for watching
Keith Knight, Don't Tread on Anyone, and the Libertarian
Institute.