The modern political landscape is more complicated than ever before. Average Americans are bewildered by the diversity of opinion on many of today’s political issues and sometimes don’t know how to make up their minds about what they believe. Is climate change real? What is ‘quantitative easing’ and is it good for the economy? Should we bail out an important institution that employs thousands of people? These are some the questions that average Americans are grappling with. So how exactly is the average American supposed to formulate an opinion on so many complex and intricate issues?
The short answer is, they shouldn’t! Issues like climate change and quantitative easing are vastly complex and only a handful of established scientists and economists are qualified to answer questions about them. The average American needs to defer to the leading experts for opinions on each of these intricately complex issues. Take climate change for example. The leading climate scientists have dedicated decades to studying the effects of carbon dioxide on the climate. The average American can hardly be expected to formulate a more informed opinion on matters of climate change than a dedicated scientist.
So the question then becomes: “which experts should I trust?”. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question, but there are some good indicators you can use to guide you in the right direction:
1. Academic QualificationsÂ
First and foremost, check their qualifications. If a loud-mouthed financier is voicing unusual opinions about the economy and recommending policies that deviate from the consensus among leading economists, check their credentials. Most likely they are an ignorant investor or stockbroker with no real economic education and certainly no experience in research and advising economic policy.
2. Prestige
Having an education is one thing, but having an education from a prestigious institution means a lot more. If someone has a belief that deviates from the prevailing opinion at leading institutions, this is a red flag. Prestigious Ivy League colleges pick the best and the brightest minds, so any prevailing opinion in an Ivy League department can probably be trusted and deviations thereof can be safely ignored. If the deviants really have genuinely convincing cases, then the leading minds will agree in time.
3. Experience
If somebody claims to be an expert in a particular industry or field, it stands to reason that they should also have experience at some of it’s leading institutions. Consider a financial professional who claims that quantitative easing is nothing but ‘printing money’ and that it does nothing but harm to the economy. Unless this person has at least a decade’s experience working for a central bank or a leading financial institution, he better have a very good reason to disagree with the world’s leading economists and financiers. Experience is key when you’re navigating uncharted territory, and only a select few have the impressive repertoire of experience necessary to answer today’s burning political questions.
Conclusion
If you ever find yourself struggling to make up you mind about an extremely complicated issue, remember, the question is not what you should believe but who, and the answer to that question can be found only by carefully examining the credentials of the world’s leading experts.
so effectively we should just leave everything up to the morons who drove the bus into the ditch in the first place?
I’m not quite sure what you mean. I’m talking about the world’s leading experts here, and you’re calling them morons?
Yes. “Bernanke” and “Greenspan” were not experts as so much as con artists an thieves who have given banks billions knowing full well those billions meant to stimulate the economy would be kept in said banks in the hands of a few rich people instead of lent to regular people. The problem with the article is you are under the impression a title means expert and a title means honest person.
Like Ted said, we are in trouble no because experts made mistakes but because they were not experts and were not looking out for OUR interests in the first place.
you REALLY wanted more debt? You REALLY wanted the banks to “lend” to you money created from thin air at interest?
There is an underlying truth in MDB’s post: people you simply shouldn’t SPEAK. There is no fucking demand for credit. The economy in the aggregate is contracting.
There appears to be no limit to the number of times you idiots have to have this shit explained to you before you can grasp it.
Without Bernanke plugging the hole in the compound interest function on aggregate Z1, the entire monetary system would have collapsed already. Either way, mfers, Happy Motoring and your cushy, upwardly mobile, growth-oriented suburban entitlement lifestyle is fuckin OVER and the sooner you wrap your little brains around that, the better.
What sort of nudnick are you?Go backto Limbaugh, HaNnity or Beck
MDB, he obviously doesn’t understand the power of accreditation.
think of it this way people, who should you believe, experts on television with credentials or your own lyin’ eyes? The choice is CLEAR. Defer to experts as they have your best interests at heart. Your gut will just lead you to dangerous conclusions that simply aren’t acceptable in today’s diverse society.
