Take subject X. What if nearly everything we’re told about X — by the most famous experts and by people in government, as well as most folks in the media — is wrong?
Let X be diet. Maybe the whole “anti-fat” idea, dominant for most of my adult life, is wrong. There’s evidence for it.
Let X be AGW, the theory of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming. We’re told that there’s a consensus in favor of it. But there’s less to that alleged consensus than meets the eye — or scientific rigor.
But to really blow your mind, consider central banking.
We’re told that the job of the central bank is to protect us from the fluctuations of boom and bust. The Federal Reserve was established by the federal government just to help us! But . . . what if that was never the actual reason that banks have been centralized?
Economist George Selgin posted, last week, a thorough debunking of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s recent statements about what he’s up to. If you have never heard of free banking before, or the long tradition of central banking criticism among monetary economists, Selgin’s critique may seem outrageous . . . as outrageous as Copernicus and Galileo were back when most folks thought the Earth was the center of the universe.
If Selgin is right (and I think he is), nearly everything we’ve been told by experts and politicians about money, boom and bust, and banking, is wrong.
The central banking school is X. X is wrong.
So if the Fed doesn’t do what it’s “supposed to,” why do we have it?
It serves big government and some big bankers.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.