Culture watch: Death by the dumb!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2011

The one thing we all have in common: Kevin Drum offers an interesting post about the dumbness of corporate CEOs.

Drum describes a Tribal Group Dumb which can’t adjust to changing realities. We must say, we see that trait all around the culture, in a wide array of tribal groupings.

Myopia is big business now. Powerful interests encourage us all to get dumb and dumber in certain prescribed tribal ways. Have Americans ever had so many interests investing so much in the promulgation of tribal group dumbness?

The evidence suggests that it works.

16 comments:

  1. Kevin Drum wrote: "Republicans are formally dedicated to blocking anything that might even remotely have a chance of improving the economy and thereby improve business prospects as well."

    What Drum means is that Republicans oppose additional government spending. Drum, and presumably Bob Somerby, believe that more government spending would improve the economy. OTOH most business leaders disgree. They think additional government spending would harm the economy.

    The CEOs aren't dumb. Bob Somerby and Kevin Drum aren't dumb. They just have different views about economics.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Agreed, no one here is "dumb." But which side's view is most supported by past experience?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Agreed, no one here is "dumb." But which side's view is most supported by past experience?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Agreed, no one here is "dumb." But which side's view is most supported by past experience?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Agreed, no one here is "dumb." But which side's view is most supported by past experience?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Agreed, no one here is "dumb." But which side's view is most supported by past experience?

    ReplyDelete
  7. There's only so much "different views about economics" that can happen before someone is just ignoring reality in favor of their fantasyland.

    When someone says that the world is 6000 years old and was created in pretty much the state it's in today, that's not just "different views about history." If someone says the world is flat, that's not "different views about geography." If someone says 2 times 2 is six, that's not just "different views about mathematics."

    ReplyDelete
  8. Gary, here's an article claiming that various stimulus plans were tried in 1975, 1976, 1977, 2001, 2008, and 2009. The article asserts that none of these stimulus plans worked.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I think bob's point is more to ask, Why the widespread dumbness (including on the left)? What is it about the way we structure our civic discourse, whether in politics or elsewhere, that makes that discourse so poverty-stricken? For instance, you don't have to agree with Krugman or Brooks, but why hasn't the NYT run much in the way of standard news reports that would give its readers a valid basis for evaluating their positions?

    ReplyDelete
  10. David in Cal misses the point. It's not whether the CEO's are actually dumb or not; it's the fact that Drum calls them dumb (thereby implying that he is smart, and that people who agree with him are also smart). Calling someone "dumb" rather than engaging their positions directly and thoughtfully, and the fact that virtually every group in the nation with some kind of axe to grind is doing this kind of thing, is what Bob is pointing out.

    ReplyDelete
  11. How shocking that an article in the WSJ would assert that stimulus plans have never worked. It's not like they have any kind of agenda.

    ReplyDelete
  12. My sincere apologies for the repeated posts -- clearly, I'm all thumbs!

    ReplyDelete
  13. My sincere apologies for the repeated posts -- clearly, I'm all thumbs!

    ReplyDelete
  14. I just realized it's from trying to navigate back through preceding pages -- it won't happen again!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Rob, granted the WSJ has an agenda. That's why they printed this article. Similarly, the NY Times has an agenda. That's why they didn't.

    For those of us trying to decide which view of economics is correct, the more important question is whether it's true that stimulus was tried 6 times in the last 35 years and failed each time. AFAIK the article is correct.

    ReplyDelete
  16. David, I notice quite a few fudged numbers and omitted facts in that article, and I'm not even an economist. I'm sure someone who's an expert would have found more (for example, insisting that Obama's stimulus was $800 billion when only a portion of that bill was stimulus, and then omitting the fact that state and local governments cut their budgets at the same time off-setting the spending increase and the fact that economists knew a full $800B of stimulus wasn't even enough at that time, etc).

    The assertion that the NY Times has a leftwing agenda is fairly ridiculous.

    ReplyDelete