“The mind can never foresee its own advance” is one of Hayek’s most quoted lines. Hayek adds, “Though we must always strive for the achievement of our present aims, we must also leave room for new experiences and future events to decide which of these aims will be achieved.”
“How can human carbon dioxide, which is less than 5% of natural carbon dioxide, cause 30% of today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide? It can’t.”
Cultural Marxism aims to destroy the family; mobilize women as revolutionaries against men, through aggressive feminism; encourage large-scale immigration to abolish national identity; create dependency on the state and state benefits; and control and infantilize the media.
What do we actually mean by “progress”? How should it be measured and monitored, and who experiences it? For many reasons, the standard indicator of real GDP growth, which leaves out much of what people value, will no longer do.
We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism. There must be people who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote.
American prosperity involves “creative destruction”: obsolete activities and technologies disappear (the destruction), and capital shifts from old uses to more productive ones (the creation). Government efforts to save or bail out companies that stick with outmoded products, services, or management methods protect the existing order at the expense of innovation, growth, and future jobs.
Opinion polls have limited predictive value. Other metrics, such as the state of the economy, may be more important than random phone calls to registered voters. Record low unemployment, particularly for women, blacks, and Hispanics and a booming economy may be a better predictor for an incumbent President’s reelection prospects.
The current economic environment—low and declining interest rates, stable prices, modest quarter-to-quarter economic growth, the absence of wars abroad—does not suggest a recession-oriented climate. Recessions typically occur in settings of rapid economic growth and rising interest rates, combined with overly bullish forecasts for stocks and business profits. That’s not the situation today.
Postindustrial economies create a far more challenging path to upward mobility than the manufacturing economy of the 1930’s. Education is now the most likely route to middle-class comfort and relative stability. The children of low-skilled immigrants, particularly Latinos, are struggling. Instead of climbing the income ladder, they are slipping down.
The message I had expected to be controversial, was old hat to the industry folks. But it was beside the point, because recycling was for them a moral imperative. Once you begin to think of recycling as a symbol of religious devotion rather than a pragmatic solution to environmental problems, the whole thing makes more sense.
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