Question 1: Are voters informed? If not, why not? According to Professor Caplan, is the problem ignorance or irrationality?

The miracle of aggregation states that even if voters are uninformed it will not matter. It states that half the uninformed will vote one way, and half will vote the other. This way the uninformed will cancel each other out, and the true vote will be left in the hands of the informed. Bryan Caplan challenges this notion, explaining that voters errors are statistical rather than random. He states that uninformed voters are more likely to lean in one direction, since “false beliefs are cheap” and easy for the masses to digest and believe. If someone has a false belief about a medical concern for instance, the result of this belief will be immediate and personal. The person will personally suffer for their false beliefs. With politics on the other hand there is no immediate punishment, so its much easier for the masses to all go along with a specific agenda.

Question 2: Professor Casey claims that the idea of political representation is an empty one. How does he defend this argument?

Professor Casey is very grounded in his belief that political representation is not an accurate representation of the public. It should be obvious to most, a political agent is not an omniscient being with access to every citizens wishes and agendas. A political agent is simply a person with their own agendas, who attempts to emulate the basics of the public’s beliefs. He has no way to communicate with the thousands of people hes representing, and therefore cannot act as a representative for everyone. A good way of describing political representation is through the metaphor of grocery shopping. In an ideal world you could take your shopping cart and fill it up with everything you want, you could get eggs, berries, and meat for example. But in the world of political representation there are several shopping carts standing before you that have already been filled. None of them have exactly what you want, but a few have pieces of what you want. One may have meat and berries, but also bread and cheese. You may really want the meat and berries, but have no need for the bread and cheese. But you have to buy them all together, just like you have to vote for someone with many different viewpoints. Political representatives are a bundle, a bundle of agendas, beliefs, and points of view. They may hold some of the beliefs you want, but more often than not they will have beliefs you don’t want. Since they have these beliefs you have no interest in, you cannot realistically call them a representation of the general public.

 

 

Question 1: How was the standard of living affected by the Industrial Revolution?

The industrial revolution sparked an enormous amount of protests against poverty, and on first glance that may make you think the industrial revolution lowered living standards. But in reality the living standards rose exponentially. Pre industrial revolution people were suffering enormously, as they had been for hundreds of years. People starving to death was the norm, and anyone hoping to protest these tragedies was simply fantasizing. Once the industrial revolution hit the factories began financially rescuing people. The factories weren’t dragging housewives away from their kitchens and children away from their play, as has been suggested throughout the years. The housewives kitchens had no food, and the children were starving in the street. The factories gave people a chance at making money, where as before there was none.

Peoples newfound ability to protest poverty was revolutionary! It wasn’t because their living standards had dropped and they had become fed up, it was because they had a newfound sense of hope and could actually imagine their living standards bettering. Before the industrial revolution there was no hope at bettering ones living standards. After the industrial revolution people could actually imagine their lives improving, and the protests against poverty which resulted are the proof.

Question 2: Evaluate this claim: “The New Deal was a wise series of government actions that healed the problems afflicting the economy.”

I would argue The New Deal did just the opposite. The governments hope was that creating stability instead of competition within industries would lift everyone. So they passed laws requiring business’s to pay their workers more. Unsurprisingly this lead to mass amounts of unemployment throughout the 1930’s. They also required business’s to have a minimum price for their products, meaning they could not lower prices the way the market demanded. This lead to overproduction on things that no one could afford, and it also lead to many small business’s having to shut down. Small business’s could not compete with big business’s on things like location and service, but they could compete with price. The government assigning a minimum price obliterated any chance these smaller business’s had to compete.

The government also had some ideas of how to raise crop prices, since the farmers weren’t making enough money. This brilliant plan was simply to destroy a significant chunk of the farmers agriculture. This way there would be less plants, so they would be in higher demand and consequently cost more. They also murdered a large amount of farm animals with the same goal in mind. You can probably imagine what came of this lunacy: the US stopped producing enough food to feed everyone. So because of this overzealous government intervention unemployment went through the roof, people couldn’t afford to buy new products, small business’s across the country were forced to shut down, and now people were starving because the crops were needlessly being burned. This was an attempt to prove that government intervention can be more efficient than capitalistic competition, and it created the worst economical depression that our country has ever seen.

