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Unnatural ‘Elites’ Are Not Disinterested, nor Are They Experts. Not Even Close…

Is Elitophobia a Hate Crime?

By 

November 27, 2019

“The reason power corrupts,” said Kyle Rothweiller in an otherwise forgettable essay, “is that sooner or later its possessor comes to believe he deserves it.”

It’s always risky to climb above your station and look down on the swells. Daniel Defoe found that out the hard way. After publishing The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, in 1703, he went to the pillory followed by Newgate prison. He had made fools of the high-church men by suggesting intolerant, violent extremes against religious non-conformists of his day. The holy men publicly agreed. Sharper readers of the era recognized that the tract was a satire lampooning the whole idea. Clerics who got laughed at set their hounds on the anonymous author. Once outed they made sure he paid.

Some 200 years later William Somerset Maugham’s play, “Our Betters”, was stifled by his betters in the British government for nearly a decade. They were worried that well-heeled American damsels would be riled by the way they were portrayed in the comic drama…as rich schemers foraging English gentry for titles. The first war was on at the time. East coast US ports were providing every material thing, along with a line of credit to buy the stuff, Crown forces desired. Hale and hardy Midwestern farm boys for the trenches were next on the shopping list. 10 Downing Street wasn’t about to let the London stage queer the deal.

Maugham was being wryly ironic with his use of the word “betters” in the play. The idea of who is, and isn’t, supposedly “better” than others has been flipped around with rhetorical judo since the time snootiness became human nature. The denizens of American high-society were warming to the mores of British hierarchy at the time of The Great War. Our ruling circles included no shortage of A-listers who knew their way around English drawing rooms. Upon US entry into the conflict, they wasted no time getting as heavy-handed with publicly aired ideas as The Office of the Lord Chamberlain in England. The Committee on Public Information began its war on unwelcome opinion 6 months before the first doughboys landed at Saint-Nazaire.

In May 1917 producer Robert Goldstein’s film “Spirit of ‘76” opened in a Chicago theater. Less than one year later Goldstein was sentenced to ten years in federal prison. The movie was made before the US joined the Allies. It wasn’t a crime then to make redcoats look bad in their fight against Americans. Troops from the sceptered isle were doing a lot of bossing people around on continental soil in the 18th century. That’s what started the Boston Massacre. Brits thought they were better than the “crude colonials”.

Ruling in the aptly named case, United States v. “Spirit of ‘76”, sentencing Judge Benjamin F. Bledsoe said: “Count yourself lucky that you didn’t commit treason in a country lacking America’s right to a trial by jury.  You’d already be dead.” John Bull, invented in the Arbuthnot screed Law is a Bottomless Pit, couldn’t have said it better. Goldstein, who was Jewish, likely suffered from the prejudice against Germanic surnames common at the time. Whatever finally became of him is unknown.

George Will’s November 21 column concerns Joel Stein’s book: “In Defense of Elitism: Why I’m Better Than You and You’re Better than Someone Who Didn’t Buy This Book.” That title might be a lot funnier if there weren’t quite so many colleagues of Will and Stein, who think they are better than dissenters, presently advocating for censorship of one kind or another. Some of them don’t even seem to realize that their published words are doing it.

“Populist,” like “elitist” or “troll,” has a definition that shifts according to the needs of the user. This is one of many reasons the 4th estate can never be a truly qualified professional class like physicians, airline pilots or bricklayers. The art of describing reality cannot be severed from any individual’s place in it. Limiting who is allowed into the realm of offering perspective efficiently limits the realm of perspective. Why else would those anti-elitist Nazis have been so keen on keeping published viewpoints within bounds they defined?

In a specific example defending “elites” Will tells us:

“Granted, expert economists did not anticipate the 2008-2009 financial crisis, but some of them prevented it from becoming Great Depression 2.0. Today’s anti-elitism wields what Stein calls the Meteorologist Fallacy — because forecasts are sometimes wrong, meteorology is worthless…”

He fails to qualify that “some of them prevented it from becoming the Great Depression 2.O”. Instead, relying on a quote from Stein:

“Populists argue that banks can’t be trusted because their mortgage derivatives collapsed in 2008. It’s an argument that is tricky to refute unless you’ve ever dealt with a child. Their first method of challenging adults is to say that you were wrong this one time about that one obscure fact, so you’re probably wrong about humans needing to go to sleep at night.”

