Old punchline: “Okay, now we know what you are. Let’s negotiate.”
It’s an important truth. When you’re honest about your purpose, I can deal with you properly. I know what you want and how you intend to get there.
Some jobs are always honest. Car salesmen want to sell you a car. Plumbers want to fix your plumbing. Beauticians want to improve your looks. They’re easy to deal with, as long as you hold up your own side and know when to say NO.
Our problems arise from powerful jobs that refuse to be honest.
Journalists are the worst. They claim (and some believe) that they are uncovering and reporting truth. Everything they say and write is propaganda for one party. Zero exceptions.
Economists are second, with a few notable exceptions like Angus Deaton. Economists claim (and some believe) that they are analyzing how business works. 95% of them are just stock salesmen, puffing up the Share Value of one company or group of companies.
Politicians are third, with several important exceptions. Trump’s second term is a complete exception. In 2016 he was a normal politician, claiming to improve our lives but really working for Wall Street. In his second term he came out with rare and ruthless honesty. His only job is to enrich a few billionaires and ruin the rest of the world. He tells us straightforwardly what he’s doing.
Despite this rare honesty, journalists and other politicians are so relentlessly locked into their own schizophrenic fantasies that they can’t haggle or negotiate. They just keep screeching their own weird garble.
Carney in Canada and Sheinbaum in Mexico are NOT locked into fantasy. They understand exactly what Trump is doing, and they are haggling PRODUCTIVELY, serving THEIR OWN COUNTRIES. They are the rarest of all exceptions. No US politician since FDR has effectively served his own country.
Note for fairness: I’ve listed the extremes at the honest and dishonest ends. Most abstract jobs have a typical distribution of honest and dishonest people. Doctors and academicians have standard myths (Hippocrates, pursuit of knowledge), but it’s easy to find realistic people in each group. Both areas are stereotyped by their worst members, who are unfortunately the loudest and most powerful.
Polistra's Mill 