Prompt: What is one issue that reflects the individualist versus collectivist outlook in your own times? How does it do this?

An issue that I have noticed has been growing rapidly in today’s world is the problem of political trending. Voters often choose to spend their time doing something other than researching politics. They’ve got better things to do, things that will have an immediate effect on their lives. This phenomenon is referred to as rational ignorance. More often than not people depend on social interactions to sway their political beliefs. Conversations with their peers, interactions on social media, trending articles and news stories to name some examples. The problem with this is sometimes the more popular belief outshines the political truth, whats going on behind the scenes is never as flashy as whats going on onstage. This can lead to false information, wrongfully assumed ideas, and manipulation of our voters and thus our countries political ring.

Whats more is that social media can be very wrong, and that incorrect ideal can be pushed on the masses very easily. For example, a company like Google is an extremely left wing company. Thus when someone researches politics on Google its very likely the first several articles they’ll see will be left wing oriented. This makes it difficult for the unbiased neutral to stay neutral, with article after article of dramatic leftist controversy being shoved down their throat. I hate to call it propaganda, as i’m sure many news reporters are genuinely trying to share the truth. But others are simply riding off the political trend and putting on a show to sway anyone who is politically neutral. At this point you can’t even share any right wing related beliefs without being publicly shamed by your friends and peers. Its as if some higher up leftists have wised up to the power of the internet and now are manipulating what people see for their own political gain.

The debate has become a war, and those on the left seem ruthless in their pursuit of harassing republicans. Politics have become so overtaken by whats trending that you can’t even have a mature conversation about anything swaying away from the leftist political norm. Anyone who questions the lefts narrative has been silenced by threats and humiliation, and its obvious to me that this will lead to intense political bias and manipulation of the ways our politics can be discussed. It shouldn’t be the norm for everyone to blindly follow the more popular political narrative, and it shouldn’t be the norm to blindly attack anyone with the slightest difference in political belief.

We shouldn’t be turning against one another, we should be discussing and debating our points of view like mature adults. But the trend nowadays is not to be mature, the trend is to use high-strung emotional manipulation as the fuel meant to burn away the political foundation our country was built upon. This trend has also been pushing for socialism, which is a major step away from liberty. Socialism takes the spotlight off the individual and their personal goals and redirects it towards the power of the federal government. Its one step away from communism, which by definition takes away almost all of the power of the individual. Anything pushing for private property to be collectively stolen away by an enormously powerful centralized government is opposed to everything our country was founded to protect. Our country is a democratic republic, and we need to stand together to protect our individual rights and liberty.

I view this as a major battle between the individual vs the collectivist. People in mass amounts blindly follow the first thing they hear, and the left are pushing harder and harder to be the first thing anyone hears. It’s not even a battle of specific politicians at this point, its a battle of the right to debate and discuss. Debate and discussion have always been our way to suss out a situation, they’ve always been our weapon against mass manipulation. Socially throwing this right away is the equivalent to shooting the messenger before he can even enter the stronghold. It leaves little chance to attain accurate justice and gives way for a tsunami of emotion fueled ignorance to break through our carefully built political dam. Once this dam breaks we have little chance at rebuilding it, and the balance of our political spectrum will be overtaken by those unwilling to hear the other side of the story.

Prompt: In what senses was the world a dangerous place in the 1960s and 1970s?

In 1947 the power struggle between Russia’s overbearing communism and America’s overzealous capitalism resulted in the Cold War. Both countries spread their power and overthrew many civilizations in their goal of global domination. While America and Russia never physically battled one another their spying and threats of nuclear destruction put both countries civilians in a constant mood of paranoia. To combat these nuclear threats the countries created a mutual destruction policy, stating that if one power were to fire a nuclear weapon the other power would instantaneously fire back.

