In a blog post last month, Dr. Tyler Cowen listed a number of books he is currently reading, and specifically mentioned a book which I think is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time. Here is what Cowen said:
“Michael Huemer, Progressive Myths. Michael is a very smart philosopher, but this book seemed like a waste of time to me. Will it persuade anyone? Do we need Michael writing seven-page essays rebutting various claims of the BLM movement and the like?”
I invited Dr. Tyler Cowen on the Libertarian Institute podcast to discuss his objections to Huemer’s Progressive Myths; he politely declined. I’d like to address Dr. Cowen who has an open invitation onto my podcast to defend himself anytime.
I don’t know what metric Cowen uses to differentiate productive books from unproductive books. Let’s assume productivity can be categorized as “Increased efficiency attempting to peruse a given end accounting for (opportunity) costs and benefits.” The book costs $12 on Amazon, is 245 pages, and is a complete refutation of the progressive ideology on economic, philosophical, empirical, and historical grounds.
Huemer provides readers with the very low cost education progressives pretend to offer us!
Progressive ideas are widely embrace by both Democrats and Republicans since it allows politicians to increase their power and social status under the guise of helping society while using involuntary investors (taxpayers) to bear the cost of their programs.
This is why presidents such as Republican Teddy Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson can historically be categorized as progressives, along with George W. Bush and Barack Obama today. All four presidents drastically increased the size and scope of government under the guise of helping the vulnerable masses.
Every basic tenet of Progressivism has been fully embrace by both parties for more than a century. If Republicans or moderate democrats were not progressive, we’d see the following:
- Drastic decreases in government spending year after year (we of course see the opposite regardless of which party is in power)
- Abolition of numerous regulatory agencies
- Abolition Teddy Roosevel’ts anti-trust laws
- Universal school choice with a plan to fully “voluntarize” all education
- Privatization of food stamp programs
- Abolition Franklin Roosevelt’s minimum wage
- Abolition of Woodrow Wilson’s income tax
- Abolition of Woodrow Wilson’s Federal Reserve
- Abolition of the Department of Education
No Dr. Cowen, your time is not being wasted when for a monetary cost of $12 and an opportunity cost of roughly 8 hours (1.5 days of school), you get to see through a century of lies being promoted by the most powerful people on earth.
My time is not wasted when decades of Huemer’s research is summarized for readers like me.
Huemer’s ability to save people time is astounding. You could spend a thousand hours watching mainstream news and never learn about the important empirical evidence Huemer brings to light. On page 189, Huemer addresses a claim few if any are familiar with:
“How could masking possibly increase the spread of disease?…Most people also wear the same mask repeatedly for many days, so pathogens may accumulate in the mask. This is a particular problem with cloth masks, which many people wore during the pandemic; indeed, one study found that cloth masks caused a nearly sevenfold increase in the risk of influenza-like illness, compared to wearing no mask.”
He mentions this after quoting Dr. Anthony Fauci on 60 Minutes in March 2020:
“Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks…There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”
Consider Huemer’s refutation of the entire concept that ‘billionaires” are people with bank accounts hoarding billions of stationary dollars:
“Jeff Bezos, for example, does not have $200 billion sitting in a bank account. Rather, he owns a large stake in Amazon. When you read that Bezos is worth $200 billion, that is based on the current Amazon stock price and the portion of the company that he owns.”
Having the opportunity to clearly see the world around you at a microscopic cost is not a “waste of time.”
Ever since I lost my crystal ball I’ve been unable to see the future and determine what will persuade who and to what degree.
I can say with a high degree of confidence that the chance of humanity being debamboozeled from the wealth destructing, divisive death cult of Progressivism is higher than it otherwise would be when we have professors with Ph.d.’s debunking progressive conspiracy theories regarding the economy, race, American history, and gender.
The economist should be quick to ask, “Compared to what”? How are people usually persuaded? White papers that are read only by peer reviewers and policy wonks? Online videos? Academic books? Blog posts? Tweets?
What is the right way to persuade people out of twelve years of progressive indoctrination, followed by four years of progressive ideas dominating universities, followed by a life where the entire corporate press defends every welfare policy and regulatory department under the sun?
Many people will be persuaded by Progressive Myths for three reasons.
First, social proof or the tendency for humans to do what others are already doing. The more people who unapologetically hold the anti-progressive position, the more people will feel welcome to embrace anti-progressive ideas such as free markets or the decriminalization of all economic activity between consenting adults.
Second, authority or the human tendency for people to trust those with a high social status. Having a published, well documented book by a Ph.d. philosopher increases the legitimacy of his thesis in the minds of many people- that progressivism is primarily a mythical belief system.
Third, the documentation is so overwhelming in the economic section alone, it’s very likely to drastically increase the amount of insecurity progressives hold in their positions, thus decreasing the confidence they have in silencing critics. Huemer takes “the poor get poorer” concept and simply verifies if the evidence proves or disproves this.
