Ralph Nader is a lot like an equally charming relic from the 70’s, a herpes infection. He’s more a nuisance than a serious threat to the Republic, but no matter how much we may wish for it he just won’t go away. What is the guy 100 years old by now?
Anyway, he’s back in the WSJ today, bleating that same old tired 70’s shtick about how it’s the “speculator” who is threatening the welfare of the globe or setting fire to kittens, or something. His view is so divorced from reality that who can tell with him anymore.
In reality, it’s the speculator that is the only one left who is still trying to impose a rational order on the world. Policy makers decide to do something that has an effect on prices. Speculators react to that, often in a way that policy makers don’t like, and Ralph calls that a problem with the speculators. He never considers that it’s actually the idiotic policies which are creating the problem and that the speculators are doing nothing but running up the signal flags.
The issue with command and control liberals like Nader is that they believe a policy should be judged based on the intent of the policy rather than the outcome. They never ever consider that every policy decision has a benefit and a cost. If they thought of policy making as choosing between outcomes rather than a unilateral imposition of one, then their expectations and the expectations of speculators would probably be more in line. But as is evidenced by this rehash from an October 1979 copy of the WSJ, that ain’t happening where Ralph is concerned.
It actually says something really profound about our society that a man can be so universally wrongheaded about how the world works, and still manage to keep body and soul together. It says that life in America has been really easy, for the last few generations at least. And even a guy like Nader has managed to find enough government approved calories to keep from starving.
But these days, we’re thankfully entering the sunset of the baby boomer era. And in a few more years we’ll be spared any further self congratulatory proselytizing of people like Ralph Nader. He can still write something for the journal, but thankfully, we’re all past the time when we would consider taking his policy suggestions seriously.
We were all young and stupid once, but the boomers seem to have clung to that idiocy of youth well into their declining years. When I was young, Nader seemed like he maybe had a point to many of my generation. I even had a good friend who ended up one of his chief lieutenants. But in the intervening 30 years while we grew up and learned about the world, (even my friend has since gone to work for a Bay area software company) Ralph remained frozen in time like a museum piece of ‘me generation’ commemoration. He could just as well be in the window next to the Cro-Magnon man display in the museum of natural history, for all people take him seriously anymore.
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t know he was still alive until I read the byline of his piece today. I guess it was only his political influence that died. And thank god for that. With Obama doing his best Jimmy Carter impression (right down to the malaise speech) I don’t think America could stand another bout of Naderism. It’s so laughable on its face, that I don’t have anything I can say which would top it.
Yes, yes Ralph, by all means. Let’s sever our last desperate link to objective reality, so we can all ascend into the perfect world of rainbows and unicorns where bad outcomes have been made illegal. Jeez. Maybe he’s having an acid flashback or something.
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If this post seems to you like a rehash of things that I've said dozens of times before over the last few years, given the context... I thought it only fair.
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