An Hypothesis of Leftist Belief

Why do people on the left believe what they believe?

Bret Weinstein says that he believes communism stems from insurmountable bad luck.  And while there is some truth to this, it is not the primary cause.  Communism is primarily a function of envy.  And there is a class of people who stoke the envy, not for the good of society, certainly not the good of the working classes, but to accumulate power for themselves.

Has history not proven this time and again?  If this fact troubles you, just name one communist leader who lived a communist life?  Just one.

Weinstein goes on to argue that the best way to immunize people from communist impulses is to give people access to the market and the tools to compete in the market.

Excellent.  Left unsaid is that the left believes this can and should be done with some series of never-ending government programs.  They argue, who or what else is going to do it?  But the reality is that the best way to provide access to the market is to limit the burden of government on everyone:  Employer, employee, entrepreneur, investor, laborer, etc.

Further, Weinstein wants to hypothesize and test solutions to our various problems.  And that sounds great.  But who ends up controlling the process?  Again, the government.  And government is unwieldy and bureaucratic.  Hypothesize, test, fail, re-tool, try again differently.  This is not something government does.  It is not something government has ever done.  But you know who has always done this?  The free market.

One thing that pro-government types struggle with is the concept of incentives.  And without this understanding, government programs of any type, are doomed to fail.  Again, who gets this concept correct?  The free market.

When government is involved, they bring their bureaucracy and their group think and their politics and their power dynamics.  And their guns.  It is always worth remembering that everything government does, and every policy that it enacts, is at the point of a gun.  Group think with guns.  That pretty much sums up every government ever.

But that is not the worst of it.  Leftist power players care very little about policy.  They only care about policy insofar as it helps them achieve and maintain their own power.  They certainly do not care about the long term effects and consequences of their policies.  So Weinstein's experimentation process is never actually started much less accomplished.  The left's so-called solutions are only proposed to win elections.  To the extent that anything ever gets done, there is zero attention to efficacy.  The whole thing is a sham.

But then it gets even worse.  Because all governments lie with impunity.  Either to further their political ends or to hide their corruption and/or failures.  Yet the left seems to believe that if they could just get their imagined version of an honest, good government, then everything will work as they envision it.  But this never happens; has never happened in the history of the world.  But next time, they assure us, they will get it right.  Just in time to carry out Weinstein's experiments.

So let's keep government in a small box, doing only the absolutely necessary.  Yes, I realize this ship has sailed.  But this should be our goal.

This is so obvious that it begs the question, why do leftists believe what leftists believe?  Well there are two kinds of leftists.  The small group I mentioned above who lust for power.  And the more common useful idiots, some driven by envy, some driven by other emotions, such as an overabundance of empathy, who buy all the bullshit peddled by the power players.  Many of the useful idiots have turned away from faith in God and replaced it with faith in government.  And as with any religion, faith does not make it true.

Now let's consider Weinstein himself.  I like Bret, I really do.  And I have learned a great deal from him.  See capture; see Cartesian crisis; see Goliath; see the difference between complicated and complex systems; see his numerous Youtube videos produced during the Covid crisis and response.  In fact, I credit Bret and his wife Heather for largely guiding my thinking through the time of Global Covid Nonsense™.

So it is odd to me that in the video discussion above, Weinstein advocates for the use of complicated government solutions, yet to be identified, to solve highly complex societal problems; ignoring his own distinction between these concepts.  Why does he do this?  Yes, he is obviously smart enough to recognize that he is doing this.  So why?

Government can provide for basic societal needs.  Roads, bridges, parks, police, courts, military.  It can address, if not solve, some more complicated problems like social security, immigration, and antitrust.  So I think what happens is that pro-government types assume that it can also address complex societal problems like black family disintegration, climate concerns, drug abuse, and a falling fertility rate.  They advocate for and usually win the argument that government must act and spend vast sums of other people's money to address these and uncountable other societal problems.  But as with any complex system, government fiddling simply ensures new problems, greater problems, and/or perpetual problems.

Again, Weinstein knows this.  He is not a useful idiot and he does not lust for power.  I just cannot understand how anyone who knows this can remain on the left.

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Alphabet Rebellion

Odom:  There is a rising movement of regular gay people who are against all the nonsense

Back in January, I wrote about the gay show and how the time has come to take a considered look at the whole topic.  Well here is a gay man who agrees that the show is getting old.

I really appreciate Amir's honesty.  All the more so because of how rare it is in the alphabet community and among the left in general.

Gay fatigue is a real thing, and here I was thinking that it was just me.

In this video, Odom makes two important divisions.  Let me restate them here.  He does not make them in this order, but let me state them in a way that makes sense to me.  First, he divides the alphabet people between the LGB and the TQ+.  Then he further divides the LGB people between the normal everyday types and the gay show types.  These seem like fair divisions to me.

Now, I have no idea what percentage of alphabet people are normal gays.  And clearly, it is the gay show types that we all tend to notice.  How could we not?  Maybe the majority of gay people are normal and do not put on a show.  How would we know?

By the way, what is "normal" anyway?  Well normal people do not walk around shouting their sexuality so that everyone can see it.  That is not normal.

