From Taki Magazine
“greatest happiness for the greatest number” would become an argument for totalitarian ultra-veganism?
hmmm… But being a utilitarian doesn’t mean you also have to be a leftist egalitarian . As a utilitarian, I believe in economic and social policy such as supply side economics as well as eugenics that will create an environment optimal to the thriving of the best and brightest that will, in turn, encourage the development of technologies that will improve standards of living and hasten the transition to a type 1 civilization. Such policy tends to be the anathema of the recession-seeking welfare left who, though useless social programs and higher taxes, want redistribution from the most productive to the lest, as well as opposing standardized testing or any program where the results could be interpreted to mean some people are cognitively superior to others. As seen by record wealth inequality that shows no sign of slowing and thriving meritocracies all over America, egalitarianism is dead before it even had a change to begin, so it’s nothing to really worry about.
The successful 2008 bank bailouts are a recent example of utilitarian policy that benefited many people indirectly by stemming the financial panic and spurning the creation of wealth through stocks, commerce and real estate, despite the left whining about ‘moral hazard’ and stuff like that. The greatest beneficiaries of the bailouts were key institutions such as multinationals, banking and venture capitalists – the very entities that are the most important to the functioning of the global economy, but millions of ordinary Americans also benefited through rising stocks and real estate. The auto bailouts and the Obama stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) are regarded to be failure, however, as many economists acknowledge. It’s selfish for the liberals on the right and left to put politics ahead of good policy.
In continuing with the discussion of the worthlessness of pop social psychology, if a leftist in academia cannot deny IQ exists with a strait face, the next strategy is to turn high-IQ into a handicap or deficit by positing smarter people less ethical, more prone to depression, or more susceptible to cognitive biases (like the conjunction fallacy).
Pop social psychology is about leveling – making everyone equal, in agreement with liberal opposition to individual exceptionalism. Liberals like Nicolas Nassim Taleb and Robert Shiller say that the market is rigged, a bubble and inefficient and that smart people cannot make excess risk-adjusted returns because they are gullible or irrational. The evidence contradicts this, as many smart people do beat the market consistently without blowing up their accounts and, furthermore, there is no such thing as an irrational investor. No one goes into a trade intending to lose money unless they are crazy or have some weird ulterior motive.
Even if smart people are more prone to cognitive biases, their other qualities more than compensate for it.