In 1955 the clash of these titans resulted in the Vietnamese War. Russia and America fought brutally to implement their own dictators, and the Vietnamese people were stuck in the middle of the violence. Nearly two million civilians were eliminated during this conflict, and the forests and villages of Vietnam were irreversibly tainted by America’s agent orange. Many Americans were disgusted by these horrors; their protests and riots overtook lots of peoples daily lives. Colleges especially were ripe for riot, and many students ceased their studies to protest the war.

In 1963 President Kennedy was assassinated, panic and outrage ensued. The Warren Commission investigating this assassination was obviously biased, and people began realizing that the US government may not be telling the whole truth. Hippies began emerging in this era, rebelling against the system and experimenting with drugs and sexuality in previously unexplored ways.

In the panic caused by Kennedy’s assassination Vice-President Johnson manipulated the people and implemented the welfare state. He swore that it was Kennedy’s idea, and rode on peoples trust in the late president. It can be argued today that Kennedy was not planning on creating a welfare state, and that Johnson simply took advantage of peoples emotional insecurity. The welfare state was meant to provide for the poor, but in reality it just dampened peoples incentive to work. The poor began depending solely on the government, as Thomas Sowell puts it: “Welfare has not helped the poor, but it has created a permanent underclass in the U.S.” Ironically this failed attempt at lifting the poor ultimately costed four times as much as it would have taken to simply redistribute the wealth of the one percent, and a dramatic rise in poverty has continued to this day.

War, paranoia about nuclear attack, moral panic, peoples newfound distrust in the government, and a permanent welfare state are some of the dangers of the sixties and seventies. Although many of the issues have been sorted out over the years the damage caused by this era wont soon be forgotten.

Question 1: What kind of success did Africa have with governments that wielded great power over the different African economies?

In the African country of Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the ruler Mobutu Sese Seko ruined the economy through his anti-capitalistic endeavors. Mobutu gained his rulership in the middle of a copper fueled economic boom, and he used this wealth to give himself a larger than life political appearance. He forced people to change their Christian names, outlawed any western attire, and made it illegal to celebrate any western holidays. In their place he advertised himself, putting his portrait in churches and pushing an enormous African patriotism movement. He chased out every Belgium and Asian capitalist, and assured the people that their wealth would multiply under his rule.

What actually ended up happening under his rule was complete economical breakdown. Zaire suffered extreme dept and price inflation. Hospitals couldn’t afford basic medical equipment, and public transportation shut down entirely. Mobutu taxed the people 95% of their earnings, which gave people zero incentive to work. Mobutu eventually was forced into begging the Belgiums he had chased away to return.

Question 2: What are some of the major arguments advanced by the Public Choice school of economics?

One of the main arguments made by the Public Choice school of economics is that government officials have the same motivations and self fueled agendas as everyone else. They aren’t unbiased omniscient beings working solely for the betterment of the majority, they are humans who are working towards human goals. Maximizing their own wealth, for instance.

Another argument is that unlike a capitalist economy where your purchases have an immediate positive or negative consequence, voting does not have an immediate response. Therefore many voters stay rationally ignorant, their vote doesn’t have an immediate consequence so they don’t care enough to put days of research into it. In contrast those who will make money off the election study day and night, then they manipulate the masses through thoughtful speeches for their own financial gain.

Question 3: What are front-loading and political engineering?

Front-loading is a way to quietly and discretely push for a political candidate. It basically gives the spotlight to a candidate, which gives them the stage to promise too many things and lie about realistic pricing. Political engineering is the physical way to lie about pricing. Say some congressman has a project that will cost twelve million dollars, but he knows that if he tells his district this they wont have it. So instead he tells many different districts and now everyone only has to pay one million dollars. It makes his project look much more practical, when in reality its the same price just spread out over many different districts and taxpayers. He then promises the congressmen of those districts to help with their projects, and the cycle of financial manipulation continues.

