Re: Truth is, no-one knows best. Everyone is groping randomly. NOM Archived Message
Posted by george brennan on January 31, 2019, 11:14 pm, in reply to "Truth is, no-one knows best. Everyone is groping randomly. NOM"
In the quoted passage Polly Identifies “rationality” with calculation of economic costs and benefits. But outside certain industries, voters did not vote on a calculation of economic costs. Calculations can be “irrational” when they defy arithmetic. Emotions can be irrational when they exceed their alleged cause. It is irrational to be angry because you feel left behind and disempowered if you have not been left behind and disempowered. But anger is not irrational if you have been left behind and disempowered. Tim Shipman in his book recounts how just after midnight on 25 May 2016, a senior staffer in the Remain campaign sent colleagues an urgent message. “Voters are very sceptical about our warnings on the economy,” began his email. “They don’t trust the numbers. They don’t trust the Treasury.” And they did not not trust IMF, the OECD and all those experts who were referenced by most of those well informed MPs who according to Polly knew better than uninformed voters ever could. But even if masses had believed those rather erratic experts, as they did not, economics would not have been the decisive matter that the Remain campaign assumed it to be and want it to be. Telling the poor dumb bastards that the economy would be ####ed up by leaving the EU means nothing to people whose experience told them that the economy was already ####ed up. As a lukewarm Remainer trying to wean Labour voters away from the distraction Leave, my fear is that a second Referendum will be dominated by fingerwaggers like To ynbee
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