So, who are these “Populists” Stein refers to? And what assumptions were these derivatives based upon? Googling “mortgage to income ratio” this citation is at the high end of what’s on the first page of hits:

“Mortgage lenders say that a mortgage payment should not exceed 31percent of an applicant’s gross monthly income. To figure your mortgage front-end ratio, multiply your annual salary by 0.31 and divide it by 12 months. Dec 15, 2018.”

How many people found qualified for mortgages by 2008 failed to meet this criteria? And how were such details figured into the calculations used in formulating the derivatives in question? Is this what Stein is calling an “obscure fact”? If it is the writer has effectively disqualified himself from any discussion of finance. What if Maserati came to Wall Street with a plan to sell one million units in the United States? Would the income of potential buyers be scrutinized? This whole treatment, by both Stein and Will, is dilettantish, superficial and…childish.

In many ways, some of the worst features of 2008 crisis are still in play. Much of the country, anywhere within the range of abundant decent paying jobs, continues to struggle with oppressive rents and mortgages. In Alexandria, Va., where I live, more than one million square feet of commercial real estate has been vacant for a decade in the one mile between the Potomac River and the Masonic Temple on King Street. That’s some of the most coveted space in northern Virginia. Still, lease rates per square foot never abate. Let the “experts” explain that. The ever present presence of street people along that route keep many noses distractedly close to the grindstone.

Meanwhile, the uppermost crust of the banking elite have their mouthpieces advocate for elimination of hard currency several times each year in major publications. They openly declare a right to electronically control every transaction on the planet. In any case, there have been enough relevant banking scandals in recent decades to go on at book length covering. We’ll suffice it here with this small observation: Most banks today charge a fee to cash a check at the very bank it is drawn on. They will shake down the poor and desperate squeezing dollars any way they can.

“Elites are necessarily small groups that exercise disproportionate influence. In any modern, complex democracy, the question is not whether elites shall rule, but which elites shall, so the perennial political problem is to get popular consent to worthy elites.”

The redundancy of the word “elite” in this passage could help clue Mr. Will in to why all those grubby populists are guilty of so much lese majeste. Inside the beltway, you can barely go from one conversation to the next and avoid butting heads with someone who finds himself worthy of bossing Joe Six-pack around. What the lobster-backs did on Boston streets in 1770 was generally mild in comparison to modern “elitist” proposals. The British class system of rule by “elites” arrived here on the same vessel that brought war censorship.

Will’s bizarre satisfaction with the present caste system leaves readers wondering what the man reads. Does he really imagine our foreign service has been achieving diplomatic coups of late? Is North Africa’s present state what we were shooting for? Was the plan for Syria pre-Trump improving prospects there? Was there ever a comprehensive understanding of Turkey’s popular struggles with that country’s notorious deep state? Was George keen on the second Gulf War? How about Viet Nam? A delve into American foreign policy blundering wouldn’t fit in a single book but many volumes. It’s “elites” are indefensible.

Mr. Will has written himself about the confiscatory outrages of asset forfeiture. Is he under the delusion this was accomplished through grassroots efforts? It was law enforcement and political elites that imposed this mass rip-off upon Americans. Has the man heard about the carnage and destruction wreaked by the proliferation of SWAT raids? Once again, it would take more than one tome to do this subject any justice. Does he think there was a referendum that served up the 1033 program? LEO elites with the discretion of Barney Fife, Eric Holder among them, decided that the local sheriff in Podunk needed a tank.

Continue reading…

From LRC, here.

Rabbi Malinowitz: The Rationalist Approach Is KOSHER, and You Need NOT Always Listen to the Gedolim!

A Rav with Strength and Integrity

The news of the passing of Rav Chaim Malinowitz – senior editor of the Schottenstein Talmud (Bavli and Yerushalmi), rav of Beis Tefillah in Ramat Beit Shemesh – came as a great shock. He had been seriously ill for a while, but it was not thought to be life-threatening. But more than that – Rav Malinowitz was a larger-than-life figure, and it seems impossible for him to not be alive.

In the years 2004-2006 in particular, he was one of the most important people in my life. Over the last few years our relationship unfortunately broke off, when he became involved in political campaigning for the Abutbul administration in Beit Shemesh and took stances in various other community issues to which I (and many others) deeply objected. Fortunately, in the last few months we were able to patch things up on a personal level.

