John Boehner says "We're broke"

Speaker of the house John Boehner told reporters yesterday that we are broke. This was in response to someone asking him about proposed cuts which will cost quite few jobs. He said if it caused some to lose jobs it was fine because we are broke.

Boy I sure hope no trouble breaks out in the Sinai peninsula or Iran. How will we be able to get our young men to go fight if we cant pay them, or buy additional fuel for our carriers and airplanes? Will we need a bake sale? Maybe a golf tournament?

I really wish someone would ask him where the money would come from in the event of a new international crisis. Would we have to go to our banker (China) and ask for just one more 5 trillion dollar line of credit? How the hell does China get all these dollars when we cant....... aren't they US dollars???

How did we run out of money? Where was this "stock" of money kept and didn't someone have the job of telling us when it was running out? Why did we have to hear it from John Boehner?

They better not come asking me for any cuz I've got my bills to pay

My Moral Argument Part III

The people who seem to have the most opposition to the MMT school of thought are the Austrians. It really strikes at the core of all they are opposed to............... on MORAL grounds, of course. I find myself attracted to arguing the merits of my views with Austrians more than any other group and its usually because they make such strong moral claims about their arguments. I cant say I've ever felt I've argued an Austrian out of their view (about as likely as arguing a fundamentalist Baptist out of his view) but I have been able to crystallize I think what it is that they see morally wrong with my view of the economy and money. As I see it the Austrians have the largest problems with the following ideas; 1) A "state" issued money, especially if its not backed by gold 2) A central bank which is there as lender of last resort 3) Efforts to "stimulate" the economy 4) State provided employment or pensions 5) Inflation, which is really a result of the previous 4 in their view 6) States regulating business activity, which should be left to the court system (presumably a creation of the state)

I see #1 as falling under the "Money is the root of all evil" (MIROAE) type moral framework. The state takes over our money system and cannot be trusted with this responsibility and always ends up debasing our currency as they pursue frivolous wars, handouts to cronies etc etc. #2 falls into this category as well but also into the "Two wrongs dont make a right" (TWDMAR) framework I described in part I. Backstopping unproductive behavior is always and everywhere simply rewarding failure and cannot have a redeeming value in this view. #3 I would put into the "Invisible hand"(IH) framework. The economy is seeking a right equilibrium and we only delay, for a period, that effort. Stimulus never works we only think it works. #4 Is in the MIROAE because by giving people money for unproductive (anything outside private sector is simply exploiting private sector production) activity we are making them lazy, dependent and worthless. #5 I see as a falling into all three categories, which is due to the nebulous nature of inflation. To the Austrian inflation occurs because a state spends new money into an economy, the central bank monetizes debt and state employees have guaranteed raises and generous pensions which cause wage price spirals. Money is evil when spent by a state and guaranteed employment contracts go against the invisible hand regulating labor supply an demand through wage adjustments. #6 definitely falls into the IH framework as businesses are viewed as being sensitive to price fluctuations as their signals. Regulations, by affecting the costs, end up distorting price signals and increase uncertainty, leading businesses to functionless then optimally. Left alone businesses will always get it right because prices will reflect all real information out there. If their product is dangerous, we'll find out and punish them by not buying it. If their product is of poor quality, we'll price it lower then the higher quality competitor. Attempts by outside agents to rectify these issues will only end up hurting consumers, it is postulated.

The common theme in these critiques is the negative aspect of "The State" and the perfect condition of "markets". States always morph towards an immoral polluter of human quests to be economically free. While markets express and satisfy human whims and desires when allowed to operate uninhibited. This brings forth two questions (just to start) for me; So what makes a state different than a market? Is not the state a market response to the human question of "How best to organize and protect our collective interests"?

I can already see this exploration taking a lot of tangents but I want to try and focus my efforts on the six forementioned ideas and I hope to use the answers to my 2 questions to begin to show that the Austrians are creating a false dichotomy.

My Moral Argument Part II

To recap my last post. When examining the appeals to morality, made in almost any thread you get involved in discussing economics, money and our present recession, I find at least three recurring types of arguments that are being appealed to. 1) Two wrongs dont make a right type arguments 2) Money/greed is the root of all evil types of arguments and 3) Invisible hand (hat tip to Art!!) type arguments.