We are all sick to death of the show.
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Epistemic Humility on Display

Goliath expanded

It was Bret Weinstein, during the Covid response episode, who first introduced me to the contemporary metaphorical concept of Goliath.  It may be a metaphor, but it represents something real.  This is clearly true even if we cannot identify exactly what that something is.  Matthew 7:16 taught us to know a tree by its fruit.  Using this lesson, we may not know exactly what Goliath represents, but we can know its purpose by what it does.  The purpose of any system is what it does.  And today, I think we can broaden Matthew:  By its fruit, we know it exists.

There is much in this two part conversation that I disagree with; there is much more that I do agree with.  Plus, I also share many of Weinstein and Carlson's open questions.  In any case, if you want to be smarter about what is going on in the world today, have a listen.




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Grammar is a Signal

WSJ:  There's an inverse correlation between power and proper grammar

That's pretty much the long and the short of the whole article (archive).  But I would add that there is a correlation between proper grammar and respect.  So when did power come to mean a lack of respect?

I am a terrible self-editor, but I do make every effort to not make, and certainly not send, grammatical or spelling errors.  But according to The Wall Street Journal, in 2026, this makes me some kind of toady.

Have we become so blasé about written communications that we fail to comprehend that there is an etiquettical dimension to the process?  Or do we just no longer care?

I mean even if I am communicating with a subordinate, I will make every effort to write properly.  I might even make more of an effort, because I would not want them to think I am illiterate, right?  That would be shameful.  Or at least embarrassing.

Well...no.

The authors of this piece seem to be saying that we demonstrate our power by using bad grammar.  Or at the very least, power gives us permission to dispense with proper grammar and editing.  Personally, I think they have been reading way too much Foucault.

But this much is clearly true.  People today like to assume that whomever they are communicating with will not assume that they are illiterate.  The correspondent will simply assume that they are busy or blame the technology or whatever.  Or, they assume that the correspondent will simply believe that they just cannot be bothered.  So there is no embarrassment much less shame.

Is that the message that we want to send?  And if it is, what does that say about us?  Here's a question:  What would your grandmother have thought about your grandfather if his love letters were full of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes?  Maybe you would not be here.

No, consistently bad grammar and spelling is a signal.  He just cannot be bothered.  That's the signal.

Here's my question:  What else is he not bothered about?

If you believe that bad grammar signals something else; maybe it does.  It could represent any number of signals.  But all of them are bad.

And if etiquettical is not a word, I will be ashamed.

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McDonald's Update: Ice Cream Machines & Burgers

Low integrity management and low trust marketing

Let's update a post from three years ago, on McDonald's and the never-ending troubles they have with their Taylor ice cream machines.

So here I am on the other side of the world, in the Philippines.  And you often see Taylor ice cream machines here just as you do in all US McDonald's.  After that first post, I tend to notice these machines.  But yesterday I was in a Jollibee (the largest fast food chain in the country) and I noticed that they had removed their Taylor machine and replaced it with a Carpigiani, an Italian competitor.  Like the one in this photo.  Or see the actual machine, below.

So I asked the manager, Hey what's with the new machine and how long have you had it?  She said, Yeah, it's brand new, we've had it for two weeks.  Our Taylor machine was defective.  I said, Yeah, a lot of them are.

If you are wondering, machines from both companies sell for around $20,000 up to $60,0000 depending on model.  And that is before installation and setup fees, and ongoing maintenance costs. (Grok)

This was the same day that a video went viral of the McDonald's CEO, Chris Kempczinski, supposedly eating the company's newest "product," the Big Arch, with obvious distaste.  Yes, he referred to the burger as a product.  He originally posted the video in early February of this year.  Here is one reaction video:

Burger King also had a fun response.  As Lindey Glenn points out, it is practically guaranteed that Kempczinski does not eat McDonald's offerings.  Ever.  He's no Dave Thomas, or even Donald Trump.

By the way, I met Dave Thomas when I was in college; he always referred to Wendy's products as sandwiches, even the burgers.  Which I found a bit odd, but at least you never heard him refer to any of his burgers as a "product."  Kempczinski might as well be selling tube socks.

I have no doubt that Kempczinski is a smart guy.  But his inability to relate to McDonald's products, franchisees, and customers is concerning.  His unwillingness to correct the ice cream machine situation is disqualifying.  I do not believe this is gross incompetence; rather it appears to be gross misconduct.  Clearly he could solve the problem if he wanted.  But this is not an operational issue; it is an ethical problem.

Note, Dairy Queen also uses Taylor machines, though a different model, without issue.  Same for Wendy's, Burger King, and Chick-fil-A. (Grok)  Someone should insist on a remedy.

You gotta wonder how many Big Macs does the company have to sell in order to pay Kempczinski's daily tab at Michelin-starred brasseries?  McDonald's clearly hates their franchisees and their customers.  So the long history of questionable management continues.

Anyway, here's the Carpigiani machine I saw yesterday:



For reference, here is an older Taylor ice cream machine in a different Jollibee:

For those who do not know, Jollibee is primarily a chicken joint.  But they serve all of the fast food staples, like burgers, fries, and of course, soft serve ice cream.  And rice; nearly everything here comes with rice.  They also do a sweet spaghetti that is very popular with Filipinos.  In the US, where they have around eighty locations, they offer great looking chicken sandwiches.  But sadly, those are not available in the Philippines.

Update, 11 March 2026

Today, Lindey Glenn can explain Kempczinski's reaction to the new Big Arch.  My question is, if the burger is not ready for prime time, why did the CEO allow its market release?  Maybe it is gross incompetence after all.

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