Right Thinking

I submit that there are two components to "right decision making", and they are "right facts" and "right reasoning". Basically, if error is ever introduced into one's knowledge or one's logic, then one cannot be expected to come to correct conclusions. I can't think of any other factors that may apply, and this framework seems reasonable enough to me. Now, understanding that facts are -- by definition -- indisputable, and logic is -- by it's construction -- rigidly repeatable, with the proper application of good logic to right facts, any two people should necessarily come to the same, exact conclusions. I think, in this framework, we can say that the source of disagreement between peoples is when one or both prerequisites for right decision making is flawed.

So knowing this, and knowing that Helicopter Ben knows pretty much everything there is to know about the Great Depression, then we must either assume he has additional (perhaps faulty) knowledge that we as yet do not possess, or he is so incredibly stupid that he would willfully ignore the lessons of the past of which he is so intimately (and yes, go to the gutter with that one) aware.

I'm going to give Benny the benefit of doubt and say he isn't a stupid man. A stupid person's rise in government probably ends at Representative. So then, that leaves us with knowledge, the lack of which is ignorance. What does Boynanke know that we don't, and more importantly, why is he not doing his damnedest to correct that knowledge disparity with the nation as a whole? Under what circumstances is it acceptable to force people who threw their chit in with Toyota to now pay for the care and feeding of an ailing Chrysler, and not gain the use of a new car because of it?

In my mind, the cost of any solution will be great, so great that the numbers used to express the dollar figure are incomprehensible to the human mind. What is a billion? Do you know what a billion grains of rice looks like, compared to a million? So, either an interventionist or a fundamentalist solution will result in a cost far greater than we are able to handle. As far as the human mind is concerned, 15 billion is just as infinite as 43 billion as 1 billion as 5 million. The question then becomes, "what is moral?"

I cannot morally accept the rewarding of failure. I cannot accept allowing abject failures to continue in a mode that, for their purposes as individual people, is essentially unchanged. Let's call the auto workers "defrauded physical asset investors", and recompense them at a value determined by a fair court. Let's confiscate those damages from these failed CEOs. That makes sense to me, from a moral standpoint.