Halfthink: How Incomplete Reasoning Costs Us Our Liberty

We tend to think halfway through, and we usually stop thinking as soon as we've achieved our desired outcome. In politics, this often costs us our liberty. This article will discuss the concept of halfthink in Keynesian economics, central banking, interventionism, the short-circuiting of due process and in our everyday life.
by Wilson Locke
(libertarian)
Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The faculty of reason is the most powerful tool given to mankind, for better or for worse. It was reason that allowed man to rise from the status of a lowly animal barely capable of providing for his own subsistence to that of a builder, an innovator, a technician, a scientist and a being that shapes his own environment to his liking. And yet, sometimes we wonder how humanity can be so irrational when we plunge into wars bringing entire civilizations down to their knees or when we surrender our liberty to people who cannot be trusted to run a local restaurant chain, let alone an entire country.

If you can choose to think, you also have the ability to shy away from thinking when you feel that it takes too much effort to think an issue through or when your own reason leads you down a path that calls for actions you do not want to undertake. All too often, we stop thinking when we feel we have achieved our desired outcome, but going further down the path of reason might cause us to realize that this outcome is impossible, illusory, unsustainable or may only be achieved by immoral means. We have been endowed with reason and trusted with freedom, and it is our responsibility to exercise our reason to its fullest potential.

In modern times, there is a strong tendency to think of reason as being synonymous with intelligence, which, in turn, is presumed to be innate, measurable and fixed for life, with the rest of our thinking being a knee-jerk reaction that can be traced to our upbringing. Or, perhaps, it is merely a product of an incomprehensible, invisible, subconscious mind. The fallacy of this mindset becomes obvious when you observe the situations where we tend to apply it.

Have you ever seen a student who just aced the final exam after a month of endless studying and practice attributing his success to his genes, his parents or a random thought spontaneously springing out of his unconscious mind? It's next to impossible to imagine someone doing this. And yet, when we do not succeed, we tend not to re-examine our own reasoning. Instead, we blame it on the circumstances, our parents, our socioeconomic background or our supposedly uncontrollable state of mind. The uncontrollable then becomes the mother of all cop-outs. After all, one cannot judge someone for something that was outside of their control.

Those who read George Orwell's 1984 are probably familiar with the concept of doublethink, which refers to the simultaneous acceptance of two contradictory ideas. Freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength... Many dictatorial regimes throughout the world managed to maintain their power through the use of fallacious ideologies that were accepted by multitudes of people despite their numerous contradictions. In the long run, ideologies whose fundamental principles are based on doublethink tend to cancel themselves out. As the saying goes, you can fool some people all the time, you can fool all the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time. When the ideas offered by a belief system are contradictory on their face, no matter how many people support the ideology, it will eventually be reduced to an absurdity and demolished by clever intellectuals who can point out the inconsistencies without obviously stepping out the line. In logic, this technique is known as reductio ad absurdum.

But what if you just don't bother thinking? When we were growing up, a lot of us went through an intermediate phase before realizing that Santa Claus does not exist. You would try to rationalize away the apparent impossibilities, and you would simply stop thinking about them the moment you saw the gifts under the Christmas tree, realizing you got what you wanted, as if by magic. Even if deep down inside, you knew there was something about the Santa Claus myth that divorced it from reality, you would voluntarily decide not to develop it any further, lest you destroy the holiday spirit and make everyone unhappy. You would think about that magical assembly line going from the elves' workshop on the North Pole to Rudolph and his flying sleigh... But how can a single sleigh go to each and every house where people celebrate the holiday in less than 24 hours? That's where we would comfortably stop thinking and unwrap the gifts, but at some point, we all had to grow up and go through the pain of understanding that we had believed a harmless myth that nevertheless happened to be false.

