Political Games 1 Canada 0

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The Evil Temptation of Numbers

Census Canada Table 5 Low wages 1993-2004

The whole of social science has been similarly broadsided by the arithmetical mania. It is worth noting that the greatest economic thinkers, from Smith through Hayek, wrote almost entirely without tables and charts, dwelling instead on the consequences of morally loaded ideas, whereas the demographic muse led economists like Malthus into monstrous visions of purely imaginary catastrophes, and wicked speculations about what would be needed to avoid them.

Likewise, the environmentalism of our own age is contaminated throughout by this Malthusian propensity to follow the numbers out the window. Never listen to people who think the cure for human problems is to reduce the number of humans. Their minds are diseased.

Too great precision, in a matter that does not admit of precision, is an evil in itself. And if Aristotle could explain this, with clarity, something like 2,340 years ago, we should have caught on by now. Indeed, it was from that sage that I learned to distrust the motives of those seeking too great precision and realized that much modern science, too, is reduced to scientism by statistical methods.

When did changes to the administration of the Census become the National Anthem for Liberals and central planners?  When did the media become so obsessed with reducing a change in policy by a Federal government into ad hominem attacks.

 

Culture of Change? 

 

When did improvements, changes to policy, design become non-negotiable? If you read some articles in the media you would come to the conclusion a coin may have been flipped in regards to the recent announced changes at Census. Did the Census staff develop a history of insulating themselves, resisting change from any direction in their management or collecting information? Many departments in the government  do not want to cooperate with the program review initiated by Stockwell Day.

When a government is being labeled extremist, ideological for every decision they undertake by the media,  opposition political parties and special interest groups does the country benefit from these political games?

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