Ape Man

My apologies to Claus Vistesen over at Alpha.Sources. I think I lead him to believe that I was going to write a post focusing on a recent article on demographics in last week’s Economist. And that was what I sat down to write. But when I started writing a long standing grudge against The Economist started coming out. This forced me to cut out a lot of stuff I was going to bring out about The Economist article. When you are over 6 pages you have got to cut your losses.

I have been a subscriber to the British magazine The Economist ever since I got my driver’s license. I can date it that precisely because subscribing to The Economist is one of the first things that I did when I got my first real job. I was not paid much, so the subscription price took up a sizable percentage of my yearly income at the time.

Thankfully, it does not take up the same percentage of my yearly income today. But I am still a subscriber. I have never let my subscription lapse.

With a tale like that, you might think that I am big fan of The Economist. But the truth is that I have a love/hate relationship with The Economist. I love The Economist because of its international coverage. I am not aware of any weekly periodical that even comes close to The Economist as far as international coverage is concerned. I don’t even think that there is a combination of other periodicals that could replace The Economist‘s international coverage.

But The Economist has also taught me why democracy is the least bad of all the bad ways to govern men and they remind me of it every week. That is where the hate comes in.

Now I suppose you all are wondering (a) why I need to be taught that democracy is the least bad way to govern men and (b) why being taught such a thing would leave me with negative feelings for The Economist.

To understand the answer to question (a) you need to understand that I work and live in totally different environment than the majority of my readers. Outside of those who read this blog and know me personally, I don’t think anyone really has much contact with the type of people that I work with.

Since this is going to be a rant about The Economist and not about my fellow workers, I don’t want to put too much effort into enlightening you all. Let me just say that prolonged exposure to people who are only semi-literate and whose primary goal in life is to drink more beer can cause one to question the wisdom of universal suffrage.

It not so much the fact that my fellow blue collar workers are ignorant that bothers me. Being finite creatures, all of us humans are basically ignorant. But when people form definite and strong opinions on subjects they know nothing about, and when they don’t care to learn anything about the subjects they are pontificating about, it bothers me. Even worse is when they should know something but don’t.

For example, you would think that someone who has voted their whole life long in every type of election from school board to national would understand the difference between a primary and a election, right? How could someone possibly spend a lifetime going to elections and not know the difference? I still don’t know the answer to that question, but I have met such a person.

In fact, I received quite a lecture from such a person. He happened to mention that he was going to vote and how he could not decide if he should vote for this Democrat or that Republican. I made what I thought was an innocent observation that he did not have to deal with all that complexity quite yet as it was only primary season and he could only choose among those candidates that belonged to the same party as he did.

That set him off. I received a detailed lecture on how you could vote for whoever you wanted to in America and no matter what I said I could not convince him otherwise. Seeing as I was only a teenager at the time and he was a man of much electoral experience I thought that perhaps I was mistaken and my state had moved on to an open primary system without me knowing it. But it soon became apparent that this gentleman (who also happened to be my boss at the time) did not understand the difference between an election to a public office and a primary.

After he went to the primary he was forced to admit that I was right. But if I were to go and ask him today what the difference was between a primary and an election I doubt he would be able to tell me. He has probably already forgotten about going to the primary and discovering that they do not work like an election to public office.

Experience has taught me that most of my fellow blue collar workers are not ignorant because they lack opportunities to learn. Rather they are ignorant because they never learn anything from their life’s experiences. My old boss is sadly typical of your average blue collar worker.

I could go on and on with various examples, but I think I have wasted enough time explaining the answer to question (a). Presumably you have at least a glimmer of understanding of why I might sometimes have my doubts about the wisdom of universal suffrage.

But as I said, The Economist never fails to reassure me that universal suffrage is the least bad way to govern men. Unfortunately, the reassurance does not come from The Economist‘s frequent arguments in favor of democracy. Rather, the reassurance comes from the fact that The Economist has repeatedly demonstrated that the highly educated elites of the world are no better than the ignorant hillbillies of the world when it comes to formulating opinions.

Sure, the people who write The Economist are far more educated and intelligent than most of the people that I work with. But for all that they know and for all that they have higher intellectual capabilities, The Economist comes by its opinions the same way any hillbilly does. They go by their emotions and what they want to be true. Any fact that contradicts what they want to be true, they ignore.

A famous example of this was The Economist article “Arms and the Man.” This article was based on research supposedly done by Michael Bellesiles that later became a book called Arming America. Now The Economist was really enamored with this research. They even made this article their cover story for that week’s issue. The only problem was that just about everything in the article was false and The Economist should have known it.

