That’s a large part of it. It’s not unlike the global warming industry. When your paycheck is signed by an organization that not only has a preferred conclusion for you to reach, but also has the power of force behind it, it’s a lot easier to just fall in line.
But another large part of the resistance is where their knowledge is coming from. Someone once said: “When government controls the schools, don’t be surprised when everyone comes out thinking the government is the solution to everything.” So of course there is an ever-present perpetuation of the idea that government is not only proper, but necessary. And when you’re forced — children are compelled to go to school, remember…and everyone is already paying considerable taxes to support the government schools, so few parents can afford to homeschool them or send them to non-government schools — into institutions at an early age, and forced to remain there not only through your formative years, but for a good deal of your life, it’s not surprising that most people become indoctrinated.
After a while, it becomes difficult to even wrap your head around the idea of a world without the government being involved in so many things. I actually had a conversation with a grown man, who served in the Navy and has children of his own, about how people would be educated without government-run schools. He literally could not get it. He’s not retarded (or at least, I don’t think he is). But his question kept going back to “how the fuck do you expect private schools to provide education to every single child? There aren’t near enough private schools! How do you expect America to compete in an international marketplace without educating our children?”
I’m not kidding. I’m not exaggerating. That was literally his question, and he was not joking. I tried multiple times, multiple ways to explain that all the school buildings are there, all the teachers are there, all the books are there…it just wouldn’t be run by government. And he literally could not get it. The closest he got was claiming that he couldn’t afford private school, so where would his kids go? Never underestimate the power of indoctrination.
And of course, that leads to a different reason people don’t get it…inertia. When people become so indoctrinated that they can’t even begin to understand how something as simple schooling would exist if the government didn’t put a gun to everyone’s head and force them to pay for it and send their children to it, obviously they’re not going to be able to teach children anything else either…so people grow up in a world where not only the lie is taught, but it’s taught from people who don’t even know it’s a lie. Multiply that out a few generations and these are the people we’re dealing with now. These are the people running government and running our institutions and winning Nobel Prizes.
And you may have heard the phrase “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” That was George Orwell. Ironically it was Bertrand Russell (of all people) who said something simliar: “This is one of those views which are so absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.”
They were both touching on a very important point about how insane ideas even get considered. It’s very counterintuitive, and most people don’t realize it, but you really do have to be quite smart to deeply believe things that are really stupid. I think it has to do with needing to have the mental capacity to be able to perform the gymnastics necessary to make things work…in your head. Most people can’t do that. The problem is most people are so dumb that they just defer to “their betters” in academia and government and go along with whatever they say…which is obviously incredibly stupid in its own right, and quite dangerous. But remember, when you’re indoctrinated to believe the government is there to “take care of you”, and that officials are to be revered and respected and praised, and that they are smarter and wiser than you, and they have armies of people who are even smarter and wiser than they are advising them, it’s quite easy to not only believe what they say, but stand behind it and actually attack those who would question it.
It’s tough to see here in the U.S., since you’re used to it…and since you can’t really recognize it, it’s a little hard to believe…but just watch a documentary or two on North Korea. See indoctrination existing and operating in one of its purest forms, here, now, in 2011. That will really help. And possibly scare the crap out of you.
I honestly don’t even think it goes that far. I wish it were that thought out, but I really get the impression that they think sound money is just “an old idea” and that “this is the 21st century” and “today’s economy” is just too advanced, and that we need something more sophisticated. Like one Yale Professor recently said “money can’t manage itself”. People just see so many things around them that have changed, that they naturally believe everything else has to change too…even laws of economics. It would be nice if they actually realized the truth but simply didn’t want to admit it like Autolykos suggests, but I’m doubtful it’s that advanced. I’m really led to believe a lot (if not most) of these guys truly don’t get it.
And again, it certainly doesn’t help that everyone around you, from teachers, to media personnel, to academics, to your all-knowing government, are saying the same thing. Like this idiot who thinks that economic growth is determined and dependent upon the size of the money supply (i.e. if the money supply doesn’t grow, economic advancement cannot occur. Seriously. Watch it. O’Reilly the host is even too ignorant to even begin to argue with him.)
And most people aren’t even exposed to other ideas. People have never even heard of anything else. It’s all just assumed as a given. And you have to remember, most people are pretty dumb, as well as not very knowledgeable…about anything. They don’t take the time to study or look into anything on their own. So the only things they might know is something they heard in their government school. But that’s not everyone. There are smart people who do look into things and study. People who get doctoral degrees specifically in the field, for crying out loud. And it was tough for me to understand for a while, how people who were so smart, and spend all their time studying these things could believe such nonsense…but you come to realize all their time is spent in dark, dank computer labs running regressions and working complex models buried in high level math, which — according to one of the most recent economic Nobel Laureates — “are abstractions that make very simple assumptions that aren’t realistic.” And all the time they’re not doing that, they’re either being indoctrinated or reminded how smart they are.
I talked a little about this here, and relayed a story about someone in this forum who gave one of F.A. Hayek’s works to an economics PhD graduate who ended up coming back and saying “I wish they had taught us some of this stuff.” (Hayek was also a Nobel Laureate, by the way, and in his day was, along with John Maynard Keynes, one of the two most prominent economists in the world. So it’s a little tough to say he’s “too obscure.”) But the fact is, they aren’t taught anything about capital theory or a realistic time structure of interest rates. When your entire higher level education, (and after that, your entire career) is essentially nothing more than the mathematization of government regulation, it’s quite easy to get so lost in the maze of trying to figure out exactly how much regulation should be in how many sectors, and how it should be implemented, and when, and where, and how each tweak affects what…that you never even think to consider whether there should be the regulation in the first place. Again, it’s just a given. Not only that, but you’ve just spent 8 years of your life, and literally tens of thousands of dollars learning this crap…so it’s a lot harder to consider the idea that it was all essentially for nothing. The system couldn’t be that screwed up, could it?
And finally, there’s also a small presence, (even if subconscious), of knowing where your paychecks come from. Not like the “remember who you’re working for” kind of thing mentioned earlier, but more of a self-preservation instinct. Like the accountant who, on some level realizes that if the tax code gets any simpler, his skills are no longer necessary…so he argues against something like a flat tax or a Fair Tax. And it’s not like he’s even necessarily thinking about himself consciously…It’s possible he completely believes the current system is better because it gives people like his clients (who are smart enough to hire him) the ability to avoid a lot of taxes that others have to pay. But of course in reality, in the grand scheme, the world is poorer in both situations…from the horrific policies that these economists advocate, and from the system of theft that makes “tax professionals” necessary.