Why Do We Pay Attention?
July 22, 2010
Ben Bernanke tells us that economic recovery is “unusually uncertain.” What on earth does this mean to any intelligent mind? Why doesn’t he just truthfully declare “I haven’t any idea what’s going on”? It’s like asking a person if he or she will do some specific act for you, and they reply with “a firm maybe.”
After some 2,400 years of worshiping at the feet of Plato’s “philosopher kings,” is it not time to shift to a new paradigm? Why do any of us pay any more attention to such established drivel than we do to a woman with her tarot cards, or who claims to read the future by squeezing a goat’s testicles?
Butler Shaffer was Professor Emeritus at Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938, Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival, and Boundaries of Order. His latest book is The Wizards of Ozymandias.
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