ePAROL - Economic News and Views

No accounting for outright stupidity

I recently engaged in a running dialog with a person from another forum site. I won't mention the name of the site but will tell you that it is well run, well organized, and populated with mostly first class folks. But a discussion was started along the lines of the economy and 1-2 people began to exhibited interesting characteristics. Actually, odd characteristics.

Allow me to use this anecdotal experience as evidence that we're in trouble. We don't need terrorists, we don't need corporations gouging us, we don't need lying politicians... we collectively have ourselves. And we're doing ourselves in with stupidity.

The theme of the thread was that most Americans do not know basic economics. The outcry and objections to that comment in the forum actually came from those that either don't know anything about economics at all, or those with some vested investment interest. In one case, one individual was heavily involved in trading currencies and simply would not allow anyone to say that the dollar was weak and falling in value. Heresy. To him, anyone even mentioning that the US economy is in trouble and the dollar was losing value was grounds for name calling, swearing, and arrogant belittlement. Yet... here we are. The dollar is plummeting, being unpegged from global currencies, and now faces being dumped by countries. Obviously an attitude of kill the messenger and resentment of the facts. In a second situation, a woman demands that anyone with any economic education has no clue what they are talking about and claims that the sole indicator of economic health is the number of banks that closed last year. Arrogant and stupid and unwilling to accept that someone might actually know more that her, she sticks to her guns about her own self made economic indicator... oblivious to a much larger and complicated world outside of her little soccer-mom housewife mentality.

I use these people as indicators of what is wrong in the country and why we are in trouble. These days, as the internet connects everyone to the far corners of the world, everyone has become an expert in everything and no one is wrong. How sad. How dangerous. You see... with this attitude, anything can be done, and will be done without these people having a clue. This is the prime example of "sheeple". This is the American Idol watching, Dallas Cowboys cheering, beer guzzling party down attitude that is killing us. When people pretend they know everything and are "above" learning, then the end is near for a culture. And so it is. Look around. the economy is booming? Sure - but on mounting debt. The unemplyment figures are good? Yeah - people that say that do not know about how people are dropped from the rolls and never counted again. Inflation is at 2%... yeah, sure, believe what the man on TV says but do not believe your checkbook.

Yes, a huge portion of our society has their fingers in their ears and they're humming loudly so they don;t have to hear. When they do, they do not want to believe, and when they are faced with facts, they accuse the messenger of not knowing anything. The same woman actually said to me (I have an MBA and studied global business systems): "I don't need any education in economics to know you are wrong". And of course, she had no education in economics or business. Yet she clings to her personal belief system - violently so. I call it stupidity and dumb arrogance. Ignorance can be very very costly.

posted by G @ 12:20 PM