Awakening from "woke" and Karenism: It's happening
Or call it an embracing of reality versus politically constructed delusion. (Sadly taxpayers have funded much of this delusion over the last two decades or so.)
I am not a fan of Mixed Martial Arts. Not that I am against it. I just don’t know the sport and I’ve never seen a bill for a fight and thought to myself, boy I can’t miss that one.
But I have recently become a fan of a particular mixed martial artist, Renato Moicano after this post victory verbal explosion in Las Vegas this weekend.
Generally we are not for the casual use of of foul language, but we’ll make an exception in this case.
"I love America. I love the Constitution. I love the First Amendment, I want to carry and own f___ing guns. I love private property.”
"And let me tell you something, if you care about your own f___ing country, Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian economic school, mother_____s."
Here’s the video.
What we have here is a warrior, a man who makes his living understanding how to manage direct conflict, calling America to intellectual arms.
It’s pretty great. I didn’t think I’d ever hear a fighter extolling the virtues of the Austrian School of Economics to a worldwide audience. (Or any audience frankly.) But it happened and it reflects a broad awakening happening in the public right now. Call it “awaking from woke”. But that is too easy, it’s bigger than that. Times appear to be changing pretty quickly from a time dominated by wokism/ Karenism in the media and politics, to something that makes much more sense, reality.
Austrian economics is reality based. Unlike many other schools of economics that embrace one particular brand of voodoo or another to justify x or y policy prescription, Austrianism basically says if one objectively looks at markets they always, ALWAYS, clear. In a sense one can say that markets are like water. Water flows downhill. We can make assumptions (that are accurate) with an understanding that water flows downhill. Something similar can be said for markets. No mater what price controls are imposed by planners, no matter what regulations are imposed by force to impede a market, sooner or later the market will clear. This is as true on the NYSE, as at the local farmers market, as on the corner where drugs are being sold, or even in places like the supposedly “marketless” Soviet Union. Markets will find the proper level, always eventually. As such we can make accurate assumptions, generally, as to how an economic situation is likely to play out.
Of course Austrianism has a lot more to it than this and I am no economist, but roughly this understanding of markets is at the core of Austrian economics. If you are interested we encourage you to read more on the subject by the co-founder of ACC Hunter Lewis, or Water Block, or Robert Higgs, along with others both past and contemporary who can be found in a list HERE.
But Moicano’s pro-Austrian impromtu speech is just part of what feels like a big societal shift. Coming out of the Obama era, where Americans were endlessly scolded, and then out of the Trump era when much of America (and really the world) was written off as racists and knuckle dragging dolts by the establishment, and now as we come out of the Biden/Covid era where the moral scolds mismanaged the globe politically and economically and embraced totalitarianism in the most blatant of ways, many (normal) people have had enough. Not only does the “king” have no clothes, people are asking why in the hell are we letting people who don’t know what they are doing play “king” in the first place?
Seriously, why should the people who crafted the response to Covid run anything? Why should the people who have created the quagmire that is the war in Ukraine and may have stumbled (with us in tow) into a global conflict (with potentially nuclear implications) run anything? Why do the economists who were so wrong on inflation (not Austrians by the way), an inflation that has crippled much of the middle class, run anything? Why are our “elite” universities now reflections not of excellence, but of a cult of social engineering? There are a thousand “whys”.
In a time of unprecedented communication and information those who fear communication and the spread of information have readily abandoned supposedly long held “liberal” ideals for state sponsored censorship and authoritarianism. They have embraced non-reality. This caught many everyday people by surprise.
People, and the power is with the people, and in the USA particularly with middle class people, are starting to stand up to the bullies however.
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