Prompt: What were the important components of Germany’s Economic Miracle?

Germany’s economic miracle was a currency reform that took place after WWII. During this time German citizens were starving and miserable. Their currency was worthless, they were only allowed roughly 1200 calories a day, and the allies that occupied the territory were worried people would revolt. Ludwig Erhard and Lucious D Clay were the two main men to carry out the new system of Deutschemarks. Clay was the governor of the American zone, and Erhard was a German politician who had been heavily influenced by Wilhelm Röpke. Röpke was a Professor of Economics who opposed the Nazis and believed that the only way to obtain a non-corrupted morally neutral economic system was through liberty in the free market.

On June 20th 1947, Erhard implemented the Deutschemark currency and the results were undeniable. Grocery stores who the day previous had empty shelves now were filled, and Germans citizens who had been using cigarettes as money now had a currency of actual value. The German economy flourished under this new system. When WWII ended Germany was only able to produce about 35% of the goods they had produced previous to the war. With this new system implemented they were easily able to surpass the amount they produced prewar. It worked so well that the free market was incorporated into West Germany’s new constitution, and Germany became an example of how extraordinarily beneficial a liberty based free market can be.

Prompt: “Is Kant’s nature/freedom dualism clearer in ‘Farewell to the Master’ or ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’? Explain.”

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher during the age of the enlightenment. One of his most famous philosophies was his idea of nature/freedom dualism. This idea is that as man continues to advance and experiment with science and technology eventually these tools will become stronger than the man and consequently overthrow him. This is further analyzed in the short story Farewell to the Master, then in 1951 the story was adapted into a movie named The Day the Earth Stood Still. The main differences between these two artworks are their endings, and their ultimate messages.

In both works a spacecraft lands itself at Washington DC, and a crowd of civilians and military surrounds the craft. After some time two figures appear from within the craft. One is an angelically beautiful man, the other is a large silent robot. In both works the beautiful man is shot before he can deliver his message, and the robot is left alone. We assume that the man is the master of the robot, and now that his master is gone the robot doesn’t have any orders to follow. In the movie the man survives, and most of our focus is on him and his interactions with civilians. In the short story the man dies, and all our focus is placed upon the robot.

As the short story progresses we realize that the robot does not need the man to function. The robot goes about his own actions, enters in and out of his ship, and experiments with different lifeforms. Eventually he takes the beautiful mans body into his ship and attempts bringing it back to life. It is here we realize that the robot is not the mans creation, but instead the robot has created the man to easilier communicate with humanity. The short story ends here, with the robot finally exclaiming to the reader “I am the master”. You could argue that the short story does a better job at discussing Kant’s nature/freedom dualism, since the theme of the robot being in charge is the main revelation one can take from the story.

The movie on the other hand discusses many different themes, themes of war and weapons and morality for instance. There’s much more of a focus on the human consciousness, and how we can use it to help or harm beings we don’t understand. There’s also a softer ending, as it turns out the robot is part of an interplanetary group of peacemakers who have come to warn humanity not to harm their outerspace neighbors. In the short story there’s nothing like this, the robot only taught humanity that it is in utter control. It better describes Kant’s philosophy, but its understandable that directors in the 50s wanted to create a less pessimistic film.

Question 1: What are some of Marx’s criticisms of capitalism?

