Here's what interest me: why do the journalists and professors so fervently believe in things they cannot possibly verify on their own?The behavior is what interests me. I think of it as rent seeking behavior. In particular, so as to not get lost in semantics, the kind of behavior thus described:
when a third party deprives one party of access to otherwise accessible transaction opportunities, making nominally "consensual" transactions a rent-collection opportunity for the third party.
This is in connection with so called "climate change", whose adherents attempt to impose costs and restrictions upon those who wish to engage in transaction opportunities in the field of energy. Such as mining and production of fossil fuel energy which we need in order to sustain our standard of living.
Journalists and professors fall into the category because they really don't produce anything. Journalists could produce something of value, which could be useful information for the citizenry. But journalists are worse than worthless because not only do they not inform anybody, they do the exact opposite. What value does this add? It adds nothing, but assures themselves a paycheck, for which nothing has been given in value in the exchange. Likewise, professors could actually teach something of value to the younger generation, but increasingly the value of what they "teach" is of no real value at all, but it supports their own meaningless and useless parasitical existence.
Why do they believe in things they cannot prove? Because it accrues more political power upon themselves as a group. As this parasitical group gains power, it does so at the expense of the larger group who are still productive. In other words, they spout the party line because they know which side of their bread is buttered on. They have to support fellow rent seekers so as to keep their mutual racket going.
You can expand this principle further and thus get at the real problem facing the country and the West today.
There's too much unproductive behavior which is being rewarded. The rent seekers are actually impeding productive behavior while expanding their own unproductive behavior. It is a political phenomenon. At some point, it will become so onerous that it will cause all the rest of the productive sector to cease functioning due to the insatiable demands of the rent seekers. When that happens, who will they blame? There will be nobody left but to blame themselves. Perhaps they can impose rent on themselves, but without any productive capabilities of their own, they will fail.
It may ultimately come down to an ever increasing cannibalistic effect. Otherwise known as "spreading the wealth." Notice that creating new wealth is not on their agenda. This is actually frowned upon.
Those who participate in such behavior don't add wealth because they don't believe in it. The world is a zero sum game, which means that they intend to grab everything they can for themselves because the amount of good stuff cannot be increased. It never occurs to them that they could increase the amount of good stuff so that everybody, including themselves, can have more. Even worse, what they believe acts in the manner of a self fulfilling prophecy- as their rent seeking becomes more and more onerous, there is really less and less good stuff to go around.
The cure is to encourage wealth creation. But in order to do that, wealth creation must be legitimized. Rent seeking must be delegitimized. The current path is exactly the opposite of what is needed. As long as the current path is followed, troubles will multiply. But we will at least be equal to each other. We will be equally unproductive and as useless as all the other rent seekers currently protesting Wall Street. If they would wise up and just look in the mirror, they would discover what's ailing them- their own useless and counterproductive behavior.
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