My relationship with Rav Malinowitz goes back over twenty years, before he was appointed rabbi of Beis Tefillah in Ramat Beit Shemesh. I was twenty-four years old, single, learning in yeshivah in Jerusalem, and publishing a weekly parashah sheet. In one of those essays, I penned a criticism of a popular icon in the wider Jewish world. A barrage of complaints ensued, and being a sensitive person plagued by self-doubt, I issued a public apology and retraction. Whereupon I received an email from someone who identified himself as one Rabbi Chaim Malinowitz. He wrote that my original article was absolutely correct, that I shouldn’t have buckled under criticism, and that my parashah essays won’t have much value if I just pander to the demands of others.

From his email, it was apparent that he thought I was much more senior than I actually was, so I wrote back to him and explained that I was just a 24 year old yeshivah bochur. Next thing I knew, he showed up at my yeshivah to chat with me. I was a bit puzzled at this special visit, but things became clearer when, a few days later, it turned out that he was proposing a shidduch for me! It was truly an honor, even though that shidduch was not meant to be. And subsequently we kept in touch.

A few years later, I was married and living in Ramat Beit Shemesh, and our shul at the time, Beis Tefillah, was searching for a rabbi. I suggested hiring Rav Malinowitz, as did a few other people. While there are very different views as to whether this appointment turned out to be good for Beit Shemesh (due to his political involvement), it certainly turned out to be incredibly fortuitous for me.

The story of the controversial ban on my books is well known. Perhaps not as well known is the role that Rav Malinowitz played in this story. While there were a number of rabbanim that supported me in various ways, probably none were as significant as Rav Malinowitz.

When the ban happened, which caused my family and I over a year of torment, I still saw myself very much as being a part of the charedi world. While there were rabbanim from the Centrist/Modern Orthodox communities inviting me to be a part of their world, I wasn’t psychologically/socially ready to do that. And I was receiving hundreds of letters of support from people within the charedi world, so I wasn’t ready to portray the controversy as being a charedi vs. non-charedi dispute (I have since mostly changed my mind on that). So it was crucial for me to have rabbinic guidance and support from within the charedi world.

Now, there were rabbis in the charedi world who were supporting me. My own mentor in the topic of Torah and science, Rav Aryeh Carmell, stood by his approbations for my works and issued a further letter of support; but by that point he was too old and weak to be dynamically involved. There were other rabbanim in the charedi world who were giving me moral and strategic support, but they were understandably too afraid to be public about it. (Reminder: don’t judge people until you are in their place.) And they weren’t necessarily people with big-name authority anyway.

But there was Rav Malinowitz! He played a crucial role in so many ways. He was an outstanding Torah scholar with bona fide credentials in the charedi world, and with a prominent position as editor of the Schottenstein Talmud. He made himself available by phone and by email to guide me and support me at every step of the way. He helped me draft letters and develop strategies. He gave me crucial guidance in the topic of rabbinic authority.

Rav Malinowitz had a very sensible, traditional, grounded approach to Chazal and science. He once shared with me an interesting insight – “According to those people who think that Chazal had divinely-inspired knowledge of modern science, why would it be limited to the science of 2005? It would mean that Chazal knew every scientific discovery that will ever take place in the future!”

Interestingly, although Rav Malinowitz had written an approbation to my work, he himself did not agree with all of my approaches to Torah/science topics, with regard to Bereishis. (He had no particular expertise in science, and was deeply skeptical of it.) But this made his support for me all the more potent. When people would tell him that my approach to various topics was wrong, he’d say to them: “I agree with you! But that doesn’t mean that it’s beyond the pale of acceptable opinions!”

Importantly, he maintained that it was completely acceptable for people to dispute my approach. People were entitled to firmly maintain that the Gemara did not contain anything scientifically inaccurate, and that Bereishis is to be interpreted entirely literally. But what they were not entitled to do was to claim that I was not allowed to take a different view and that I was alone in doing so. They were entitled to condemn my approach, as long as they made it clear that they were also condemning Rambam, Rav Hirsch, and so on.

Rav Malinowitz was the one who explained to me exactly why I was not under the slightest obligation to obey the ban. He explained to me both why the rules of rabbinic authority do not require one to always listen to the Gedolim, and why their opposition to my work was mistaken. But it wasn’t just personal guidance that he gave me – there was no shortage of people doing that. Rav Malinowitz was one of only a handful of people in the charedi world who actually went on record as publicly supporting me.  He wrote an official letter, on shul letterhead, explicitly reiterating his support.

