Truth in Politics

truth1There isn’t any unless it is accidental. There is a reason why it works out this way. The objective is to get elected. Politics is also the most ruthless activity on the face of the earth. The truth has no variance so a truth teller can use no variation in trying to get a point across. If candidate A tells the truth and gets a decent response. (In actual practice the truth will get a candidate booed off the stage.) To sound a little better, Candidate B, will change the truth just a little so the voters will like his version a little better. At that point it it is no longer the truth. It is a type of arbitrage.

Why do people believe politicians? In the mind of a listener, what constitutes the truth? Tell the listener what he wants to hear, and to the listener that will be the truth. It will be a counterfeit truth so no brownie points are made with God. It won’t be the truth but the listener will accept it as the truth.

Every successful politician knows how to create a mood where people will believe what they are told. An old staple in lye telling technique is to convince your victim that you like him and hold him in high regard. People are many times more likely to believe what they are told if it is told by someone who they believe likes them. Notice that every political speech starts with the politician telling the audience what wonderful people they are.

Telling the truth contributes nothing towards a positive outcome to a campaign so politicians stay away from it.

In politics, all words have the same value. All sentences have the same value. The politician uses the combination that best accomplishes his goal.

Here is Curbside Jimmy’s song A Lie Will Get You By.

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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.

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