I also argue that maximizing our satisfaction is at the heart of these arguments. Two wrongs dont make a right is never satisfactory because it risks a never ending spiral of retribution, vengeful hearts are never content. Money is the root of all evil recognizes the hollowness of chasing monetary wealth. Chasing money often leads to compromising all principles and is denounced in virtually every culture. The notion of an invisible hand tries to remind us of our ignorance of the big picture and tries to assure us that there is something looking out for the big picture so we should just let go and stop trying to control that which we cant control. We will always end up with collateral damage with any effort and be less satisfied.

The root of the word economics is oikos (household) and nomos (custom or law) so within the word is a suggestion that there are customs or laws governing the trade of goods and services. In any society that ever existed it is through its laws and customs that the collective morality is expressed. In addition, virtually every economist Ive ever read opines that each of us in our economic decisions is trying to maximize our own welfare. It seems to me that economics is about trying to maximize our own welfare while maintaining an eye to the customs which have been agreed upon within your culture/community. When I hear people trying to argue that economic decisions are value free or amoral I just have to chuckle. No decision is value free. If one claims something is just about money and not personal that reveals a fundamental flaw in a view that money isnt personal. Money IS personal. That is why people are so passionate in their feelings about it.

Lets agree at least that every decision we make with our money says something about our morals. It must. We use money to express what we want, what we are willing to pay for, what we value and what has meaning to us. We would never pay for something totally meaningless to us. Even when I bought Happy Meals for my son and had ZERO interest in the worthless plastic toy inside, I knew my son was going to get great joy from not only the toy but the totally empty calories, and I WAS willing to pay for his joy, no matter how fleeting I knew it was.

My Moral Argument Part I- A Framework

At some point most everyone with an opinion on our current economic situation defers to a moral position. The use of the term moral is applied in many ways. One way is to see certain interventions being considered as leading to moral hazard ,sort of the "two wrongs dont make a right" morality. Another way is to see certain actions on the part of different economic actors as immoral and thusly the cause of all this, a type of "money is the root of all evil" morality. Still a third way is to view our economy as something separate from our human actions that actually has moral intuitions to it. The "market" is described as some sort of perfect vehicle for bringing our wants and needs into fruition, using our capacity and efforts as a way to determine what we deserve. When we use the market purely everything works but when we try to manipulate the market the results are never what we hope for. I dont have a catchy name for this but it assumes that a market is completely amoral and punishes all people equally, playing no favorites and that only people,usually in the form of governments, make immoral/moral decisions. Markets are pure people are not.

I'm interested in what is at the heart of these moral arguments. Finding a framework to look at validity of morality claims. I find moral arguments very persuasive because they get to, I think, the heart of what we as humans are about (social creatures trying to survive and needing people we both like and dislike in order to do so). However the use of the term moral is often times thrown out quite loosely and is frequently used as way to discourage further questioning. I've seen many people simply comment that they object to a certain considered policy or suggestion on moral grounds without any further elucidation. It is used in much the same way a person objects on religious grounds and we are not "allowed" to question their religion.

Moral arguments always mean "I dont like it". So at their core they are about human satisfaction. There may be numerous reasons why they dont like it but when morality is invoked you can be sure we are dealing with dissatisfaction about something.
So morality must be about increasing satisfaction, at some level. It may not be about immediate satisfaction. It may involve longer term satisfaction but somewhere there is satisfaction.


If its NOT about human satisfaction then I'm not sure I care about it.

Supply or Demand

Its taken a while to figure out what is worth posting about. My recent obsession with all things economics has left me with much to ruminate about, not being an economist, and not as much to talk about. Most economists have already thought about the things I roll around in my head and have models and equations to express them. . Stories and thought experiments/analogies are what has been the most informative to me in my explorations through the economics blogosphere. Things just have to make sense when you think about them and be consistent with how other systems in our universe work. I find supply side economics to be one of those things that doesnt ring true. Not that it has nothing useful to say or that looking at the supply side is not informative but to build an economic edifice around the supply side seems woefully incomplete.


