posttruthmonkey

George Orwell, Thomas Sowell, Friedrich Hayek and Frédéric Bastiat give you four excellent tools for cutting through Canadian political language. Orwell: Watch the words. Sowell: Ignore intentions. Examine results and trade-offs. Hayek: Be suspicious when politicians think they possess enough knowledge to manage millions of people’s decisions from the centre. Bastiat: Look beyond what you can immediately see. Ask what the policy costs, what it prevents, and what would have happened otherwise. Apply those four tests to Canadian politics. “Affordability” can mean spending more government money, cutting a tax, sending you a cheque, controlling a price or subsidizing something. Orwell asks: What does “affordability” actually mean here? Sowell asks: Does the policy really make Canadians better off after all the costs are counted? Hayek asks: How does Ottawa know the right price, subsidy, industry or investment for millions of different Canadians? Bastiat asks: What don’t we see? What would taxpayers, businesses and families have done with that money instead? “Investment” sounds better than “government spending.” Fine. Investment in what? How much? Who decided? Who takes the loss if it fails? “Compassion” describes an intention. It doesn’t tell you whether a program works. “Fairness” sounds unquestionably good. But fairness to whom? Who pays more? Who receives more? What behaviour does the policy encourage? “Common sense” is another slogan until somebody explains the actual policy. “Corporate greed” can describe genuine misconduct, but it can also become a convenient explanation that ignores taxes, regulation, wages, competition, monetary policy, supply constraints and government decisions. “Crisis” may describe a real emergency. It can also create the political urgency needed to push through measures that would receive much more scrutiny under ordinary circumstances. “Misinformation” should mean a factual claim that can be demonstrated to be false. It should never become shorthand for “an argument we don’t want to answer.” “Dangerous” tells you somebody wants you to fear an idea. Ask for the evidence. And when somebody calls an argument “simplistic,” ask them to identify exactly what is wrong with it. Sometimes a simple argument is wrong. Sometimes the complicated language is there because the simple question is uncomfortable. This applies to Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats, premiers, bureaucracies, CBC, private media, corporations, unions and people on social media. It also applies to the politicians you like. Especially the politicians you like. Strip away the language and ask: What is actually being proposed? What will it cost? Who pays? Who benefits? What incentives does it create? What knowledge would government need to make this work? What consequences aren’t immediately visible? What would people have done with their own money and resources instead? What evidence says the policy works? What happens when it fails? Orwell teaches you to examine the language. Sowell teaches you to examine incentives, trade-offs and consequences. Hayek teaches you the limits of centralized knowledge. Bastiat teaches you to look for the unseen cost. Put all four together and you have a pretty good bullshit detector for Canadian politics.