Cargo Cultists Revisited
I hate to repeat myself, but sometimes (rarely, but sometimes) I’m just so gosh-darned right that my words bear repeating. Here are a few from June of 2011 I was reminded of by the impending fiscal cliff:
Cargo cults arose in the South Pacific during the Second World War. US soldiers and marines would arrive on an tropical island, and one of the first things they’d do was build an airstrip. Then the cargo planes would arrive and — Americans being Americans — our boys would share their loot with the half-starved locals. Candy, clothes, condoms, whatever.
The war eventually ended and the soldiers left and the cargo planes stopped coming. So the locals would make their own airstrips, using whatever tools they had — some quite elaborate. Then they’d stare at the skies and wait for the cargo planes to return.
That’s what quantitative easing is. “Print the money,” they say, staring at the skies, “and the goods will come.”
Well, no.
The goods must first be produced, and with the expectation of a profit. I know it’s fashionable for Paul Krugman to assert that “uncertainty is just a myth.” But this idea that there are Person Units called “Businessmen” who continue to produce goods no matter what government does to them is a liberal conceit. It’s the same liberal conceit that believes there are other Person Units called “Doctors” who will go on treating patients and finding new cures for diseases, no matter what government does to them.
People change their behavior as incentives change. And for the last three years, the incentive has been to hunker down and try not to get hurt.
But Krugman and the rest are immune to simple reason and plain facts, because they’re creatures of faith. They’re cargo cultists. Print the money and the goods will rain down magically from the skies.
We’ve tried that twice now. It hasn’t worked. And so the cargo cultists tell us that the gods are angry gods. We have not appeased them enough. We must print more money. We must have a third round of quantitative easing. That will make the goods appear.
We hearing the same argument now over federal spending: We have to keep printing checks to every Tom, Dick, and Harry, or the economy will implode.
Well, no.
I mean, yes. Yes, the economy is going to implode. Big Fat Washington is sitting on its chest, whacking it in the head with a big burlap sack filled with dollar coins and demanding to know why it won’t produce any jobs. This is after Big Fat Washington sicced the Lilliputians on the economy and then stole its wallet. Poor guy just can’t catch a break.
What I’m saying is, the money won’t mean anything — whether or not Washington is printing all the checks — unless the goods and services are being produced. But so long as Obama and the Chicago Squad remain in town, the builders and doers are going to stay just as hunkered down as they were last year.
Off topic, but you’ve got to love Drudge. Picture of Barbra Streisand over a headline of “BLOWING IN THE WIND: ROTTING WHALE CASTS FOUL STENCH OVER CELEBS’ HOMES IN MALIBU…”
If a bakery sold donuts, would producing more donuts and simultaneously cutting the price make people buy more donuts? Yes, but only they like the donuts. If the donuts taste like the bottom of a birdcage, it won’t help. More to the point, if there’s a bunch of bullies always waiting outside the bakery to rough customers up and steal their donuts before they can eat them, cutting the price won’t really boost sales much.
That’s the predicament we have now. The Fed baker says PLEASE borrow, invest in business and hire people and the Obamunist goons waiting outside say “we’re gonna raise taxes on whatever profits you manage to make because you’re an evil, greedy bastard who didn’t earn them.” Business is a risk in good times, even more so in this crappy economy. But if you’re brave enough to take the risk and manage to make money, there’s a good chance the Obamunists will make it not worth the effort. The sane man would probably choose to earn a somewhat safe, tax-free 2% in munis and sit relaxing in his easy chair instead.
The whole “Clinton raised taxes and the economy grew” and “Eisenhower tax rates grew the economy and cured psoriasis” mantra’s from Democrats are just another Cargo Cult too.
Indeed, the metaphors abound. I also like to think of the Democrats as feudalists. That is, they believe the Lord in the castle has some sort of responsibility to the peasants, because the peasants do all the work. Never mind that it has no relationship to reality, it’s what they believe.
Then again, they also remind me of wombats. Wombats are very stupid animals, and when they’re walking along and run into something, they simply butt their heads into the thing they run into over and over until either it, or they, perish. It’s why electric fences in Australia will inevitably be surrounded by smoking wombat corpses.
Democrats work the same way: they will try and try and try the same thing that didn’t work before, and if you point out that they’re not succeeding, they’ll bellow and call you names. I suppose when they fail, they simply blame Republicans.
But yeah, Cargo Cults are another good one. I remember reading once that there was an LBJ Cargo Cult somewhere in the Pacific, where natives once were visited by LBJ. For years after, they sat in their little grass hut and held up a stick to their mouths, intoning, “Come in, Lyndon Johnson, come in!” Sort of like Democrats hoping for a renewal of the Great Society.
dear God, I have been doing everything I can to hold on until 2013 when I thought we would awake from our national nightmare. Now, I don’t know how I am going to steel myself for the next 4… how do we the citizens get Big Fat Washington off the economy’s chest and then put it on the crash diet it so richly deserves?
By giving the Dems everything they want: tax hikes on “the rich” coupled with no entitlement cuts and new “stimulus”. Just sit back as it imbalances more-and-more until the entire republic seizes and collapses, just like the USSR a couple of decades ago. Then get ready to piece together a new society from the anarchy that follows.