Now, one could say the same thing about the demand side. Its only one side of the coin and doesnt explain everything. Agreed but my quest is not to find the economics equivalent of the physicists quest for the theory of everything, its simply to find what came first. My question is just about the "prime mover" in economics. This seems to me the ultimate question. Were we designed as demanders or suppliers? Some may say that this is a silly quest to be on because its not answerable. Perhaps. I have no illusions that supply siders will read this and go, "My gosh Ive been bamboozled all these years I must rethink my position". Mostly this is because many supply siders (I think) are simply extreme tax cutters in economist clothes. They hate the notion of a bureaucracy "stealing" their hard earned dollars. So they have used a lot of fancy math and models to show that letting citizens keep more (ALL) their money will lead to a more vibrant and growing economy. But its also because I myself dont think the demand side answers everything. Only a complete view, coherent with consideration of human tendencies, has a chance of being explanatory and embraced by more of a consensus than we have today. Today the number of "camps" is ridiculous and mostly they talk past each other, content to worship their "god" of Hayek, Keynes, Ricardo, Marx or Smith. I wish someone could just say "Stop it!.. Cant we just agree on THIS!!!!"


The large issues are employment, and how to stimulate it, the nature and utility of money and how to preserve something for later so not to just have a large fight today to see who can get "it" all now. On these large issues all the forementioned "gods" were in quite different places I would say. Some said money came about naturally in the form of gold, unemployment is simply someone expressing the will not to work and savers are the SAV-IORS of society. Others might say money is a man made object, more political than anything else, unemployment only happens when a person is required to chase currency via the route of a job and no job is available and savers while good are no more important than borrowers to a modern society they are two sides to the same coin. Just like an exporter needs an importer a saver needs a borrower. There is likely a mix and match of these views within schools of thought but it appears to me that most arguments seem to settle around these areas.


Okay, now to my main topic. Are we first demanders or suppliers? Are we A) primarily demanders and suppliers will arise to meet our wants or B) do we sit around and dream of things to supply and spend our time trying to convince everyone else they will be a better human for it? This is the "prime mover" question. The proximate cause for just how we became homoeconomicus. Most people are quite aware that while blood flow and tissue health are intimately related many dont understand the nature of supply and demand of blood flow in the body. The heart (the supplier) gets all the attention. We pay men hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to keep the pump going (good thing too) but the heart is an organ because the complexity of organisms got to the point where it DEMANDED a heart to keep it alive. The hearts purpose is to keep tissue alive and it gets its signals for what to supply from tissue demand. When tissue need more the heart supplies this. Now, we exist today in the middle of all that. We dont really care as long as someone understands the ins and outs. But we are only an organism when we have tissues demanding blood from a pump. Pump only...... no organism. There are organisms without pumps(not very complex ones) they respire in different ways, but there are no pumps without organisms. So if someone were to hear someone argue that "All we need to look at is cardiac output (Heart function), and remove all restrictions to cardiac output we will have a healthy body. Cardiac output is the determiner of health and any time we see the patient getting sick we are going to increase cardiac output" they would not be doctor you should go see. You need someone with a more complete view of how our body operates. Its not quite that simple.


How does this knowledge help us? I'd like to posit that our economy is much more naturally like our body. It has flows of money and works off of people wanting/desiring stuff and services, and that when it is healthy (if its ever been) we have a supply that is truly in tune to our wants. We can, I think, use the circuitous nature of life sustaining blood in our bodies to help understand the circuitous nature of life sustaining goods and services in our societies. Knowing the direction of flow is critical I think. In our economy its not quite as simple and consistent as the direction of flow in our bodies, but there is a direction or more accurately, there ARE directions. Things move from somewhere to somewhere else in a very definable direction in a lot of places in our economy and getting flows right is paramount in making proper interventions. For example, loan origination at banks, is primarily driven by a demand for loans from customers, not by a supply of money to be lent. On a system wide level it is demand which drives it. A particular bank might be in a bad financial spot and not give credit to someone they would have a few months previous but system wide it is the financial health of the consumers which drive loans not the financial health of the banks. The banks got sick because their consumers stopped paying, the consumer got sick first. Knowing this, one would never simply give more money to banks to help the credit markets. It will never work and it hasnt worked.



