C-Poll

The latest C-Poll is closed. You can read all about it here!

Showing posts with label Human Nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Human Nature. Show all posts

November 25, 2017

"McCarthyism masquerading as liberal open-mindedness" in Silicon Valley / San Francisco

During a Reddit AMA, author/investor Tim Ferriss gives one of several reasons why he's leaving the Bay Area. 
Silicon Valley also has an insidious infection that is spreading -- a peculiar form of McCarthyism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism) masquerading as liberal open-mindedness. I'm as socially liberal as you get, and I find it nauseating how many topics or dissenting opinions are simply out-of-bounds in Silicon Valley. These days, people with real jobs (unlike me) are risking their careers to even challenge collective delusions in SF. Isn't this supposed to be where people change the world by challenging the consensus reality? By seeing the hidden realities behind the facades? That's the whole reason I traveled west and started over in the Bay Area. Now, more and more, I feel like it's a Russian nesting doll of facades -- Washington DC with fewer neck ties, where people openly lie to one another out of fear of losing their jobs or being publicly crucified. It's weird, unsettling, and, frankly, really dangerous. There's way too much power here for politeness to be sustainable. If no one feels they can say "Hey, I know it makes everyone uncomfortable, but I think there's a leak in the fuel rods in this nuclear submarine..." we're headed for big trouble.
His destination, Austin, leans hard to the left itself, but apparently it's much less McCarthyite than SV/SF is.

Open-mindedness is seen as a virtue only when one's passionate views are held by a minority of those in positions of power and influence.  Once those views become dominant in some place (e.g. the Bay Area), open-mindedness goes out the window and dissenting opinions are suppressed.

May 13, 2017

Think carefully before demanding that the government take up your cause

Image Source
"The average American of today is intellectually so far removed from his forebears
that instead of regarding government with apprehension,
he is more likely to regard it as a virtual parent,
concerned only with protecting him and helping him."
- George Reisman

Human nature being what it is, no government in history has ever been able to live up to the expectations that the current generation of Americans has for our government, and no government is ever likely to.

The government cannot take up your cause without oppressing those who do not embrace that cause.  If you're okay with that, then you are the reason our forebears regarded government with apprehension.  Modern government is full of people like you -- fine with the idea of oppression, as long as the oppressors are your fellow ideological tribespeople.

March 29, 2017

Teach a man to fish...

Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for life.
Give a man someone else's fish, and he'll vote for you.
(Source)