Cognitive Dissonance

Cath Elliott writing in CiF – ever a rich seam of idiocy – tells us what she wants to see in the next ten years. Oh, boy…

I don’t mean to sound like some wise old sage, because let’s face it, I’m not one;

Indeed. It goes downhill from here on in.

What I would like to see is national governments and international organisations genuinely committed to improving the lot of everyone on this planet, man, woman and child.

Before you roll your eyes and emit a long, guttural groan about governments getting the hell out of our lives and all this stuff being nothing to do with them, wait to see what follows…

At the moment we seem to be all but drowning under a massive tide of bureaucracy, with human rights instruments and global treaties drawn up to cover just about every scenario under the sun.

See? And why are we drowning in a a sea of bureaucracy, Cath? Might is just be because governments see themselves as agents for improving the lot of every man woman and child? Something that should never be in their job description. One causes the other…

Going back to the by-line of this piece, it’s worth making a simple observation about capitalism:

I’d like to see a new international politics, where humanitarian concerns take precedence over greed and self-interest

Self-interest is what makes the world go round. It’s how commerce works. I buy something from a provider which is in my interests to buy and it is in his interests to sell. We both win. Self-interest is a good thing, not a bad one. Trade is a good thing, not a bad one. Capitalism, ultimately, is a good thing. It is the means by which people can drag themselves out of poverty, unlike socialism which seeks to drag us all down to mediocrity in the name of “equality”.