The significance of this should not be underestimated. In the charedi world, publicly going against the Gedolim is virtually unthinkable; the strength of character required is immense. It wasn’t just a matter of people badmouthing him (though, for people outside of the charedi world, it’s hard to conceive of just how much pressure this can create). Rav Moshe Shapiro called him in to castigate him for undermining his stance against me – and Rav Malinowitz stood his ground. Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz at ArtScroll – Rav Malinowitz’s primary employer – threatened to fire him if he didn’t repudiate his support for me. At that point, I told Rav Malinowitz that he could sell me out, as I didn’t want him to lose his job. But he told me that on principle he could not do such a thing. (Fortunately, as he predicted, the threat fell through.)

As the controversy over my books stretched out beyond a year, the toll became unbearable. My wife and I went to meet with Rav Malinowitz together to discuss the situation. He said to us: “Why not just leave the charedi community? Switch your kippah, send your kids to different schools, and that’s that! You’ll be much happier.” We took his advice and were immensely better off for it. (Ironically, a few years later, Rav Malinowitz told me that he was upset that I followed his advice so completely as to even leave his shul – he hadn’t meant for me to go that far!)

As I mentioned, several years later, Rav Malinowitz took positions on various communal and political issues that aroused much opposition in the non-charedi religious community, including with me. At one point, our dispute became very public. And yet, consistent with his own approach to rabbinic authority, he had no problem with my publicly disagreeing with him. He continued to email me over the years with various sources of interest. And while I was still upset by the communal positions that he had taken, and his public claims about there being a “War on Torah” in Beit Shemesh, I always told him that my gratitude for what he did for me in my hour of need would never falter.

Will there ever be such a figure in the charedi community again, with such integrity and strength of character? Rav Malinowitz’s passing leaves a great void. May his memory be for a blessing.

From Rationalist Judaism, here.

Would Anarchy Mean Civil War?

But Wouldn’t Warlords Take Over?

07/07/2005 Robert P. Murphy

On two separate occasions in the last couple of weeks, people have asked me a familiar question:  “In a system of ‘anarcho-capitalism’ or the free-market order, wouldn’t society degenerate into constant battles between private warlords?”  Unfortunately I didn’t give adequate answers at the times, but I hope in this article to prove the adage that later is better than never.

APPLES AND ORANGES

When dealing with the warlord objection, we need to keep our comparisons fair. It won’t do to compare society A, which is filled with evil, ignorant savages who live under anarchy, with society B, which is populated by enlightened, law-abiding citizens who live under limited government.  The anarchist doesn’t deny that life might be better in society B.  What the anarchist does claim is that, for any given population, the imposition of a coercive government will make things worse.  The absence of a State is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to achieve the free society.

To put the matter differently:  It is not enough to demonstrate that a state of private-property anarchy could degenerate into ceaseless war, where no single group is strong enough to subjugate all challengers, and hence no one can establish “order.”  After all, communities living under a State degenerate into civil war all the time.  We should remember that the frequently cited cases of Colombia and now Iraq are not demonstrations of anarchy-turned-into-chaos, but rather examples of government-turned-into-chaos.

For the warlord objection to work, the statist would need to argue that a given community would remain lawful under a government, but that the same community would break down into continuous warfare if all legal and military services were privatized.  The popular case of Somalia, therefore, helps neither side.1  It is true that Rothbardians should be somewhat disturbed that the respect for non-aggression is apparently too rare in Somalia to foster the spontaneous emergence of a totally free market community.  But by the same token, the respect for “the law” was also too weak to allow the original Somali government to maintain order.

Now that we’ve focused the issue, I think there are strong reasons to suppose that civil war would be much less likely in a region dominated by private defense and judicial agencies, rather than by a monopoly State.  Private agencies own the assets at their disposal, whereas politicians (especially in democracies) merely exercise temporary control over the State’s military equipment.  Bill Clinton was perfectly willing to fire off dozens of cruise missiles when the Lewinsky scandal was picking up steam.  Now regardless of one’s beliefs about Clinton’s motivations, clearly Slick Willie would have been less likely to launch such an attack if he had been the CEO of a private defense agency that could have sold the missiles on the open market for $569,000 each .2

We can see this principle in the case of the United States.  In the 1860s, would large scale combat have broken out on anywhere near the same scale if, instead of the two factions controlling hundreds of thousands of conscripts, all military commanders had to hire voluntary mercenaries and pay them a market wage for their services?