Karl Marx was a decently bright individual, but he was also rather disconnected with the reality of economics. He had several severe (yet unjustified) complaints about capitalism. The first was that capitalism promotes drudgery. In capitalism people usually find a profession they enjoy and stick with it, eventually becoming proficiently efficient at their specific job. Marx’s belief was that this system demoted creativity and stifled self expression, he believed people should have the choice do to whatever profession they’d like the moment they felt like doing it. Someone could be a fisherman in the morning, a painter in the afternoon, and a chef at night. In contrast he also wanted a centralized government to completely organize all the production, a system that would completely undermine his previous economical wish. Centralized government controlling and organizing an economies production is COMPLETELY different than individuals switching between professions whenever they wish, the two systems are distinct opposites. Even if you exclude any reference to centralized government this system would still fail. The reason we take up one job and slowly master it is because it takes quite awhile to master something. If people could switch jobs willy nilly they’d never master anything. They could continuously switch jobs, but they’d constantly be subpar at each and every job. There would be no experts at anything, and our economy would be heavily deprived of strategy and intellect attained from years of specific fieldwork.

Another of Marx’s complaints was that companies in the capitalist system would only pay their employees the bare minimum, then inevitably the employees would get fed up and rebel against the system. What Marx forgets about capitalism is the importance of competitivity. Business’s compete against one another in all areas: materials, equipment, and of course labor force. They create competitive wages for their employees, attempting to pay their employees more than the business next door pays theirs. If a company wasn’t paying their employees enough they’d simply go out of business. The employees wouldn’t rise up against the competitivity of capitalism, they’d use it to their advantage and find themselves a better paying job.

Question 2: How might you respond to the criticisms you discussed in question 1?

To make a long story short Marx is bitterly disconnected with reality. He’s a salesman (more of a conman really), who says hes working for individual liberty when all of his beliefs and wishes point towards total centralized government. His political and economic wants contradict each other viciously, he seems to be living in some sort of economical fantasy land. Its idealistic sure, but its in no way realistic.

Communism promises many things free: free healthcare, free education, ect. But in reality nothing is free, its simply taken from the people who are smart enough to build a successful business for themselves. The way economy should work is those who work hard get more funding, that way economical growth is highly encouraged. Instead of paying more to those who work hard communism does just the opposite, not only does everyone get paid the same but those who work hardest are actually given more responsibilities. Communism does the opposite of what a economical system should do: it discourages economical advancement. Those who put hours of overtime in, or those who study for years and genially apply their intelligence, or those who sincerely want to improve their financial status by working as hard as they possibly can, these people are all punished under the communist system. The ones who are rewarded are the freeloaders, the people that don’t care about an economies advancement and are more focused on selfish desires. These are the people that are pushing for communism, because they know they will get easy money. But for the freeloaders to get their easy money the rest of us would have to suffer heavily. We’ve seen what this system of government does so many times through history, Venezuela is a good recent example.

There’s no such thing as free money, chasing after this fantasy only leads to extreme economical collapse. Our nation has built its foundation upon hard work and genuine effort, selling that out for the false promise of free riches is as lazy as it is unethical. Karl Marx had a lot of ideas, but its very clear that he didn’t have a well structured plan to go along with these ideas. He simply stated that communism was “inevitable” but gave no backing or logic to why it would be inevitable. Capitalism has many flaws, but its at least structured enough to create an enormously large and thriving economy. The financially poor people living within the capitalist economy live better than the richest kings of yesteryear. Technology, large scale production, and financial encouragement of genuine work ethic have all been made real by capitalism, while the examples of communism being implemented into the real world have all ended in economic disaster.

Prompt: In what ways did revenge figure into the strategies of the countries fighting in World War II? In what ways did revenge figure into the strategies of the countries fighting in World War II?

Revenge was a huge motivator, especially during the second half of WWII. In 1944 the Eastern Europeans (knowing they had been greatly wronged by the Germans) took it upon themselves to rid their lands of any and all peoples of German lineage living within their Countries. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Poland teamed up with the Soviets to ruthlessly drive the Germans from their lands. Problem was the Germans living in their lands weren’t soldiers, in fact they were merely civilians who had lived there for generations. Many were women, children, and elderly who had stayed in their home country to avoid the brutality of the war. More than one million German people were wiped out in this vengeance fueled act of violence, making this the most consuming ethnic cleansing in history.

