THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

WHY DO PEOPLE SAY THINGS? | 2008-11-26

Like everything else I keep hammering on, this concept is so simple it is ignored. Everybody uses it all the time, but they don't THINK about it.

It is fully understood that a person who does not see the difference between an advertisement and any other information needs adult diapers. Any sane adult knows why an advertiser says what he says.

But it stops there.

It was the same with supply and demand. For as long as we have had records merchants have looked for shortages of particular goods in one place and an abundance f the same goods in another place. But for thousands of years those in economic looked for a Natural Price.

The rice system is not perfect. Well HOOP-DE-DOO! Supply and demand is BASIC, and if you ignore it you end like the Soviet Empire. The Chinese economy is impressing everyone with it growth. Actually China was at starvation levels when it ignored supply and demand. As they get away from that disease, they show a LOT of FAST improvement.

If you have pneumonia penicillin will make you better fast. But that does not mean that anti-biotics are the key to perfect health. China has not discovered the key to economic development. It has begun to use a cure for a disease.

But once again, the world cannot see that, anymore than it could see that supply and demand, which was basic to all trade, had further implications.

"Why do people say things?" is a rule that is as important and universal as supply and demand. If I can supply a motive for your saying what you say, the chances are that what you say is not true. Like supply and demand or any other rule of human action, this is not A Final Truth.

It is possible that what you say can be explained accurately as what you NEED to say, and that it is still true. This is coincidence. It is the same thing as saying that a broken clock is right twice a day.

Sane people want a clock that TICKS.

COMMENTS (3)

#1 Dave | 2008-11-26 14:59

BW hit the target with remarkable precision in his comment about Screwtape and complexity.

But for the most part the circulation of misunderstanding is not motivated. Words replace understanding on account of ignorance. And there is a lot of ignorance that cannot be addressed. It is baked-in-the-cake.

But what I have learned from BUGS is this: If you don't have a clear-cut understanding of the goal, you can't make sense.

And the goal should be the ditching of words that circulate misunderstanding. There is so much hard study and oceans of effort expended on account of the want of the right word or the right phrase.

The right word or the right phrase clears everything up in an instant. I will give you an example: What is the goal of Central Banking? Answer: To get a quart of wine from a pint bottle.

I just summed the entire message of the Austrian school of economics that complains wrongly of the unfairness of not having whole academic departments devoted to it.

Thank God it doesn't. The fact that nobody is willing to spend money on promoting Austrian economics is its very salvation.

Ditto, for little intellectual groups such as us.

#2 shari | 2008-11-30 11:38

I'm reminded of something Agatha Christy's Miss Marple said to a young woman. "You mustn't believe people, my dear, I haven't for years."

#3 shari | 2008-12-04 10:17

Alot of times I say something because I feel very nearly dead, so I give a kick. I really think it would be better, to be truely, dead, than dead and still breathing. I see a lot of this and it drives me nuts. I hate that. A clock that ticks would be life from the dead!