Today, the rut we are stuck in is calling out for more demand. Where does demand come from? Income. Where does income come from? Someone elses non saving. A person who is saving is depriving an income to someone else. We all thrive on someone else not saving. This isnt to say saving is bad but we must understand the consequences of our decisions. Austrians and others argue that it is the savings which result in future income for others through investment. If you look at the flows this doesnt quite bare out. The investment happens first and a residual savings is left. Yes the two equal out but the direction tells you why increasing saving first can only result in recession. Savings is viewed as a supply which will be met by the demand later, but investment is the supply properly RESPONDING TO the demand and leaving behind some savings. This can be explored here . Warren Mosler also does a nice thought experiment here:

Consider this extreme example to make the point:
Suppose everyone ordered a new pluggable hybrid car from our domestic auto industry. Because the industry can’t currently produce that many cars, they would hire us, and borrow to pay us to first build the new factories to meet the new demand.
That means we’d all be working on new plant and equipment - capital goods - and getting paid. But there would not yet be anything to buy, so we would necessarily be ‘saving’ our money to buy the new cars when they rolled off the new assembly lines. The decision to spend in this case resulted in less spending and more savings. And the production of capital goods, which constitute real investment, led to an equal amount of savings. I had this discussion with a Professor Basil Moore in 1996 at a conference in New Hampshire, and he asked if he could use that expression in a book he wanted to write. I’m pleased to report the book with that name has been published and I’ve heard it’s a good read.

Unfortunately, Congress, the media, and mainstream economists get this all wrong, and somehow conclude we need more savings so there will be funding for investment. What seems to make perfect sense at the micro level is again totally wrong at the macro level. Just as loans create deposits, investment creates savings.

What most people refer to as investment today simply is buying an already existing financial asset, stock or bond, and adding income for a broker. Not actually creating anything new at all. This is a fine, legal, ethical and sometimes fun and profitable activity, but it is often sold to us as something else. We need new investment now, to help put people back to work and start producing near capacity. Your 401k is not doing that. This is another flaw in the story that our savings is good and will (by magic) create the opportunity for those future new jobs. This story does not pass the smell test.


Some say we have a supply glut today and we should just let supply contract to meet demand and then we build from there. Well, we were demanding those things a few years ago and thats why the supply grew, now we just have a financial crisis and some people think we dont have money anymore. How could we not "have" the money now? Money is created when there is a demand for it. Money came along when we as a species demanded it. We didnt walk along the road one day and go "Look, there's some money, I think I'll go use this to buy me some wheat and a new tunic" It was our creation. We started out as demanders of money (and then the supply of it was hijacked by the Machiavellians of our societies). When we started out in nonmonetary societies we simply traded things we thought were mutually useful but the only things we took from someone else was something we wanted(demanded). The next time we met up with that tribe they likely had what we demanded the last time. Our forefathers, way way back forefathers not Ben and Thomas and the lot, simply consumed everything they needed from mother earth. They didnt supply anything. It was all supplied and in abundance (somewhere) they just needed to seek it. It was a while before we had any suppliers.


I hope Ive pointed to some of the inadequacies of supply side thinking which seems to dominate our discourse today, at least amongst those in power. Do you think it has anything to do with the fact that those in power are the suppliers?....... hmmm. It takes little effort to make gods in your image, the effort is in convincing others to worship those gods.

Walking Away

There has been much discussion around the blogosphere about the issue of homeowners walking away from badly underwater mortgages. Megan McCardle had an opinion (surprise surprise!) and Steve Randy Waldman at interfluidity had a response

There is no doubt that I agree with Mr Waldman and respectfully call BULLSHIT on Ms McCardle. Libertarians are the last group of people I will take any moralizing comments from since they tend to be the group of people who will defend their right to do as they please the most emphatically. Of course Ms McCardles concern is for "business" interests in this case or more probably the "engine" of capitalism. She couches her argument in "social contract" type language but is ultimately disgusted by people who "game" the system. This gaming of the system is exactly the type of behavior her "brand" of capitalism breeds. It cannot run without it. The amount of outside (government) intervention necessary to prevent this would probably make society unlivable in her view. Of course the legislation she referred to was decidedly one sided in limiting the consumer from exercising options at the discretion of businesses at any moment.

At this very moment there is case before our supreme court which is trying to decide if there should be any limits to how corporations can operate in the political sphere. Laws regarding donating to political causes has made some distinctions between people and corporations mainly because corporations have so much more financial weight at their disposal. It seems likely that THIS supreme court will side with corporations and rule that they have the same right as individuals regarding expressing their political desires with campaign funding. The question needs to be asked; If they have individual rights do they also have individual responsibilities? I doubt you will find corporations suddenly willing to subject them selves to moralizing about the "common good" and the "fabric of society" when their self serving actions are exposed.

