Blog Roundup

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. At New Ideal, Ben Bayer offers penetrating insight into the nature of conspiracism:

To an unsuspecting audience interested in the truth but unaware of the conspiracist mindset, it can be helpful to point out alternate explanations for the puzzling anomalies conspiracists point to as "evidence" for their claims. But this is only a courtesy to the honest, and futile unless it's accompanied with a condemnation of the baseless dishonesty of the conspiracist claims that cause confusion for people trying to be rational.

Image by Wesley Tingey, via Unsplash, license.

Conspiracists engage in the pretense of cognition not just because they want others to believe their claim, but also because they want to convince themselves that it's okay to believe it, that they're not dishonest hacks ginning up fantasies. So to engage in argumentation with the conspiracist as though he's really honestly gathering evidence is to assist him in his pretense, to help him pretend to himself and others that he really cares about the truth when he doesn't. This is why conspiracists need to be dismissed as dishonest, not argued with. [bold added]

It is striking how swiftly in Bayer's analysis what can one do? follows from what is it?

2. At the blog of the Texas Institute for Property Rights, Brian Phillips argues that regulation is making housing unaffordable:

[A] study by the National Association of Home Builders found that building codes enacted in the past decade have added 6.1 percent to the price of new housing. The total cost of regulatory compliance adds more than $93,000 to the cost of the average new home. At the same time, exclusionary zoning, and particularly single-family zoning, drives up the cost of land within a city. It is not unusual for an empty lot in desirable locations to cost $200,000 or more. This means that even before construction begins, the cost of a new home is unaffordable for low- and moderate-income households. Multi-family housing is similarly impacted by government regulations... [bold added, link removed]

I have not had a chance to read Phillip's book (linked within his post), but I know from recent experience that, as eye-watering as the above amounts are, they're just the tip of the iceberg.

Just off the top of my head: Central planning via interest rates caught us coming and going in our recent interstate move, and socialized education very strongly affects housing prices in either direction and has serious knock-on effects on local quality of life.

3. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney offers her advice regarding a common affliction of the conscientious:

The practical problem with a strong desire for approval is that it undercuts every social situation, especially once you realize how self-destructive it is in the long term.

For example, a questioner at a talk I gave recently confessed that he was ambivalent about asking his question, because part of him wanted to get approval from me and the audience for asking a "brilliant" question. It was a good question (on this exact topic), but I suspect he felt ambivalent and guilty in racing to the microphone to ask it. He had convinced himself that it was proper to ask, but the desire for approval reflected a part of him that he didn't approve of.

So there he was, doing something perfectly rational, yet experiencing some guilt and maybe a little self-doubt. That doesn't seem fair, does it? [bold added]

Approval from rational people for rational reasons is still a value, of course, so Moroney also offers her thoughts on putting that value in its proper place.

4. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn explains why government meddling in the name of "fairness" is a bad thing, ending with a call to arms:

If we want to defend freedom, we must oppose "fairness" initiatives and hold the government accountable for protecting individual rights, using whatever channels are available, such as social media or our political representatives. And we should do so while we still have free speech that makes criticizing the government and stopping the erosion of freedom possible. [bold added]

One need only look at what is going on in Venezuela to see the long-term alternative.

-- CAV