6 Commonly Held Beliefs Among People Who Lack Common Sense
by Don Cooper
The diet industry is a multibillion dollar a year industry that thrives on people’s stupidity and weakness. They offer this quick weight loss fix, that surefire diet, those diet pills. They package them with sheik names like: the South Beach diet, or Jenny Craig. There’s Weight Watchers, Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice. We even have "fat farms." You can lose 20 pounds in 20 days; 6 inches in 6 minutes; you can eat whatever you want and still lose weight. There’s the chocolate cake and beer diet and yes you can still lose weight! Well I’ve decided to get in on the "feeding" frenzy and introduce my new weight loss plan. But I need a name for it; something sheik, hip and catchy. How about the: you’re an idiot diet? I like it! So, here’s the plan: eat less and exercise more. Now I realize that could be complicated for those on the Jenny Craig diet to understand so let me break it down in simpler terms: stop going out and plopping yourself on a bar stool and eating chicken wings and drinking beer because you look like Jabba the Hut. Go out and walk around the block once today; twice tomorrow until you can walk a mile, then two. Turn off your iPod, put down your cell phone, get off your ass and tune in to life. Get a grip on what everybody else already knows: you need to change your lifestyle to a healthy lifestyle and losing weight and keeping it off will be a consequence of that. The laws of physics are the same for everyone. It’s a physical impossibility for you not to lose weight if you use more calories than you take in. Ask a super model. In the immortal words of Dean Wormer: fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life. I love this one. I’m going to employ the transitive law of logic here: If A then B. If B then C. Hence, If A then C. Here’s A:
Here’s B:
Here’s C:
Our founding fathers based our entire government, our economic system, our monetary system, our national defense, our justice system, our civil rights on this document. It’s obvious they did not intend for it to be meaningless hence it is not open to interpretation. Of course "interpretation" here means soulless, slick government lawyers and justices abusing and manipulating its meaning. I’ve followed with great interest Dr. Walter Block’s trials and tribulations with the politically correct thought police. Dr. Block mentioned Dr. James Gwartney at Florida State University with whom he had on occasion collaborated on labor economic issues. As it turns out I was Dr. Gwartney’s graduate assistant at FSU in the early nineties and so it’s not surprising that I received the exact sort of education back then that Dr. Block argues against now: assuming all things equal, if a woman makes a lower wage for similar work then it must be due to discrimination in the work place. As with losing weight, unless the laws of human nature are suspended in your world, this wage gap could not persist. What it assumes is that male entrepreneurs and business owners are so sexist that they would rather discriminate against women than make a profit. Anyone who does business like that won’t be in business long. If I have a new business, for example, and I can hire women to do equal work (experience, education, quality of work, productivity, travel, overtime, etc…) as men but at a significantly lower wage, then of course I’m going to do so. In doing so, I’ll be able to offer my product at a lower cost than my competitors who hire all men. Seeing their profits drop, my competitors will try to cut their costs which will include lowering wages of their male workers until they are on par with women’s wages. I challenge anyone to try and convince me that a successful business man would choose to have higher costs if he didn’t have to. There’s nothing in the economic or psychological literature that would indicate that misogynistic pride brings a business man more utility than increased wealth. So what can explain the differences in wages in the work place? Dr. Block offers some empirical explanations as do others but one thing is for sure: it’s not all due to discrimination; so get over it. That old excuse is nothing more than a cliché, a cop out, a political platform…said the middle-aged white man. And the list goes on. This argument is so tired and worn out it’s a sure way to demonstrate that you are in fact going through life fat, drunk and stupid. I’d like to shoot the guy that came up with this crap. Specifically since my best friend is someone who I can trust to tell my wife that I was with him last night when she calls. I have absolutely no idea what a soul mate is. I get the lover part but it just feels wrong limiting myself to just one woman. Not my decision, but mother nature’s. As for a confidant: see my first point. Most days I go home, kiss the cat, kick the kids and sufficiently sedate myself with bourbon and hope to successfully coexist with my wife until bedtime. Anything more is a bonus. Moving right along … April 9, 2009 Don Cooper [send him mail] is a Florida native, Navy veteran and Oxford educated economist living and working in the Midwest. Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
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