I’m beginning to define conservatism as the proposition that smart people are stupid and stupid people are smart. They will value your intelligence until you disagree with them, then you’ll lack “common sense”. As best I can tell, “book smarts” primarily causes a loss of “common sense” and I’ll concede there may be some truth in that correlation, but what truth resides is only applicable to a single person. But what is it that the vast majority of smart people can’t see? And why is it only uneducated people can see it? Instead of humbly admitting that NOT studying economics didn’t make them experts and that there may be something they haven’t considered, they doubledown with “liberal agenda, indoctrination, brainwashing, omg protect the ego!”
Common sense is what’s readily apparent and obvious to even the dumbest person, and what’s most obvious is that the earth is flat because: look around, don’t it look flat? It’s common sense! Stupid science disagrees. It’s the government’s fault!
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irZelZxvElI[/youtube]
It’s common sense that we could just keep going faster and faster right? It’s common sense! But stupid Einstein says no.
Common sense is essentially a superficial overview of a situation with no depth of exploration.
Like the gold standard seems sensible until I ask what happens when the population expands and people get richer, where will all the new gold come from? “Oh yeah I didn’t think of that.” Some cocky-sounding guy on youtube said money needed to be backed by something and it seemed sensible until we actually think beyond the slogan.
Or “the min wage will drive up prices.” How? Prices are already as high as companies can push them. Are we to think walmart is being charitable by offering lower prices than it could get away with? Hell no! They’re charging the max they can without losing business and revenue and profit. 21 times over 80 years the min wage has been raised and it’s always “the sky is falling” with those people. The reason prices go up is: people have more money! They buy more stuff and increase demand, which increases prices that people gleefully pay. In my min wage study, states with higher min wages had 10% higher gas prices (on ave), but 30% higher median incomes (on ave). Who wouldn’t take a 10% hike for 30% more pay?
It’s dumb idea after dumb idea and it’s stemming from the fact that they haven’t thought it out and are too proud to admit they don’t know something. And there’s the terror that someone somewhere might get something for nothing.