Two Worlds: Politics and Everything Else.

• Author: Higgs, Robert
• Position: Etceteras ... - Column

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Even after I had earned my Ph.D., my dad used to look at me with a twinkle in his eye and tell me, "Son, the trouble with you is you don't know nothing." And he was right in regard to my knowing worthwhile, practical things and having the skills and prowess to get things done. But I know stupid when I see it.

And I see it all around me all the time, especially in the news and the social media. This is a bit of a mystery because we live in a world flush with marvelous achievements by people working in the sciences, technology, and the practical arts and crafts, so that a day rarely passes without the announcement of some new discovery, invention, or achievement to expand the understanding and practical attainments of the human race.

The key consideration here is that stupidity manifests itself especially, to a painful, almost unbearable degree, in politics and anything closely tied to politics--which is to say anything having to do with government as we now know it. Political discourse itself is enough to make even a person of moderate intelligence run away screaming. So much ignorance is on display, so much viciousness, so much ill-disguised envy and malevolence, so many unscrupulous attempts to take what belongs to other people and give it to those who have no just right to it. The stupidity, therefore, is not only an inability to connect real causes and effects but also an inability to do what is obviously right and decent as opposed to what is predatory and criminal albeit legal.

Do these two worlds--politics and nonpolitics--attract different kinds of people? Or are people the same everywhere, but politics makes those who enter that world stupid and morally dense, whereas people engaged in science, technology, and the practical arts and crafts must demonstrate that they can get worthwhile results--and know they can't bail themselves out with smooth talk if they fail, at least not for long?

Well, I'm an economist, so I understand that prevailing incentives and constraints structure people's actions. If one enters a world in which violence, extortion, and fraud are the chief means of attaining one's objectives, one learns how to sharpen those swords and use them to maximum effect. That's the world of politics--dishonest at its very core, a blatant attempt to paint lipstick on the plundering pig, to declare indispensable an enormous mass of what could well be dispensed with because it amounts to...