CONTRACT THEORY OF GOVERNMENT

I can imagine a reader generally endorsing the above analysis, yet still resisting my conclusion.  He or she might say something like this:  “In a state of nature, people initially have different views of justice.  Under market anarchy, different consumers would patronize dozens of defense agencies, each of which attempts to use its forces to implement incompatible codes of law.  Now it’s true that these professional gangs might generally avoid conflict out of prudence, but the equilibrium would still be precarious.”

“To avoid this outcome,” my critic could elaborate, “citizens put aside their petty differences and agree to support a single, monopoly agency, which then has the power to crush all challengers to its authority.  This admittedly raises the new problem of controlling the Leviathan, but at least it solves the problem of ceaseless domestic warfare.”

There are several problems with this possible approach.  First, it assumes that the danger of private warlords is worse than the threat posed by a tyrannical central government.  Second, there is the inconvenient fact that no such voluntary formation of a State ever occurred.  Even those citizens who, say, supported the ratification of the U.S. Constitution were never given the option of living in market anarchy; instead they had to choose between government under the Articles of Confederation or government under the Constitution.

But for our purposes, the most interesting problem with this objection is that, were it an accurate description, it would be unnecessary for such a people to form a government.  If, by hypothesis, the vast majority of people—although they have different conceptions of justice—can all agree that it is wrong to use violence to settle their honest disputes, then market forces would lead to peace among the private police agencies.

Yes, it is perfectly true that people have vastly different opinions concerning particular legal issues.  Some people favor capital punishment, some consider abortion to be murder, and there would be no consensus on how many guilty people should go free to avoid the false conviction of one innocent defendant.  Nonetheless, if the contract theory of government is correct, the vast majority of individuals can agree that they should settle these issues not through force, but rather through an orderly procedure (such as is provided by periodic elections).

But if this does indeed describe a particular population, why would we expect such virtuous people, as consumers, to patronize defense agencies that routinely used force against weak opponents?  Why wouldn’t the vast bulk of reasonable customers patronize defense agencies that had interlocking arbitration agreements, and submitted their legitimate disputes to reputable, disinterested arbitrators?  Why wouldn’t the private, voluntary legal framework function as an orderly mechanism to settle matters of “public policy”?

Again, the above description would not apply to every society in history.  But by the same token, such warlike people would also fail to maintain the rule of law in a limited State.

FREE RIDERS?

A sophisticated apologist for the State—especially one versed in mainstream economics—might come back with yet another justification:  “The reason a limited government is necessary is that we can’t trust the market to adequately fund legitimate police forces.  It may be true that 95 percent of a population would have similar enough views with respect to justice such that peace would obtain if they all contributed substantially to defense agencies dedicated to enforcing their views.”

“However,” the apologist could continue, “if these police agencies have no right to extract contributions from everyone who endorses their actions, then they will be able to field a much smaller force.  The market fails specifically because of the free rider problem:  When a legitimate firm cracks down on a rogue agency, all law abiding people benefit, but in a free market they would not be obliged to pay for this ‘public good.’  Consequently, rogue agencies, funded by malevolent outlaws, will have a much wider scope of operation under anarchy.”

Again, there are several possible replies to such a position.  First, let us reflect that a large standing army, ready to crush minority dissenters, is not an unambiguously desirable feature of government.

Second, the alleged problem of free riders would not be nearly as disastrous as many economists believe.  For example, insurance companies would “internalize the externalities” to a large degree.  It may be true that an “inefficient” number of serial killers would be apprehended if the relevant detective and police agencies had to solicit contributions from individual households.  (Sure, everyone gets a slight benefit from knowing a serial killer has been caught, but whether or not one person contributes probably won’t make the difference between capture or escape.)

Yet insurance companies that each held policies for thousands of people in a major city would be willing to contribute hefty amounts to eliminate the menace of a serial killer.  (After all, if he kills again, one of these companies will have to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars to the estate of the victim.)  The same reasoning demonstrates that the free market could adequately fund programs to “contain” rogue agencies.

Third, people need to really picture the nightmare scenario to see how absurd it is.  Imagine a bustling city, such as New York, that is initially a free market paradise.  Is it really plausible that over time rival gangs would constantly grow, and eventually terrorize the general public?3  Remember, these would be admittedly criminal organizations; unlike the city government of New York, there would be no ideological support for these gangs.

