Knowing What is Not True

I thank everyone who reads and visits Fantasy Free Economics. Word to mouth and some sharing now and then has been the only source of readers. Search engines do not send traffic to a site unless it is to their benefit. There is nothing on Fantasy Free Economics Google and others would like for people to know. Search engines are in the business of herding you. I am trying to teach you how not to be herded. Fantasy Free Economics is not their friend. There is nothing to sell here not that here would be anything wrong with that. The truth is hard to sell. There is no market for it at all. That is more the reason for “nothing for sale.”  than any lack of interest I have in making a profit. Truth does not sell. To make a profit here, I would have to venture away from being truthful. Then there would be no reason for folk to read what I write.

I really should not use the term “telling the truth.” What I do at Fantasy Free Economics is expose what is not true. As one false belief is exposed, then another and then another  we get closer to the truth. It is almost impossible to establish anything as being permanently true. It is surprising how many “certain” truths from days passed turned out to not be true. Newtonian physics was deemed “all there is to physics” for the longest time. Then someone discovers quantum mechanics. How many times in your life has coffee been explained to be bad for a person and then said to be a good herb to drink? It is not that truth is relative. It is that we have limitations.

The key is to constantly discover beliefs that are not true. Doing that we get closer and closer to truth as time passes. (not that we know what time is) What I talk about at Fantasy Free Economics are false beliefs that are largely accepted as true but that are actually nothing close. Where economics and politics are concerned most beliefs on which the disciplines are based are simply not true. In many cases this is because thinking about existence in its rawest form is so stressful, more pleasant ways of looking at things evolve as replacement. There are ideas in economics that are true. The most widely accepted beliefs are simply not true. That makes it almost impossible for an economist whose reasoning is based on traditional dogma to be right about anything except by accident. The study of economics treats individuals as sentient beings and autonomous decision makers. It turns out that humans are guided by instinct more than anything else. Sometimes knowing what is not true is more important to know than at others. This is not a particularly good time to settle for group think and be done with it. There have been periods in history when a person could live a whole life believing reality was one way when it was actually another without experiencing personal harm. That is not the situation today.

A new Curbside Jimmy tune: The scene shifts from a regular swamp to the big swamp in Washington D.C.

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About Fantasy Free Economics

James Quillian independent scholar,free market economist,and teacher of natural law. Who is James Quillian? Certainly I am nobody special, Just a tireless academic and deep thinker. Besides that, I have broken the code with respect to economics and political science. Credentials? Nothing you would be impressed with. I am not a household name. It is hard to become famous writing that virtually no one in the country is genuinely not in touch with reality. But, if I did not do that, there would be no point in my broking the broken the code. If you read the blog, it is easy to see that there are just a few charts, no math and no quantitative analysis. That is not by accident. Given what I know, those items are completely useless. I do turn out to be highly adept at applying natural law. Natural law has predominance over any principles the social science comes up. By virtue of understanding natural law, I can debunk, in just a few sentences , any theory that calls for intervention by a government. My taking the time to understand the ins and outs of Keynes General Theory is about like expecting a chemistry student to completely grasp all that the alchemists of the middle ages thought they understood in efforts to turn base metals into goal. Keynesian theory clearly calls for complete objectivity. Government can only make political decisions. Keynesian techniques call for economic decisions. So, why go any further with that? Fantasy Free Economics is in a sense a lot like technical analysis. Technical analysis began with the premise that it was impossible to gain enough information studying fundamentals to gain a trading advantage. Study the behavior of investors instead. Unlike technical analysis, I don't use technical charts. What I understand are the incentives of different people and entities active in the economics arena. For example, there is no such thing as an incentive to serve with life in the aggregate. In the aggregate, only self interest applies. It is routinely assumed otherwise. That is highly unappealing. But, I am sorry. That is the way it is. I can accept that because I am genuinely in touch with reality. Step one in using Fantasy Free Economics is for me to understand just how little I really know. A highly credentialed economist may know 100 times what I do based on the standard dogma. Compare the knowledge each of us has compared to all there is to know and we both look like we know nothing at all. There is always more than we don't know than what we do know. I am humble enough to present myself on that basis. Why? That is the way it is. I am not bad at math. I have taught math. What I understand is when to use it and when to rely on something else. Math is useless in natural law so I don't use it. While others look at numbers, I am busy understanding the forces in nature that makes their numbers what they are. That gives me a clear advantage.