Experts that merit trust:
– Lawyers
– Doctors
– Derivatives Traders
– Economists
– Tenured Professors
Would you prefer that important decisions be left in the hands of the masses?
Wow, that is some deep, unfunny sarcasm. This site is full of far out dark, quasi-humor. When the world seems to be coming apart at the seams and the end seems to be closing in, let’s create a site that on the surface looks serious but is actually a giant waste of time. Good work – keep it up.
You are here wasting your time? Would you prefer to tilt at windmills instead?
This is insane advice!
I wish it were that easy or that correct.
We have institutionalized corruption and those that control the money control the credentials.
I have better advice – FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!
Experts can be helpful, but only if they are truly “independent” experts!
The rich and powerful elite donate money to the institutions that they wish to influence.
We actually have to go back to original data, assume nothing and try to establish facts along with other quality sources that are not corrupted by the money pushers. You have to sort through the best of alternative media and find original data. The lame-stream media is a pure programming propaganda machine.
Quite the opposite. It’s the ‘independent’ experts you want to avoid. These are the types that often delve into conspiracy theories and spread lies about our government. There is no greater red flag than a supposed expert who claims to be ‘independent’. Independent of what? Our own government?
What’s wrong with being independent of our own government? Why should we just cow-tow to the government? What a fucking stupid position.
What is this ‘cow-tow’ you speak of? Is that some rural sport, like ‘tractor-pulls’? How does one play? Do you tow as many cows as you can, or is it a matter of towing the cow over a specific distance as fast as you can? Is it on ESPN? Personally, it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to me, but since I’m not an accredited cow-tow-er, I hesitate to put forth my opinion.
“but since I’m not an accredited cow-tow-er,”
That’s because you are a douche-bag.
“What’s wrong with being independent of our own government?”
You deflected from the point because you have no defense of it. Its a stupid position. DUH!
Behind most of these “independent” experts you will almost invariably find the Koch Brothers or some other right wing monsters. The Koch Brothers lurk in the shadows behind nearly every scientist or analyst that questions the mainstream viewpoint, hatching their fiendish, sinister plots to destroy our happy modern world of diversity and access for all.
I thinkhe’s one of those psychoticteabaggers or a Karl Rove deciple
Wow! What looked like a serious site turns out to be just some hack telling us to believe the same load of crap that we have been fed for the last (at least) 25 years. Come on. If what passes as an expert really knew anything about what they were talking about, we would not be in the mess we are in. Just wait, the psudo experts will be shaking a can looking for a hand out very soon.
Just because a beagle dog has papers does not mean he can run a rabbit…….
If you know what I mean
MillionDollarBonus_ you are a lonely, narcissistic fuck.
Hahah, this is a hilarious post. Looks like the writer himself doesn’t have the capacity to judge these “complex” issues…
No less a mind than leading philosopher Bertrand Russell put forth MDB’s position, almost a century ago. He felt the common man should always defer to the educated expert, and also said, that far from forming his own opinion, if the experts disagree, the common man’s only possible viewpoint was skepticism of both sides, until the experts reached a consensus.
In our time, there was some initial skepticism about climate change, but since 34,827 accredited scientists supported the IPCC report, and only a handful disagreed, it is abundantly clear what the expert consensus is. The common man may not hear it, deafened as he is by the roar of jet planes and the constant drone of limousines, but he can trust the experts to consider all the facts and arrive at the correct conclusions within the relative silence of those vehicles .
the reality is that the common man lacks the IQ to form an educated opinion on nearly anything yet believes his opinion to be worthy of consideration merely by virtue of lots of Facebook “likes”
This site is really a sorry piece of crap. Every post, but for a few obvious posi-trolls, pans the stupid pretext stories and ridiculous pro-government/pro NWO positions
It’s really quite simple. Experts should be thought of in a Fatherly way. Every child knows that their Father will only tell them things that are true and for their benefit. Relative to the knowledge and experience of experts, the common man is like a child. This means that the common man should be putting his full trust in the fatherly advice of experts, who have the full backing of the government; which fulfils the patriarchal role in all citizens’ lives.
Once is ENOUGH!