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by Adrian Sobers
“My mind is my modern day Spear / … Despair, eh It keep on suppressing the humble man’s opinion.” – (Damian Marley & Nas, Dispear)
I started this on the eve of Thanksgiving and a quick search revealed that Americans consume approximately 46 million turkeys every Thanksgiving, followed by another 22 million at Christmas, and 19 million at Easter. Turkey season is the perfect time to reflect on Nassim Taleb’s “Turkey Problem” from Antifragile.
First, a report on Turkey (the country): “Turkey’s economic crisis entered a tumultuous new phase, with its currency plunging to a fresh record low and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan preparing to meet the leader of a regional rival in search of foreign investment.”
The report continues, “The lira slid as much as 18 per cent Tuesday, before easing slightly, threatening to further shake the economy by undermining confidence, making it harder for businesses to pay off foreign-currency debt and increasing the cost of imported goods, especially oil. That would push the inflation rate, currently at around 20 per cent, even higher, further hurting households, analysts say.” This is, of course, not unique to Turkey; and neither is Taleb’s Turkey Problem.
Turkey’s literal currency problem and Taleb’s turkey metaphor both warrant our attention as they confirm that the most pressing global issue is one of currency and not climate.
The despair felt by ordinary households is not helped by the muddleheaded narratives our political masters offer as reasons for the currency crisis. Now is also a good time to point out that economics’ epistemology problem is not exclusive to said discipline. It is common to the social sciences, and society at large.
Let me hasten to add that this has nothing to do with being stupid. The authors of the aptly titled When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People put it best; it is a case of “epistemic stubbornness”. Their introduction, Our Epistemological Crisis, doubles as the perfect description of our intellectual landscape. They note that, “It is not about always being right. Being reasonable does not mean being infallible.”
Rather, their aim is to point out that philosophy – especially epistemology and ethics – is fundamental to good thinking: “If we are to cure America, and the world at-large, of the baseless and harmful ideas that have infected a frighteningly large portion of the population, it is to philosophy that we—as individuals and as a society—must first turn.” (I agree with their general point but part company on how they flesh out the details.)
Very well then, onto Taleb’s metaphor: “A turkey is fed for a thousand days by a butcher; every day confirms to its staff of analysts that butchers love turkeys ‘with increased statistical confidence.’ The butcher will keep feeding the turkey until a few days before Thanksgiving. Then comes that day when it is really not a very good idea to be a turkey.” (Love like a butcher loves a pig.)
“We can also see from the turkey story the mother of all harmful mistakes: mistaking absence of evidence (of harm) for evidence of absence, a mistake that we will see tends to prevail in intellectual circles and one that is grounded in the social sciences.” Not being a turkey he says, “starts
with figuring out the difference between true and manufactured stability.”
The aforementioned report on Turkey is an example, albeit extremt, of what can go wrong when central planners try to manufacture stability.
This turkey season stretches back to the response to the last financial crisis, and the continuation of said response (COVID has only hastened the inevitable), has brought us to this point: a crisis of currency. Mexico’s inflation reached a 20 year high in early November, rising to more than twice the Bank of Mexico’s 3 per cent target. (The numbers in Mexico, the US and elsewhere are actually higher. That is another story; but same turkey problem.)
Nas’ opening on Dispear is eerily applicable to the currency crisis, “The Master and the Masses / One has power, The other one lacks it / … Who are the Masters? They are the Gangsters / They are the [central] bankers, the ones who tax us [via inflation] / The Masses, they are us / The sheep, the people, divided in classes.”
The powers that be in the US are recycling the false narrative from the 1970s, blaming the masses (consumer spending). Same thing in Turkey. A parliamentarian, in making the point that Turkish consumers need to reign in their spending, said, “Maybe we will have to eat bread and onions for days, for weeks.”
If there is one thing this crisis is confirming it is that politicians have much gall and little shame.
Closer to home, silence on this issue is occasionally punctuated by equally false narratives: “hostile market forces” and all that. But the market has proved to be no match for the hostility of Ministers of Finance who hide behind central bankers and an unprecedented expansion of the money supply. When coupled with artificially low interest rates this allows governments to spend like there’s no tomorrow; debasing the currency and harming the most economically vulnerable in the process.
The hook on Tribes at War from the aforementioned street intellectuals, hood heroes, and revolution rhymers is a good place to end my anger and frustration on an issue that should not play second fiddle to climate alarmism: “Each and every man deserve to earn / … like Babylon deserve to burn.” And burn it will (hopefully sooner rather than later). But do not be overcome by despair, occupy yourself, and keep
sharpening your modern day spear until He comes.
Adrian Sobers is prolific letter writer and commentator on social issues. This column was offered as a Letter to the Editor.