The following post I found this morning sums it up pretty well for me. It was at Greed Greens and Grains

Mortgage walkaways, good or bad?
We economists are indoctrinated into thinking first in positive rather than normative terms. That is, how DO people and markets behave, not how SHOULD they behave.

So. Should you walk away from your underwater mortgage?

I don't know. All I know is that if you're a rational economic agent you WILL walk away from your mortgage if the benefits outweigh the costs.

Or maybe not...

You see, the mortgage business seems to be counting hard on the idea that maybe you won't walk away from your mortgage even if you're hundreds of thousands underwater and it is in your material self interest to walk away. Not walking away saves the investment banks tons of money if you valiantly pay you mortgage even though it serves their profits over your economic interest. These are the same banks (and mortgage-backed securities holders, including the Fed) that took huge risks in lending to you in the first place, and had assumed you would walk away if things got as ugly as they currently are. Oh, did I mention those guys are still making gazillions?

It's kinda funny how the financial business plays the morality card when it suits their pocketbooks, no?

Anyway. I think it is true that many people go on paying their mortgage even when it is not in their material self interest. People do this mainly because they feel it is morally correct to do so. It's a little like taxes: cheating on taxes would pay for many people but they don't, just because they think it's the wrong thing to do.

What I'm really wondering is whether this phenomenon of people sticking it out with an underwater mortgage is is a good thing or a bad thing for broader economic recovery. You see, I think many banks are reticent to workout mortgages for people who are underwater and struggling because they feel if they lower the principal for some it will weaken the moral suasion they currently have over underwater mortgage holders who can go on paying, but probably shouldn't. This general reticence then keeps lots of people underwater and, more importantly, stuck in homes that are suboptimal for their particular circumstances. And this helps to keep the economy generally stuck in a rut. People simply cannot move to the locations, living situations and jobs that align best with their current circumstances.

Without attaching any morality to the situation, it seems to me that the general situation where people are unwilling to walk away from mortgages is slowing general economic recovery. It is adding a lot of nominal rigidity that we really could do without.

Like always, if I'm wrong about this someone please tell me why I'm wrong

Businesses are feeding off our morality and profiting from it. Cynically they have bet that we will all be suckers and continue to do irrational things. Irrational from a business standpoint. If corporations want individuals and corporations to lack distinction they certainly should not protest when individuals act in kind.

I think this is a perfect demonstration of the modern day American "hypercapitalists" being completely ignorant of the consequences of their ideology. Running around and labeling as a communist or socialist everyone who wishes some sanity in our economy even if it results in some added costs (taxes) or restricted freedoms (legislation) has brought us where we are today. Since the Reagan revolution we have had to endure one liners like "Greed is good" or "The government cant do ANYTHING right". People mindlessly parrot this bullshit and never actually think what kinds of decisions have been historically made that brought us where we are today. I work with women making mid six figure salaries exactly equal to their male counterparts who parrot the right wing talking points while enjoying their guaranteed eight week paid time off when they get pregnant. Who do they think guaranteed this for them? The corporate titans? Do they think that these guys went to Washington and asked that they be made to pay their female workers on par with their male cohorts and also pay them for eight weeks and hold their position while they sat out with their new babies? The amount of "freedom" they enjoy at their jobs was ONLY guaranteed by a "big government". This why I "walk away" when any of these people open their mouths about politics, government and economics.

A Case for Purpose

Over at Greta Christinas blog I have gotten into a discussion with her about theism/atheism. She has written many articles at AlterNet and other places about her encounters with christians and her strong atheist views. I like her writing and feel she has something important to say. Her main "gripe" if you will (which is shared by many of the more prominent atheists) is that religion and religious believers hold their arguments to a completely different standard than they hold atheists arguments. They also act like atheists have no right to argue them or anyone else out of their positions. Well this idea is prevalent among theists, especially evangelical christians, and frankly it is absurd. They would take no other topic and declare it off limits for rational debate but their faith is not to be "offended". First off there is a difference between a person becoming offended by a comment and someone making an offensive comment. Too many evangelicals wear their outrage on their sleeves. They act as if every question about religion is a personal affront. Well honestly that is part of their tactical agenda, declare something too offensive to discuss in public and voila all atheists are just trying to offend people by putting up billboards or teaching their children evolutionary biology. So I really share her frustration with the way the public in this country treats subjects that can and should debated. Especially one like religion and some of its more tenuous claims which have the potential to change the way certain people are treated in this supposedly democratic country.

