Thursday, June 7, 2018

Doug Ford's Deplorable Magic


Vincent J. Curtis

5 June 2018


RE:  Ford and the magical, all-knowing market (Hamilton Spectator 5 June 2018.)



Research by a Ph.D. is supposed to be no mean thing, and so I can understand why Latham Hunter, Ph.D. is so frustrated.  In spite of all her independently researched confirmed facts, those inclined to support Doug Ford for premier stubbornly continue to support him nevertheless.  Deplorable!

The disconnect arises from two areas.  First, Hunter’s expertise is in the field of communications (at which, by her own admission, she is failing miserably), while the matter under discussion is politics.   She is speaking outside her realm of expertise.  The second problem is the incoherence of her logic.

Facts of themselves cannot forecast the future, and hence Hunter’s "confirmed facts" cannot logically conclude “how harmful Ford would be for this province” – whatever the nebulous ‘harmful’ means in this case.

Hunter then reverts to full progressive mode – that Ontarians ought to be ruled by their intellectual betters because the experts know better than we do what is good for us.  Continuing, Hunter takes issue with Ford’s preference for market-based solutions to economic problems.  Ford’s is an entirely conventional sentiment that works often enough.  But Hunter can’t leave it alone.

No, she has to deny a rule established by economist Friedrich Hayek that market prices reflect information the totality of which cannot be known by any one individual, and by Ludwig von Mises that socialist systems must be inefficient because the central planners would not know how to allocate available resources efficiently.  The inefficiencies that central planning brings are precisely the matters at issue in the Ontario election.

Rule by the elites is being rejected the world over, and causing heads to explode.
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