Mark
How is it that people throughout history have allowed themselves to be conned into following ideas that have devastated their nations?
Let’s have a look at one way that can happen.
Imagine I am a high school social studies teacher (or whatever it is called now), and I have socialist leanings and want to pass those on to my subjects. (Sorry, I mean students.)
I tell a story of two companies manufacturing on-the-spot instant coronavirus tests and selling them to two countries. Company One is good as it makes quality reliable test kits. Company Two is bad as it cheats, cuts corners and its kits are unreliable. Country A has a socialist, government-controlled, system. Country B has a capitalist, free-market system.
In country B both companies are free to set up shop and get stuck in straight away. Everything looks good initially, but after 5 months 15 people have died after supposedly having clear tests. After rumours abound, after another month, people eventually realise that all the false negative tests were from kits supplied by company Two and then people stop buying their kits. The dodgy company is squeezed out. The good company carries on happily ever after.
In country A the government refuses to allow the companies to operate until their products have been checked alongside old-school laboratory testing. For a month, people are tested three times, once by a kit from each company and once by the old nasal swab for the lab that takes 3 days to get an answer. After the results are compared by a government official, it is discovered that company One’s test kits line up with the lab perfectly, but company Two’s kits gave 3 people a clean bill of health when the lab said they had the bug! Company One receives a certificate of approval to operate from the government. Company Two is told to get lost!
In both countries, good company One does well, and bad company Two ends up leaving. The difference: capitalist country B took 6 months to sort them out and 15 people died needlessly. Socialist country A sorted them out in one month and nobody died. Socialism saves the day! Apparently.
Oh dear! What presumptions am I applying here? What bad philosophy am I sneaking in the back door of my students’ subliminal consciousness? Maybe the idea that socialist leaders are the most perfect ethical darlings that always have the interests of their people at heart? Maybe the idea that socialist leaders would never entertain even an ounce of corruption? Maybe the idea that the capitalist pigs are only ever out for a quick buck and never think long term? Maybe the idea that company One has enough cash reserves to survive being undercut by company Two between when they get started and when they get found out?
Induced subliminal presumption is powerful and dangerous. We must all look for, and talk about, the full story.
Can I please try my social studies class lesson again with a little more historical, rather than ideological, perspective?
In country A the government starts the audit of the virus test kit companies, but because company Two has money left over from its dodgy cost cutting, it can bribe government officials to fudge the results. Good company One is told they failed the audit but is not given much information as to why. The government just says they are just a new start-up and not really the experts. Company Two is granted a licence to operate. When people start dying it is somehow determined they died of other things not related to the virus being tested for. When people doubt that, they are criticised by the government as being ‘conspiracy theorists’ having no medical experience or qualifications. Politicians and company Two executives go on a ‘business’ holiday on a private jet to country C. You know… that country. With lots of ‘drinking establishment customer attendants’ who are female, attractive, and noticeably young. Two doctors are stripped of their registration by the government for questioning the audit of company Two in a “reckless, arrogant and public manner.”
In country B the people elected a government that understood that even though freedom was important, there needed to be a few regulations here and there to stop things getting out of hand. For example, traffic lights and stop signs. That was after the previous government let things get out of kilter. So the new government rightly feared and listened to the people who wanted the instant test kits but also wanted them checked out first. The government had an honest audit as they knew there would be hell to pay if things went wrong later. Company One passes and goes ahead, company Two fails and leaves. Everyone happy! (who deserves to be.)
The full view of history does not fit into sound bites.
The full view of history is not politically correct.
But it will save us from repeating the disasters of the past.
Otherwise we are needless victims of good old Murphy’s law: “In case of doubt, make it sound convincing!”
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