Morons with degrees

The Dumb ages are the result of ordinary people deferring to fake experts.  Fake experts have only the thinnest veneer of credibility, a university degree.  For some reason University degrees impress people.  Ordinary people believe that a degree indicates superior intelligence even when the degree holder says and does incredibly stupid things.

Case in point, Mark Carney.  Mark Carney is the former head of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.  He is now the leading Candidate to be the next Prime Minister of Canada.  His supporters think he is a genius economist who will put Canada back on track.  Carney certainly looks good on paper.  His impressive resume is backstopped with degrees from Harvard and Oxford.  Unfortunately for Canadians, under that impressive resume is an idiot.

And herein lies the danger of Carney: his credentials do a lot of heavy lifting, lending credibility to a man who is regularly blown around by the ideological winds of the moment. Consider his response to Brexit, the defining event of his much-vaunted tenure as Bank of England governor. The Remain camp warned of economic Armageddon. Carney fell for it 

I remember when the Brexit vote happened.  A young man I worked with was shocked at the vote and repeated the same narrative Mark Carney bought in to.  Britain will face economic destruction by leaving the EU.  I told my young colleague that it would be much ado about nothing.  Britain would not face economic destruction.

My conclusion was based on simple logic.  The British economy did not suddenly disappear with a single vote.  Britian was trading with various countries before the vote and those same countries would want to continue with that trade after the vote.  The only thing that changed was some of the trade deals would need to be altered.

My assessment turns out to be correct.  My young colleague was worried about nothing.  I can hardly blame him for his worry.  The media told him to worry, and he was still far too young to understand that the media lies to support the preferred narrative.  Mark Carney on the other hand is only a few years younger than me.  He should have known better, but he did not.  Mark Carney is just a more credentialed version of Justin Trudeau.  An idiot who thinks he is a genius.

Trudeau is leaving politics, but Canada is not leaving the dumb ages.