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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (23831)	11/1/2007 5:40:12 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 71588

Nah... nobody was ever 'cooler' than Groucho! "Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy." --- Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977) "Television is very educational," said Groucho Marx. "Whenever it is on, I go in another room and read a book."

To: TimF who wrote (23831)	11/1/2007 9:46:01 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

That is an excellent article. Here is some of what is important in it: World views make us feel that we have it all figured out, with little room for doubt. A world view could be a religion—the devout often find an answer to everything in God. Or it could be an ideology that claims to have answers to all the ills that plague our world. World views are deliciously comforting—in his book, The Myth of the Rational Voter, Bryan Caplan nails it by referring to them as “a mental security blanket.” While world views bring comfort, they also lead to intellectual laziness. Lured by the certitudes of received wisdom, we often stop examining difficult questions, satisfied that we know it all. This can be dangerous if our world view is fundamentally flawed, especially if it is widely shared, and can actually impact the lives of millions of people. Take socialism. It is dreadfully beguiling, and I must confess that when I was in college many eons ago, I thought Karl was a cooler Marx than Groucho. First, socialism makes you feel good about yourself, for the compassion that fills your heart. Secondly, it has—and therefore you have—an answer for everything—usually government intervention. ... Now, socialism—which I use here as a shorthand for Leftist thinking—runs counter to one of the basic truths of economics, one that is dreadfully unintuitive: that central planning cannot distribute resources and build prosperity remotely as well as spontaneous order can.