Who deserves respect? Do you respect the President of the United States, members of congress and the American Flag? Respect is a great thing in personal relationships? Have you ever done time in an American prison? In prison respect matters out of proportion to everything else.
What is the role of respect in studying economics or political science? James Quillian has no respect for the American flag, the president, other world leaders or any of the sacred people or institutions folks are prone to celebrate. James has no lack of these entities either. No respect is a neutral. Respect is positive. Disrespect is negative.
The president is just one of the animals who is where he is because of a unique set of personality characteristics. The president holds the highest position in our world’s game of dominance and subservience. All that matters is what the president does and the incentives he has. There are no special people.
In personal relationships, respect is indispensable. In politics as soon as you respect someone, you are ascribing characteristics to a person that he may or may not have. With disrespect, a person is being diminished, perhaps arbitrarily. Respect is something to be discarded privately. It must never be replaced with rudeness.
What matters in economics is a person’s incentives. If you can entertain the idea that what a person ends up doing is an accurate picture of that person’s deepest beliefs, then taking a persons actions at face value is the best approach. If in doing things, a person is not acting on his beliefs then there is no way to discern the worthiness of the things he does anyway.
Use good manners. Be rude to no one. In studying social phenomena respect is a way of engaging if fantasy. Fantasy will generate wrong answers. Use respect in personal relationships.
Under all circumstances, remember that all legislation is for profit. Who profits from legislation? Who has political power? Political power determines who makes the profit on legislation. Legislating for profit is what congress does. If you have no political power, legislation puts you at a net loss. Respect tends to build the impression that politicians participate for reasons other than self interest.
The truth is a hard sell. Fantasy Free Economics gains readers one at a time. Major search engines simply do not list blogs which disagree with their As long as folks share the link to this blog and others speaking out against the grain, the truth will at least trickle into the public consciousness.political agenda.
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