By Bob Hoye ——Bio and Archives--March 11, 2024
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Well, just what drives the decision-making by this lofty group when it comes to election time? By academics, one thinks of those in the Liberal Arts, such as Social Work, Psychology or even History. All subjects requiring work, smarts and years to accomplish a PhD.
Yet most seem to vote for the authoritarian candidate and party. About 70 percent identify as being “liberals”. At one time the term meant sovereignty of the individual with limited government. Over many decades it has been corrupted to the opposite. Some call going to the left as the “Diploma Divide”. Further, the most ambitious need authoritarian government to impose their schemes upon ordinary folk.
One of the most egregious examples was John Maynard Keynes, whose limitations in financial history allowed him the Eureka Moment in “discovering” the idea that a central bank in easing credit could prevent a recession.
He thought it was a new idea when it dates back to Edward Misselden, in responding to the disastrous 1818-1823 Crash, that devastated Europe while trashing England.
Academics also supported the forming of the Federal Reserve System, a term used to avoid having to call a central bank, a central bank. Its supporters understood that credit crises preceded recessions and celebrated that with the Fed as “Lender of Last Resort”—Presto—no credit crises and no more recessions.
There have been 18 cyclical recessions since the Federal Reserve System was imposed during Christmas 1913.
However, economics is a subjective field allowing room for many opinions to be brought forward and debated.
On the other side are the fields of Mathematics, Physics and Engineering. Newtonian Mechanics in not being subjective there is nothing to debate. In Engineering, engineers learn it and test things to destruction. Arriving at “That’s the way it works”. Or with a failure, “That’s the way it doesn’t work”.
Newton’s First Law is about inertia and points out that if a body is at rest or in motion it will remain so unless acted upon by an external force. That this inspiration was due to being hit on the head by a falling apple is legendary. But close to the real story.
Newton’s friend William Stukeley recorded that when they were drinking tea under a tree, Isaac wondered about why, when loosened from its stem, the apple fell rather than going sideways or even up?
His Second Law deals with force acting upon a body to cause a change in motion. Which has the elegant equation: “f = ma”, that simply states that force is needed to change momentum. That would be for either moving a body from rest or accelerating one that is moving.
Of course, the opposite of the latter is deceleration.
In the real world, acceleration can be exciting when driving a performance car or motorcycle, or skiing. But in a crash, extreme deceleration can be harmful or even deadly.
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In getting back to the theme about how Academics decide to vote, and this was a long time ago when my friends had moved to a nice part of Ontario. Meaning not in Toronto, nor too close to the abysmal arboreal forest in the north.
They moved there from Vancouver decades ago and were unwilling to admit to being control-freak socialists. So, when asked who they voted for it was always: “For the brightest candidate”, avoiding naming the socialist candidate or party.
A few years ago, when a general election was called, I asked my friend if the IQs of the candidates in her riding had been published? Confused, she answered: “They don’t do that, but why do you ask about IQs?”.
I said that “You always vote for the ‘brightest candidate’, and how can you decide without their IQs being published?”.
The huffy response was: “Well, we can always tell”.
And employing the veneer of superiority is how socialist academics vote the socialist ticket without admitting their authoritarian bias.
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Bob Hoye (BobHoye.com) has been researching investments for decades, which eventually included the history of financial and political markets. He considers now to be the most fascinating time for both since the Great Reformation of the 1600s. Bob casts a caustic eye on all promotions and, having a degree in geophysics, is severely critical of the audacity that a committee can “manage” not just the economy, but also the temperature of the nearest planet. He has had articles published in major financial journals and, as a speaker, has amused assemblies in a number of cities, from London to Zurich to Tokyo.