The reason that I say that The Economist should have know that most of Michael Bellesiles work was false has to do with this one little passage in the “Arms and the Man” article….

So, contrary to popular belief and legend, and contrary even to the declarations of the founding fathers, gun ownership was rare in the first half of America’s history as an independent country. It was especially low in parts of the countryside and on the frontier, the very areas where guns are imagined to have been most important. By no stretch of the imagination was America founded on the private ownership of weapons.

You have to be arrogant to write something like contrary even to the declarations of the founding fathers, gun ownership was rare in the first half of America’s history. I mean, founding fathers were alive at the time and the writers of The Economist were not. It is pretty cheeky to think that the founding fathers did not know how widespread gun ownership was in their time and that we in this day are only now discovering the truth.

But even if you are so arrogant as to ignore the words of the founding fathers, one has to wonder how The Economist thought that the Americans managed to exterminate the Native Americans if guns were really so rare on the frontier. Surely The Economist did not think that North American continent was really “empty” and the American settlers could just peaceably go where ever they wanted to. Surely the writers for The Economist know enough early American history to know that it was just one long series of small wars with Native American tribes. Surely The Economist knew that most of those small wars were fought by militia’s made up of all the able-bodied men on the frontier. Kind of hard to square all those facts with the idea that most people on the American frontier were peaceable folk who did not own a weapon, is it not?

I don’t really need to belabor this point. Everyone knows by now Michael Bellesiles faked most of his data. He even had to give up his job as professor of History at Emory University after they conducted an investigation into his research practices. Even The Economist had to concede that almost everything in their article was false.

But the fact that so many educated people fell for his made-up story shows how little value education has on improving people’s discernment. If you can say “America has committed genocide against Native Americans” out of one side of your mouth and “American people on the frontier were peaceful folk who did not even have a weapon” out of the other side of your mouth, you have no business pretending that the facts have anything to do with your opinions. And if the facts have nothing to do with how you form your opinions why not be ignorant? Of what advantage is it to be well read and educated?

It would be nice if “Arms and the Man” was a one off. Unfortunately, The Economist continually demonstrates the same disregard for the facts and for consistent reasoning that they showed in “Arms and the Man.” To be sure, the reliance on fake data that characterized the “Arms and the Man” story is presumably a rare occurrence (otherwise I would not read it at all). Most often The Economist simply chooses to ignore the inconvenient facts and march happily down the road of irrationality.

An excellent example of how they do this can be found in last week’s article entitled “Suddenly, the old world looks younger.” There is no false data in this article that I am aware of, but the data that is there is irrationally used. Moreover, the data that is not there constitutes a lie by omission.

To understand why I would make such strong claims let us consider the stated purposes of this article. In the beginning of the article the author writes…..

This article will argue that pessimism is no longer justified. It would be too much to say Europe’s population is bouncing back. But its long-term decline is starting to bottom out, and is even rising in a few places.

This is the standard by which we will judge the article. I would note a couple of things. The first is that The Economist seems to be conceding that pessimism was once justified yet it never says why the pessimism was once justified. That makes it hard to pin them down on what has changed to make the pessimism unjustified now. The second is that the bottoming out that The Economist is talking about is fertility rates (the number of children that each woman has on average). This is important to note because if fertility rates bottom out below replacement rate and stay there, it is hard to see how that is an argument for optimism.

I bring out those nitpicks just to point out that The Economist‘s argument does not make much sense even in its formulation of intent. About the only concrete thing you can get out of it is that you should be optimistic, not pessimistic. But this is just sloppy writing. The real crimes come later in the article.

The most fundamental error in The Economist‘s article can found in this passage….

But countries are not doomed to fall into this trap. Over the past few years, almost a dozen places have not only avoided it, but begun to reverse their decline. France is leading the way.

Now maybe it is just because I am ignorant hillbilly, but I always thought that you should be careful not to give too much weight to every little up and down tick in a data series. I have always been taught that what matters is the trend line that runs through the data series. If you look at Europe’s demographic data over the last 30+ years you will see up ticks and down ticks. But the overall trend line is resolutely down. Why should we take data from the last few years as overturning this 30+ year trend?