We often tend to reason logically up until the point when we've reached our desired result. But once the objective has been attained, there is no need to keep on thinking, right? If George Orwell were to analyze this phenomenon and create a new term for it, he would probably call it halfthink; that is, thinking halfway through and then stopping when it's convenient. No adult in his right mind believes in Santa Claus, but in public affairs, almost everyone has been guilty of halfthink at some point or another, including myself. Apparently, it is in our nature to stop thinking when we realize that any further conclusions may be undesirable, but if we keep falling in this trap, disaster will ensue.

Remember this: If you always think halfway through the issues, the politicians will do the other half, and it is very unlikely that your liberty will make it to the top of their priority list.

Economic Halfthink - Keynesianism

We've all heard of the multiplier effect. If the government spends a dollar, a big chunk of that dollar gets spent by government employees on goods provided by the private sector, and a fraction of that gets spent by the business owner and his employees elsewhere, ad infinitum. As a result, the benefit received by the economy as a whole is more than a dollar. Right? But where did the government dollar come from? You've got your prosperity, and the DOW is up, so it's time to turn off your brain and stop thinking. Mission accomplished.

But what if I don't want to stop thinking? The government has no money of its own, and all the money it spends needs to come from taxes, borrowing or government-owned enterprises. If it comes from taxes, the government dollar comes from a private citizen who could have spent it on goods in the private sector, which in turn would have given the business owners and their employees the opportunity to spend a fraction of it elsewhere, and so on, and so forth. We see the exact same multiplier effect going in the opposite direction. If the government borrows money, it will have to eventually repay the loan with interest. If it decides to run a self-sustaining business, there is no net benefit to having it run by the government, unless it comes with an implicit bailout guarantee. If it can be profitable, free enterprise will eventually fill the spot.

In reality, Keynes himself admited to the fact that he was indulging in halfthink. When anyone tried to point out that his solutions have no effect in the long run, he would retort, "In the long run, we're all dead".

Economic Halfthink - Central Banking and Inflation

Money doesn't grow on trees. It appears that with the ascent of Keynesian and Monetarist macroeconomics, this statement has been made obsolete. In order for an economy to develop, it needs more and more money. Therefore, running the printing presses around the clock is the recipe for eternal prosperity. If a financial institution is about to fail, don't blame the management. It simply needs more money or, as they now call it, "liquidity", and the wise men at the Federal Reserve know exactly who needs it and when they need it, and how much money should be given out. But how does the creation of new dollar bills, each of which constitutes a claim to goods and services, create more resources elsewhere in the economy? Wouldn't more money be chasing the same amount of goods? If someone gets a new claim to the economy's resources, and no new resources have been created, will value be effectively stolen from someone else? Whoa! Hold it right there! You just got a car loan at a record-low interest rate. You should be happy. Why bother thinking about the big picture?

Those who have been around long enough have probably noticed that a dollar does not buy nearly as much as it used to. If you leave your money in a piggy bank or a savings account, it will be practically worthless by the time you retire. So you need to put your capital at risk and invest it in stocks and bonds, whether directly or indirectly, just to maintain the purchasing power of the money that is rightfully yours. Precious metals are a well-known escape route, but at one point, it was illegal for Americans to own gold for that purpose. So we've seen our wealth being redistributed arbitrarily for private and public benefit without representation, and yet we've managed to convince ourselves there is nothing wrong with that.

Political Halfthink - Surveillance and the Short-Circuiting of Due Process

They hate us for our freedoms. The government knows they are guilty and dangerous. They are not entitled to any constitutional protections, not even to habeas corpus and a speedy public trial. Just lock them up and declare them guilty after the fact in a military tribunal. There's another 9/11 just waiting to happen, and the only way to prevent it is to get tough. The government needs to have the tools necessary to protect us at any cost, so we have to allow arbitrary surveillance and wiretapping. Privacy is a barbaric remnant of the horse-and-buggy era. After all, it's our government, of, for and by the people... They are the good guys fighting the bad guys, and we all know just how bad the bad guys are. Anyone who looks like an Arab needs to be temporarily detained and interrogated, all the while presumed guilty of terrorism until proven innocent. We've all heard that time and time again from FOX News and others. But how does the government know who's guilty? What if they caught the wrong guy? What if they declare you guilty and deprive you of the tools you need to prove yourself innocent? It's time to turn off your brain. Stop thinking, for crying out loud! You think too much! That can never happen.