From page 146 of Progressive Myths:
“A 2007 Treasury Department report tracked individuals from 1996 to 2005. It found that 58% of people who started out in the bottom quintile of income earners in 1996 had moved up to a higher quintile by 2005.”
In two sentences, Huemer debunks the generational wealth conspiracy theory that almost every progressive believes.
Consider his debunking of “the rich don’t pay taxes” myth from page 155:
“In case you’re wondering about the notorious top 1% of income earners…[d]espite comprising only 1% of the population, they shoulder a third of the entire net tax burden.”
Yes, the book is persuasive and likely to persuade people who already see progressive mascots like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as complete sell-outs.
Cowen asks whether or not we need narratives like the Black Lives Matter movement refuted. Need? It’s not a matter of needing X, it’s a matter of, is X true, and will more people understanding X to be true be beneficial to readers and the general population?
The Black Lives Matter movement rioted, looted, and assaulted for months in the summer of 2020, victimizing innocent and powerless people when they were mad at the U.S. government’s police force. Conservatives on the other hand, when they were mad at the government, flew to Washington DC and stormed the Capitol building, taking on the most powerful people in society responsible for so many ills.
Now do you see why the American establishment pushes the BLM narrative happily while calling January 6 the worst thing since the crimes of the Mongolian Empire?
Imagine raising a male child and saying to the child five times a day:
“You are discriminated against. As a male, you are 50% of the population yet 95.5% of those killed by police, 90% of workplace deaths and the only gender that must register for military slavery (conscription and selective service). You must fight the White Male/Asian Woman Pay Gap with every fiber of your being, since Asian Women make more than white men. You must riot and loot every time a male is killed by the police. Don’t try to improve your skills, don’t get on the job training, don’t show up on time, or be a good person in general. The problem has nothing to do with your behavior. The problem is the system.”
No sane parent would raise their son this way, yet it is how progressives wish for women and non-whites to view the world around them.
Thankfully Japanese Americans didn’t take the advice of progressives. According to Thomas Sowell in Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality:
“Japanese immigrants to the United States also encountered persistent and escalating discrimination, culminating in their mass internment during World War II, but by 1959 they had about equaled the income of whites and by 1969 Japanese American families were earning nearly one-third higher incomes than the average American family.”
Apparently Indian Americans and Nigerian Americans have been able to doge the white supremacy of America by having incomes significantly higher than whites on average.
If you had to guess, how many people in general know the following; quoting from Progressive Myths, pages 58-59:
“[T]he police kill far more whites than blacks.Here are some more unarmed people who were killed by police recently: Timothy Randall, Tyler Woodburn, Matthew Mitchell, John Bomar, Richard Poulin, Joseph Nagle, Jeffrie Glover, Clesslynn Crawford, Nicholas Rodin. Those are all just from the year 2022.”
How many people saw the Dallas Police murder Tony Timpa by suffocating him to death on camera?
How many of your students, Dr. Cowen, can explain the disparity in the response by the corporate press between Tony Timpa and George Floyd? Do they even know Kelly Thomas was beaten to death on camera by police officers, who then were acquitted? Consider that unarmed white woman Ashli Babbitt was murder by a black officer on camera, and there was not even a trial, let alone wall to wall media coverage and months of riots. Have they even heard the name Justine Damond, the unarmed white woman who “was fatally shot by 31-year-old Somali-American Minneapolis Police Department officer Mohamed Noor after she had called 9-1-1 to report the possible assault of a woman in an alley behind her house”?
Huemer ends with a heroic defense of America in general, giving Americans of both genders and all races a narrative to unify us in divisive times. Quoting from page 241 of Progressive Myths:
“And why does America have so much power? The answer is that America makes the most of human talents. The society does not guarantee you success, but it lets you compete for success. Granted, not everyone has a perfectly equal opportunity. But the poor have much more opportunity in the U.S. than in the vast majority of other societies today and throughout history.”
For those of us unwilling or unable to spend a hundred thousand dollars and four years of our life at university only to be turned into a race-baiting, economically illiterate Bolshevik, Michael Huemer gives us the economic and philosophical education I wish I would have had in school.
Yes Dr. Cowen, we need this book.
I’m not sure why in the face of a government which spends $6.27 trillion dollars a year, regulates all commercial interactions, taxes the income of productive people to subsidize parasitic behavior while provoking a third world war, Cowen would insult Huemer’s heroic project of delegitimating the progressive world view which got us here.
One theory is that Huemer did not take the boring, predictable, establishment approach of ‘Straussianing’ the public into his thesis by shrewdly communicating in such a way that nudges the layman while dog whistling truths only academics can detect.
Huemer self-published on Amazon, the company that has done more to improve the living standards of poor people than any progressive government program could have ever conceived.
By not going through traditional routs, Huemer was able to tell the truth, unapologetically debunking conspiracies about racism, sexism, and the idea that the rich are out to get us.
I’m eternally grateful for academics like Jason Brennan, Tom Woods, Bryan Caplan, Scott Horton, and Michael Huemer who speak to the public in apologetic terms they can understand on the most important issues facing the human race.
