7 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 19.8 ms ] thread
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...

> 4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

> 5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

to be fair the unemployment numbers have always had major problems.

And the CPI, for over a decade now, is an insult to statisticians and economists everywhere. There have been absolutely egregious policies for calculating the CPI, quite brazenly misleading: (completely unjustified hedonic adjustments, comparing chicken to meat, just because people can no longer afford beef, etc)

I think this article is mainly upset about the reduction in scientific funding.

> I’ve observed that scientists across disciplines are managing mountains of data assembled from federally funded research, but defunding will prevent them from sharing the data that taxpayers paid for.

They have "mountains of data," yet the firing of three people compromises that somehow? Has it been compromised? Has the size of the data they're accessing decreased?

Is there an actual result here?

> The institutions under attack are universities, data repositories, libraries, archives, statistical agencies that have earned their legitimacy through decades of transparency and authentication of verifiable information.

To be absolutely fair: a lot of these institutions also lost legitimacy by aligning themselves with one major political faction and alienating the other. Politics is more than elections and legislative debates, and that was a major political blunder on the part of those institutions. Some of the stuff Trump's done (like to the BLS) is egregious, but the universities have spent so long being outspoken bastions of the left that they should have realized the right would someday be in power decide to send the money they'd been getting elsewhere.

Infrastructure should aim to be bland, try to stay on the lagging end of controversies, and aim for universal support. Trying to use it to win some controversy just makes it vulnerable.