The Cost of Certainty

Americans pay for certainty with both hands and with all the money they can muster up. How much certainty do they get? There is no certainty in the universe so they don’t get any at all, in terms of what is offered to them by others.

In small groups animals can enhance their chances of survival. Beavers build dams and people plow fields. Beyond those kinds of things, there is not much which can be done.

National defense is fine but is likely to cost far more lives than it saves. What people end up getting for their money are feelings of security at a very high price. The business of selling feelings of security is highly lucrative. The mere state of existing is terrifying because the state of not existing is less than one breath away, always.

The business of offering comfortable feelings to others for a price is highly lucrative. Services are offered from the strong to the weak.  O.K. there is no certainty, so what. That is not going to keep enterprising people from offering feelings of certainty to others for a high price. Not surprisingly merchants of feelings of certainty do end up enhancing their own lives by selling a perception of certainty to others.

Human beings are scared animals. The ones who are less scared  make the more scared feel comfortable for a price. This is what government does. Over a period of decades, society buys one illusion after another. Today, citizens fantasize over countless imaginary benefits and controls on the part of government. Government has no way to accomplish these things.

Currently there is a fantasy that a president’s job includes making sure various groups and individuals only hear nice words from fellow citizens. Government is expected to make all people be nice to one another. Today we have professional athletes protesting because others are not kind enough to people of the same race. There is nothing immoral about wanting these things to be true. We all must understand that government does not have a way to make these kinds of wishes come true.

Government is about getting, not giving. What happens when all discourse in a country is centered around fantasies to such a degree that all of the serious issues are ignored? The political system collapses.
The truth is a hard sell. Fantasy Free Economics gains readers one at a time. Major search engines simply do not list blogs which disagree with their worls. As long as folks share the link to this blog and others speaking out against the grain, the truth will at least trickle into the public consciousness.

Fantasy Free Economics recommends the following blogs.

Dandelion Salad Of Two Minds Liberty Blitzkrieg Mises Institute Straight Line Logic Paul Craig Roberts
 

 

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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.