We must consider that in such an environment, the law-abiding majority would have all sorts of mechanisms at their disposal, beyond physical confrontation.  Once private judges had ruled against a particular rogue agency, the private banks could freeze its assets (up to the amount of fines levied by the arbitrators).  In addition, the private utility companies could shut down electricity and water to the agency’s headquarters, in accordance with standard provisions in their contracts.

Of course, it is theoretically possible that a rogue agency could overcome these obstacles, either through intimidation or division of the spoils, and take over enough banks, power companies, grocery stores, etc. that only full-scale military assault would conquer it.  But the point is, from an initial position of market anarchy, these would-be rulers would have to start from scratch.  In contrast, under even a limited government, the machinery of mass subjugation is ready and waiting to be seized.

CONCLUSION

The standard objection that anarchy would lead to battling warlords is unfounded.  In those communities where such an outcome would occur, the addition of a State wouldn’t help.  Indeed, the precise opposite is true:  The voluntary arrangements of a private property society would be far more conducive to peace and the rule of law, than the coercive setup of a parasitical monopoly government.

  • 1. Having made this concession, I should point out that anarcho-capitalists can see their theories borne out in Somalia to some extent.
  • 2. It’s true that this figure would be lower for a private defense firm, since it would control costs much better than the Pentagon.  Nonetheless it is still true that a private firm would husband its stockpile of weapons better than State officials.
  • 3. Let us also keep in mind that currently, mob groups (1) do not extract anywhere near as much money, nor kill as many people, as any government in a typical day’s work, and (2) they derive their current strength from government prohibitions (on gambling, drugs, prostitution, loan-sharking, etc.) and hence are not representative at all of an anarchist world.

From Mises.org, here.

The Establishment Is Terrified of Home Remedies

Shocking Proof How Google Censors Health News

By 

Mercola.com

November 9, 2019

June 3, 2019, Google implemented a broad “core update”1 that in one fell swoop eliminated most Mercola.com pages from its search results. Virtually overnight, Google traffic to my site dropped by approximately 99.9%.

Considering Mercola.com has been the most visited natural health site for the last 16 years, it’s no great surprise that we were listed as one of the biggest losers in Google’s June algorithm update.2

I wrote about the ramifications of Google’s core update in two articles at the end of June 2019. In Part 1, I discussed the effects that the new search algorithm and updated quality rater guidelines is having on traffic to this site.

As mentioned in that article, Google’s “quality raters” are manually lowering the ranking of what they arbitrarily decide is undesirable content and burying even expert views if they think they’re “harmful” to the public.

In Part 2, I revealed how Wikipedia censors information and crafts narratives to benefit certain groups, and how Google raters use Wikipedia’s skewed and biased articles to ascertain the expertise and trustworthiness of any given author or website.

Today’s videos and article will show you just how clearly and deliberately Google has eliminated my articles from its search results.

After more than 15 years of being considered a highly relevant source of content, Google has removed all those high-ranked results, and replaced them with health information from advertising companies that promote junk food and drugs instead. Below, I’ll provide clear examples of how this works.

For many years now, I’ve been warning about how Google’s monopoly presents a clear danger to the free-flow of information, and health information in particular, seeing how holistic health is a direct threat to the drug industry. The fact that Google would eventually grow big enough to dictate what people see and don’t see was predictable, and we’ve now entered the era of blatant internet censorship.

How Google Censors High-Ranked Health Content

A major reason for my success as a physician running my own practice was the ability to resolve extremely challenging cases of arthritis. One of my articles describing my arthritis treatment protocol generated over 1 million views, and was consistently a top search result when doing a Google search for arthritis.

Today, even if you use my name in a search for arthritis, you will not find that highest-ranked article. What you find instead is an article copied from my website — without permission — by a Croatian website operated by Zdravko Mauko, followed by a few articles about arthritis from my pet site, followed by a short piece about arthritis that I contributed to Creations Magazine.

The top search result for “Mercola arthritis” is a tiny, insignificant site that in no way, shape or form could possibly compete with Mercola.com. When you compare the ranking of our sites on Alexa, you find my site (as of October 8, 2019) ranks 9,002 in global internet engagement over the past 90 days.3

And that’s despite having been buried by Google since early June, as two years ago our overall Alexa ranking was 3,708. Compare this to our-arthritis.com, which has a ranking of 9,401,920.4 The first screen shot below is Alexa’s ranking for Mercola.com on October 8, 2019. The second screen shot is Alexa’s ranking for our-arthritis.com on that same day.

