A couple of canards and a clever take on stupidity

The politics of the pandemic have produced panic -- a national panic syndrome -- while preventing prosperity for the poorest of the poor.

"From each according to his ability. To each according to her his need." Any reasonably educated management and leadership student will recognize that by promising to fulfill a person's every needs is certainly going to reduce that same person's desire to demonstrate his full ability. What work hard when effort has no effect on need satisfaction? That reminds me of the truism of economics, "People respond to incentives."

There are potential lessons tone learned from the Brits, where the Left/Labour has moved from being a party of trade unionists, the working class, and youths aspiring to a good job, to serving identity politics and urban diversity and welfare programs, much like the United States progressives have turned the Democrat party away from work towards a world of welfare. A society can not satisfy everyone's needs without creating a system to incentivize people to work to the very best of their abilities.

A second, well worn claim is that people have the right to immigrate at will and that countries need to create more compassionate immigration policies. The problem is that this 'assignment' is given only to those countries who attract immigrants, and no attention is paid to the responsibilities of governments to make people want and to be able to stay in their country of birth. Recently, vice president Harris, in a feeble preface to an even more feeble attempt to defend the Biden administration's failed south border policy, started with the assertion that people would prefer to stay in their country of birth. That might be true were their home countries doing their job to protect and promote the welfare of their citizens. But, in fact, many countries don't do any such thing. Their citizens are eager to leave, more than willing to forsake their roots, when those roots are planted in a toxic culture in a toxic country.

Then there's the 'follow the science' canard of the progressive parties. More often it means, "Follow the advice of the scientist who agrees with me," which means, "follow the scientist, not the science." In practice, progressive social warriors prefer to follow their feelings, not facts, and not the science. Disingenuous at best. There is some good news of working class people -- the traditional base of the left-leaning parties -- waking up to the problems of 'woke' policy, as demonstrated by the recent stunning defeat of a Labour candidate in a by-election in a constituency that had only ever voted Labour. Listen to a good analysis off this historic reversal here. Spiked offers the description of a segment of the Labout party as, "people who turned Labour from a relatively normal party into a hateful, identitarian outfit for middle-class cosplay Marxists and social-media loons who have a suspiciously lively hatred for the world’s only Jewish state."

For a great perspective on the ignorance and/or stupidity of the elite 'experts', watch this short TEDx video, where a well-reasoning Swedish psychiatrist brings us to realize "the (five) basic laws of human stupidity," (1976) which recognizes the fact that neither education or intelligence (e.g., IQ) prevents people from acting stupidly, from "getting it wrong." Stupid people's actions lead to bad outcomes, for themselves as well as for others, regardless of their years of education (credentials) or intelligence (IQ score).