Those who supported the doctrine under President Bush sided with him on most issues. After all, the Executive will never go after its own supporters. But now that Barrack Obama is in office, the tables have turned. If you are opposed to abortion, you are potentially dangerous. If you have attended a tea party protest, you are most likely a right-wing extremist or a white supremacist just waiting for the right excuse to kill a person of a different race. If you believe in the right to bear arms, you must also believe in the right to shoot at a cop who wants to give you a speeding ticket. If you oppose socialized medicine, the government knows for sure that you do so not because it can create long waiting lines but rather because you secretly desire to wipe out the minority groups you dislike by denying them healthcare.

In the first half of the halfthink process, you've been convinced to give quasi-totalitarian powers to a government representing the beliefs and practices of your own group... After all, it's OK if they only use them against the "bad" guys. They know you're not one of the "bad" guys. But now that a different group controls the government, all of a sudden, you are the one in the crosshairs. Here comes the second half of the halfthink process, where you're not in charge anymore because you chose not to think it through and expressed your support for a flawed, immoral principle.

As long as the government is constrained by a strong commitment to due process and the presumption of innocence ("innocent until proven guilty") regardless of what kind of "guilt" you bear in the eyes of the public by being a member of a certain group, class, race or religion, even if the President has the political convictions of Mao Tse Tung, there isn't much he can do without breaking the law. If, however, you've authorized whoever holds the title of President to do anything he or she deems necessary to "fight terror", just wait until you become part of a minority or, perhaps, a minority of one. The President will be able to kill you with your own weapon, figuratively speaking.

Political Halfthink - Interventionism

We live in the greatest country in the world whose ideals of liberty have brought it to an unprecedented level of economic prosperity. This gives us an obligation to export the system to the rest of the world by killing all dictators and freeing the oppressed. We can then remould their nations in our image, and they are going to love it. Their culture is different from ours. But how are they going to react if they see our troops on their soil? Will they think we're after their resources? Do they believe that their culture gave them what they have, and we are about to take it away? Will they consider their own death to be a fair price to pay for making their country more like America, Canada or Britain? If you've ever asked yourself any of these questions, it means you should have stopped thinking a long time ago. You want prosperity for all, and how this can be brought about should be left to the experts in the White House and the think tanks. All they need is your support and blind faith.

In reality, no matter how good your system is, if it is brought about by violence and plunder, the sacrifices made to put it together will be much greater than any benefits derived from it. All the tea in China and all the iPods in America will not be worth all the destruction brought about by war. And no matter how a war of aggression is dressed up, the real motive behind it is power. If you sincerely want others to adopt your system, lead by example.

Cultural Halfthink - Never Say No

You've been invited to a road trip, and you don't want to go. However, you don't want to say "no". So you say "yes" out of politeness, elaborating on the details, pretending to be looking forward to it, and then you just don't show up, and you turn off the phone. The next time you meet that person, you make up a story explaining why you couldn't make it. Everyone's better off, right?

When everyone does that, it makes planning the event next to impossible. The planner needs to know how many cars he needs and how much food is necessary. An honest "no" may have allowed them to invite someone else. So you've made it harder for the person you wanted to benefit by not telling the truth. Just imagine what it would be like if this type of cultural norm existed in business. You would not be able to count on the other party fulfilling its contractual obligations, and you would then have to constantly "overbook" every aspect of your business.

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©2010 Wilson Locke, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Last modified: Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The views expressed in this article are those of Wilson Locke only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Wilson Locke is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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