One of the hardest things to do is be objective. When I was trading if I was able to keep myself in a flow and look at data objectively, I did pretty well. As soon as I wasn’t, I lost a lot of money.
When I invest in startups, I work extremely hard to maintain that objectivity. For example, I don’t care where people came from, what they look like, or what their political beliefs are. All I care about is if they can build a blowout company and that the company comes first in their life. I have backed politically conservative entrepreneurs and politically liberal entrepreneurs that have built crazy good companies.
When it comes to journalism in the United States, that objectivity isn’t there and you are fooling yourself if you think it is. I was reading John Kass today and he linked to this debate which is worth listening to. You ought to subscribe to Kass. He’s a great writer. I do.
HERE IS A LINK. (I cannot figure out how to embed it here. I wish Rumble would fix that and make it easier)
The two debaters are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. David Greising is a liberal Democrat and an establishment newsman. His entire career has been in establishment news where 90% of the newspeople vote Democratic. To say he has lived life in a bubble is an understatement. The other person is Dan Proft. He is a conservative and has had a radio program in Chicago for years.
Why is this interesting?
First, it shows how one person thinks they are objective when they aren’t.
Second, it shows the belief that somehow, if something is owned and operated by the government it is objective. It isn’t. Governments have their own agendas and many of the agendas aren’t for citizens. Milton Friedman said, “Who are these angels? Do you think the Kommissar in Russia is an angel?” The same can be said for National Public Radio, Public Television, and any agency of government.
Third, it shows that newspapers and the media hide behind this supposed objectivity and are smarmy about it. Proft freely admits his publications aren’t objective. In the same breath, he also points out that all of the stories he publishes are in fact true. Greising doesn’t deny or refute this.
I wish publications would actually clearly state their political perspective. The NY Times is clearly a hard left-wing newspaper with a hard left-wing agenda. But, it hides behind being “objective” because somehow journalists report “both sides”-except they don’t. If they did, the facts behind Democratic Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock treatment of women would be reported more aggressively.
The last few days of market reporting have been breathlessly bullish. The left-wing mainstream media needs a rally into November. The bear market took a breather. But, today it is down big as I type this.
Lesson. Bear markets take money away significantly faster than bull markets make money. We are in a bear market. Two up days no matter how big don’t make a bull.
To try and retain some objectivity, what’s changed? What new data has emerged that would cause a bear to become a bull?
Beuller? Beuller? Anyone?
We still have very high inflation. I just put gas in my pickup truck at Costco and the price was much higher than it was last week. Nevada has super high gas prices which doesn’t make me happy.
Food prices are still high, although some meat prices have come down. Stock up. They will be a lot higher once herds are culled.
Wages are still hot according to the unemployment report this morning. At the same time, job openings are down…..that’s not good and we are in for what’s known as stagflation. Stagflation is high-interest rates in a recession. In other words, no hope for the little guy.
The lesson is, to be honest with yourself. How do you view the world? What about your worldview is making you less objective so you can try and see through the looking glass to make better decisions?
It’s really hard which is why we make bad decisions sometimes.
Of course there is no sense of humility among the media now. I think that comes with no knowledge of history. The phrase I read somewhere is "often wrong but always certain". I play a game with myself to prevent me from getting too sure of anything. What are we sure of now that people will laugh at in 50 or 100 or 500 years? In the past people were sure that;
Bumps on your head revealed personality traits
You could cure most ailments by bleeding
Flight for humans is impossible
Same for space travel
God chose kings and queens to rule over us
Witches walked among us
Guilt could be determined in a dunk tank
Sun revolves around the earth
People were 100% sure of every one of those things and thousands more and we laugh at their stupidity. We are also 100% certain of things and some of those certainties will be laughed at in the future. This relates to the media because they are the most "certain" people on the planet right now.
The "government should be trusted" argument is another Leftist enigma for me.
The same people who have zero trust for an entire half the country they disagree with, as well as Big Business, Big Oil (and so on) and believe that humans are irretrievably flawed also believe that government is remarkably insulated from human nature. That people selflessly choose "civic service" for others and not themselves.
I argue that in fact government is the embodiment of the WORST of our nature, as it attracts power-hungry, attention seeking, amoral people seeking gratification of selfish desires at a great cost to everyone else. The only thing that motivates a politician is fear of losing their prestige and power. These are bad things, and it is only the free press and the system itself as designed by our Founders that can constrain people like this.
So when Leftists want to hand all power over to bureaucrats or their favored superhero politician I realize that it is their emotions controlling them, not their objectivity. You can see case study "Barack Obama" as a great example of raising someone in government to deity status, and the results of that fiasco.
Nice post.