Another signal of trust and popularity is based on the number of sites linking in, or the number of sites that reference your own site. There are more than 11,000 sites linking to Mercola.com, and only 2 linking to our-arthritis.com. This is another example of Google’s purposeful censorship.

Despite the fact that our-arthritis.com plagiarized my entire article without permission, and have no credibility in terms of website engagement or ranking, it “owns” the search terms “Mercola arthritis” — above my own site!

Censorship Strategy No. 2 — Content Mix-Up

Giving precedence to a site with a relevance ranking that is 1,000 times lower than my own would be bad enough, but it doesn’t end there. Even if you try to use a restricted search, which allows you to search for results within a specific website, Google has you barking up the wrong tree.

When doing a restricted search for “Mercola.com arthritis,” or “site: Mercola.com arthritis,” which theoretically should provide you with links to the most popular articles about arthritis within my site only, Google provides the top search results for arthritis on our veterinary website!

The entire first page of search results; 10 of 12 of the search results on Page 2; and 6 of 10 results on Page 3 direct you to our Healthy Pets website. How is that for relevance? Google has really outdone itself in “helping” users find relevant information, hasn’t it?

Google-Owned YouTube Uses Similar Obfuscation Tactics

The same misdirection and obfuscation is happening on YouTube, which is owned by Google. If you do a YouTube search for “Mercola arthritis,” links to my many arthritis videos are blatantly pushed aside by irrelevant search results as evidenced in the screen shot below.

In short, it’s not a suspicion but a blatantly obvious fact that Google is doing everything it can to erase my online presence and hide the many tens of thousands of free articles and videos I’ve generated over the last 22 years.

Who Now Dominates Online Health Searches?

Who are the Google-trusted health websites that now dominate health searches? WebMD and Healthline. But are they really the most trustworthy sources on the web? Their track records certainly suggest otherwise.

WebMD is owned by the global investment firm KKR & Co.,5 which also owned RJR Nabisco at a time when it sold junk food and tobacco products. As described in my 2018 article, “Google and WebMD Partner To Be Your Virtual Doctor,” KKR also owns Medscape and MedincineNet.com and, according to Fast Company,6 “is trying to corner the market on internet-based health information dissemination …”

WebMD, as you may recall, was in 2010 caught providing users with a fake depression screening test. The test — in which 100% of quiz-takers ended up having a “high likelihood of major depression” and were directed to talk to their doctor about treatment7,8 — was sponsored by drug giant Eli Lilly, the maker of Cymbalta.

The quiz was in fact direct-to-consumer advertising masquerading as a valid health screen, and this is perhaps the most hazardous kind of drug advertising there is.

Then, in 2017, Google partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, launching a depression self-assessment quiz which, like WebMD before it, funneled querents toward antidepressant drugs.9,10 There simply is no doubt that Google is a proponent for and promoter of pharmaceuticals.

Likewise, WebMD — which pockets millions to promote drugs — is far from an independent source of health information. A quick search of WebMD articles on antidepressants and depression, for example, reveals a clear pattern: They contain ads for antidepressant drugs furnished by Google ad services and doubleclick — both of which are owned by Google.

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From LRC, here.

On the Socialist Pseudoscience of ‘Happiness Research’

The Trojan Horse of “Happiness Research”

06/09/2011 Thomas J. DiLorenzo

A very large literature has built up over the past several decades in the area of so-called “happiness research.” Such research is based on several very dubious assumptions: namely, that utility is cardinal and measurable after all; that interpersonal utility comparisons can therefore be made; and that the great unicorn of economic theory — the “social welfare function” — has finally been spotted. Armed with these assertions, socialists around the world believe they have finally discovered their holy grail. Now that governments supposedly know with “scientific certainty” what constitutes “happiness,” there can be no argument (or so they think) against virtually unlimited government intervention in the name of creating happiness.

Affluence is actually a disease that generates massive unhappiness, says the Australian author of a popular book in this field, entitled Affluenza. The government of Brazil is in the process of enshrining this notion into its constitution, and similar movements exist in Great Britain and other countries.