Imagine, if you will, that Europe goes through a few years of economic recession. Let us say that birth rates drop really low due to rough economic times. Let us say that a doom and gloomer like Mark Steyn (a target of The Economist‘s article) extrapolates the trend of those few years of hardship into the future and argues that they are doomed sooner than anyone thought. Don’t you think that under this scenario The Economist would be at the forefront of those arguing that you should not project a trend on the basis of only few years’ data?

The Economist should know better than to treat data this way. If you are going to say that the last few data points in a series mark the change of a trend you had better make a darned good argument as to why this so. But in “Suddenly, the old world looks younger” The Economist does not even try to make the case for why this represents a changing trend. They just say the equivalent of “look, good news, we can all relax now”.

But since economic growth has been good in Europe recently (at least in those countries that have seen their demographics rise) I think we can reasonably wonder what will happen if the business cycle turns downward. Given that economic hardship and birth rates are linked, I think that it is reasonable to think that the birth rates will go down again. So unless we assume that the business cycle will always stay high in Europe, I think we ought to look at the current up tick in birth rates as being temporary. The true trend will reveal itself over a complete business cycle.

Even if you want to accept The Economist‘s assertion that the uptick of the last few years represents a fundamental change in trend, you still have to admit that The Economist is playing fast and loose with the data. This is because the uptick is only happening in 12 countries that do not represent the majority of Europe population. Even if you go beyond those 12 countries and include all the countries in Europe with a halfway healthy birth rate, you still do not have a majority of Europe’s population. The Economist does its best to obscure that fact. It says…

If you take account of late childbearing, you find that 16 European countries, with a total population of 234m, now have fertility rates of 1.8 or more. Half are above 2.0. Despite near-panic about “inevitably” declining population, then, some European countries are growing quite strongly. They are rare examples of bucking the trend that, as countries get richer, their birth rates fall.

16 countries and 234 million sounds like a lot don’t it? But how big is the total European population? Well, if you go by Wikipedia the total figure is 728 million. If you go by The Council of Europe the figure is 815 million. That kind of puts the percentage of Europe population that is just below replacement rate into perspective doesn’t it?

I don’t know what figures The Economist would use for Europe as whole because The Economist is careful never to look at Europe as whole. This is kind of odd for an article that said in its statement of intent “And just as everyone whinges about the weather, but does nothing about it, so everyone in Europe complains, but does nothing, about population. This article will argue that pessimism is no longer justified.”

If you are going to argue that pessimism for Europe as a whole is no longer justified, you ought to look at the population of Europe as whole don’t you think? But if The Economist looked at Europe as a whole they would have to show that close to two thirds of Europe’s population was way below replacement rate. For the matter, most of population in the one third that is doing “well” is slightly below replacement rate. That fact would damage their case against pessimism, now wouldn’t it?

All I am trying to demonstrate is that The Economist is so desperate to present the demographic situation of Europe in a positive light that they sacrifice the internal coherency of their article. We are told that there is no reason for pessimism in regards to Europe’s future as a whole and yet the article asks us to only focus on that small minority of countries that have experienced good demographical news in the last couple of years. How is this honest?

Why does this matter? Who cares if the reasoning behind your average Economist opinion piece is no better than the reasoning of your average ignorant hillbilly? There are two reasons.

The first reason is purely selfish on my part. A subscription to The Economist is not cheap, especially if you are a laborer by trade. I would rather not spend all that money to be bombarded with the type of drivel that I can hear everyday at work. As I said before, I put up with it because of their international coverage. But gee whiz; can’t they raise their game a little?

But there is a more important reason for being concerned/disgusted with the poor reasoning that seems to be epidemic at The Economist.

If you take a look around the world you will see a growing backlash against the ideas that The Economist has traditionally stood for. Democracy is getting a bad name in Latin America and the Middle East. Trade and immigration are everywhere under attack. Nationalism is everywhere resurgent. Riding these waves of discontent are increasingly vocal demagogues who just love to whip up the fears and concerns of the crowds.

If you were so inclined you could say that The Economist is broadly right and that the demagogues are broadly wrong. Certainly that would be true for me. But I happen to believe that when it comes to winning hearts and minds, the means are as important as the ends. There in lies the really serious problem that I have with The Economist.

I cannot honestly point to The Economist and say that it is more reasonable than the rising crowd of demagogues. I cannot say that The Economist is fairer minded than the rising crowd of demagogues. Because I cannot say those things, I have to think that The Economist does more harm to its ideals than your average demagogue.

When it comes right down to it, if the elites cannot argue any better than demagogues, why shouldn’t the hillbillies believe whatever they want to believe?

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Demographics, Economics, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.