Anyway over at her site I got into a discussion with her regarding the idea that there may be hints of evidence that our universe has a purpose. Not to point to a particular god that "inspired" a particular text thousands of years ago but some sort of greater force that when we subjugate to it we can actually improve our existence and reach a higher realm of understanding, peace and happiness. I've been inspired by much of Robert Wrights writing. He is a big question guy like I am
(I generally tire quickly of small talk and want to find out deeper stuff about someone fairly soon) and he's a tireless researcher. You may read his books and disagree with some of his conclusions but you cant say he didn't do his homework. Further, you better be able to explain the evidence he uncovers or your claim that he's wrong doesn't hold any water.

Here is my response to her when she tells me to bring it on after I commented that I think there IS at least faint evidence of purpose in our universe.

It seems from studies of evolutionary theory that beyond individual selection pressures there are also group selection pressures. These emerge from the same biologic source (DNA) but do manifest themselves in different manners. Individual selection would best be characterized as zero sum in most cases. Group selection is more non-zero sum, we can all benefit or at least we can all not suffer a loss by working together. It is here that morality emerges it seems. Morality is completely contingent upon "others" being around. It seems that within our DNA there is a "predisposition" to carry out moral actions, group selection constraints if you will. So it looks like DNA as a natural replicator was under some sort of "pressure" to create an array of organisms, which in turn were under some sort of pressure to procreate and multiply, which in turn allows the moral behavior to emerge.

Again I dont believe there was a conscious choice by some omnipotent mind to "make" DNA this way, just that our cosmic environment is tuned so that first DNA emerges, then variety of life, then sentient beings who live in groups, then selection pressures within the groups to behave in ways which maximize the groups chance of survival not just the individuals. If this is true, why is the groups chance of survival an emergent property? Are we becoming all small parts of a larger organism which we will "discover" later? No answers there but certainly legitimate questions.

The discovery in physics that all we are is an existence in a very small corner of reality (4 of maybe 11 dimensions) lends some support to a small part of a greater organism idea. MY next question is, can we extrapolate at all from current conditions and possibly see what might emerge at the next level of understanding. Is the "greater organism" a greater good? Is it something we will find pleasing? Again if you look at what strategies seem to be programmed into our DNA I think we can be hopeful. Its a matter of trusting that the mechanism we've discovered, DNA replicating and producing larger and larger organisms (not individual size per se but collective size), will continue in its present manner. Small changes over billions of iterations make huge changes but each iteration results from a cooperative process.
DNA it self had to be created in much the same process at the molecular level. Each strand of DNA
is composed of thousands of genes which must sit in the correct spot and only pass their information at a very specific time. It too is a "cooperative" process at the smallest level. Cooperation seems to get 'it" done. Understanding that there are "others" whose needs supercede yours at the present time seems to be selected for. Taken to its logical conclusion with universal milieu-- DNA--individual organisms--multiple organisms-- groups of organisms-- groups of groups all operating under "pressure" to cooperate an subjugate individual needs at times, what in the end will/should this mega organism be subjugated to?

Why is cooperation seemingly selected for at so many levels of the universe? What factors at every level seem to influence the greater likelihood of cooperation? In humans certain emotions and mindsets are more conducive to cooperation? Do these appear as more prevalent within a population? I think they do.

These are more questions but I do think that there is a faint hint of something we are "subjugated" to and the best way, it seems, to achieve that is to forget self (a very buddhist notion), sacrifice your individual needs (a very christian notion) and look at our existence as a "spiritual" journey we are going on together( a new age church notion)

Part of the reason i started my blog was so that I would have a place where I could keep my ideas and possibly one day put them into book form. I dont know why anyone would want to read it really but I promise it would be more accurate than Sarah Palins book. Actually I think that is a great reason to like Sarah Palins book (not that I have or ever will read it) because her book sets a standard for what can be accepted as "Non Bullshit". If you ever want to publish something and the publisher says your manuscript is bullshit you can immediately argue that Sarah Palins book has more documented bullshit than any book ever written (except mabe the book titled " On Bullshit" by Harry Frankfurt.