By 1945 almost every country was fueled by revenge, each having had something immense taken from them at this time in the war. In February British and American troops bombed Dresden over several days, vengeance for when the Germans bombed Coventry. In France people began practising “epuration”, or purification. The basics of this was anyone having any relation to the Nazis would either be humiliated or shot. Women suspected of having romanced Nazi soldiers had their heads shaved, swastikas painted upon their foreheads, and they were marched around through town to be belittled and laughed at. Anyone besides women who were suspected to have some relation to the Nazis were shot without any real questioning.

Then the most infamous part of the war occurred, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now my personal stance on this is it was unneeded, horrendously destructive and sociopathic on Truman’s part, and simply a way for America to feel like they had earned back their dignity from Pearl Harbor. But it did stop the war in its tracks, with quite an unnecessary amount of civilian murder. Japan had already completely surrendered at this point, their only plea was to keep their emperor (who was seen as a holy asset by the Japanese people). Now this surrender in itself was very difficult for Japan to do, they were an extremely prideful country that took great severity in their victories and defeats. Surrender in any form was extremely disgraceful for them, and asking to keep their emperor was basic for their culture and spirituality. Not only did America refuse this outright, demanding an unconditional surrender. But they poured a huge bucketful of salt into Japans already stinging wound by atomically ripping the skin off of 146,000 uninvolved Japanese civilians. It was incredibly barbarian in nature and was just an unbacked excuse to prove to the Soviets that America had atomic weapons. It was a horrifying end to a horrifying war, and I’ve been pretty horrified having to look into the details of it. It was the most explosive form of vengeance in WWII, a major disaster that makes me wish America had just stayed out of it entirely. But it did end the war, not surprisingly. So I guess we have to give it that. Lots of painful executions of innocent lives, lots of unnecessary death. I hope we get to research something a little more cheery next time. As someone who loves Japan, and all nationalities for that matter, this was a painful topic to thoroughly examine.

Question 1: The standard claim about Sweden is that it shows that society can prosper without such a free market and with extensive government intervention. Based on the lesson and on your reading, what would be a good response to this claim?

The claim that Sweden has prospered without any form of free market is inaccurate. The initial growth of Sweden’s wealth was actually accumulated within a free market, as from the 19th century into the 20th century Sweden maintained all the essentials of a free market. There wasn’t any form of socialism or social democracy until after this, until after their wealth had already been built up. So Sweden earned its wealth through a free market, then it must have been social democracy that allowed them to maintain that wealth right? Wrong, it was mainly Sweden’s insistence that they avoid war as much as possible. Since they weren’t throwing millions towards the war fund they were able to further develop their own technology and productivity. From 1870 to 1950 (when Sweden was using a free market system) they had the highest rate of per-capita income in the world. Then from 1970 to 1989 taxes and government welfare programs rose dramatically, and Sweden dropped from the fourth richest industrialized country to the fourteenth. After 1970 establishment of Swedish firms dropped significantly. In 1990 a real estate crash occurred that lowered GDP by 6%. By 1993 government spending had increased to 71.7% of GDP, and consequently this is when the country dropped from fourth wealthiest to fourteenth.

What were the primary values of fascism?

The primary value of fascism is that the leader of a country is in complete and utter power. Its sort of a mix between extreme nationalism and absolutism, the dictator is basically viewed as a human representation of God. They will be patriotic to an unhealthy level, dehumanizing outsiders and convincing the people their nation is superior to all others. They will also usually be fixated on conquering other peoples and further spreading and developing their rule. The way fascism is most commonly developed within a country is the people become blinded by the pre-fascists political charisma. They are promised economic and social liberation, but once the fascist gains power more often than not they deliver the opposite. Fascism is the most extreme example of the central government growing out of control. In a healthy political arena there are thousands of representatives debating laws and regulations, and hundreds of thousands more civilians voting on whether or not they approve. In fascism only the dictator and his or hers advisers make the countries decisions.