These assumptions rest on the proclamation that public-opinion surveys are sufficient measures of cardinal utility. The economists who make such assumptions studiously ignore all of the reasons why economists have disavowed such practices — especially the notion of demonstrated preference — for generations. As Murray Rothbard explained in his essay, “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics,”

The concept of demonstrated preference is simply this: that actual choice reveals, or demonstrates, a man’s preferences; that is, that his preferences are deducible from what he has chosen in action. Thus, if a man chooses to spend an hour at a concert rather than a movie, we deduce that the former was preferred, or ranked higher on his value scale. … This concept of preference, rooted in real choices, forms the keystone of the logical structure of economic analysis, and particularly of utility and welfare analysis.

Rothbard continued to explain the folly of relying on public opinion surveys, as opposed to the actual demonstrated preferences of economic decision makers:

One of the most absurd procedures based on a constancy assumption [i.e., the false assumption that people never alter their preferences] has been the attempt to arrive at a consumer’s preference scale not through observed real action, but through quizzing him by questionnaires. In vacuo, a few consumers are questioned at length on which abstract bundle of commodities they would prefer to another abstract bundle, and so on. Not only does this suffer from the constancy error, no assurance can be attached to the mere questioning of people when they are not confronted with the choices in actual practice. Not only will a person’s valuation differ when talking about them from when he is actually choosing, but there is also no guarantee that he is telling the truth.

The one economist who is arguably the leader in the field of “happiness research” (at least among economists) is Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich. When I asked him at a conference in Prague several years ago about the age-old criticisms of replacing actual demonstrated preferences with questionnaires, his response was that his “data” were no worse than GDP data. As bad and as unreliable as GDP data are, “happiness research” questionnaire data are at least no worse, he said.

But in fact, much of the happiness-research data are much, much worse.

“Happiness research has indeed been a gold mine for resume-building academic economists whose econometric game playing is no longer limited by the requirement of digging up actual economic data.”

European socialists in fields outside of economics have gone even further with their research of “happiness.” A bestseller in Europe is The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. The book is an excellent example of the misuse and abuse of statistics by these two British epidemiologists. It is an abuse of statistics because the entire book is a fishing expedition for simple correlations between the degree of material “inequality” in a country and myriad other variables. Wilkinson and Pickett don’t even attempt the use of multiple-regression analysis, as is typical in their own field, in economics, and elsewhere. Consequently, they arrive at contrived statistical conclusions that greater material equality in a country supposedly leads to improvements in community life, mental health, drug use, physical health, obesity rates, intelligence, teenage births, recycling, violence, imprisonment, social mobility, dysfunctionality, anxiety, and self esteem. (One critic of this research mocked its abuse of statistical methods by presenting a scatter diagram that purportedly showed a positive correlation between recycling and suicide, suggesting that the more one recycles, the more likely that one will commit suicide!)

According to these scientific-sounding conclusions (which have been lavishly praised by politicians, of course), the people of the former Soviet Union must have been the happiest people on earth, since the pursuit of equality was always the pronounced objective of socialism. As F.A. Hayek wrote in the 1976 edition of The Road to Serfdom, socialism was originally defined as government ownership of the means of production, and then changed to mean the redistribution of income and wealth through the auspices of the welfare state and progressive income taxation. In each case, “equality” was the ultimate end; only the means changed over time.

Happiness researchers make no mention at all of the long-recognized deleterious effects of welfare statism, including destruction of the work ethic, family breakup, the growth of dysfunctional citizens who are paid by the state to remove themselves from the work force, etc.

Bruno Frey is no socialist, but the area of research that he champions is being very enthusiastically embraced by interventionists, socialists, and would-be central planners within the economics profession. Frey himself explained this in his June 2002 survey article in the Journal of Economic Literature entitled “What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?” (with Alois Stutzer). Among the things economists can learn from this strange branch of psychology, Frey and Stutzer approvingly report, are the following:

  • “Happiness functions have sometimes been looked at as the best existing approximation to a social-welfare function. It seems that, at long last, the so far empirically empty social welfare maximization … is given a new lease on life.”

  • Income has increased dramatically since World War II, but “happiness” supposedly has not. The counterintuitive implication is that work, investment, and entrepreneurship — the ingredients of economic success — do not produce happiness, but human beings nevertheless keep doing more and more of it year in and year out.

  • Interpersonal utility comparisons have also been resurrected, supposedly proving that “social happiness” can be created by the state’s theft of one person’s income and the redistribution of it to another (while keeping a tidy sum for “administrative expenses”).

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From Mises.org, here.