Authored by Doug French via The Mises Institute,
Referring to someone as a sociopath is strong language. After all, just between 3 and 5 percent of Americans are really sociopaths , people who initially seem charming, but, due to bad neurological wiring, lack a conscience and are unable to feel remorse. They are exceptional liars and cheats, and have no capacity to feel guilt.
But according to author and multi-millionaire tech hedge fund manager, Bruce Cannon Gibney, anyone born between 1946 and 1964 (baby boomers) that are still living are sociopaths.
“There is something wrong with the Boomers and there has been for a long time,” writes Gibney in the forward to A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America and the author’s beatings continue for 400-plus pages.
He doesn’t let any of us Boomers off the hook, but really focuses on “generational representatives like Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, Donald Trump, and Dennis Hastert–a stew of philanderers, draft dodgers, tax avoiders, incompetents, hypocrites, holders of high office censured for ethics violations, a sociopathic sundae whose squalid cherry was provided in 2016 by Hastert’s admission of child molestation, itself a grotesque metaphor for Boomer policies.”
Gibney’s point being us Boomers are molesting younger generations because Social Security and Medicare might remain solvent just long enough for Boomers, but no one else, to collect. And, the author preaches from the environmentalist good book every chance he gets. Any skepticism about climate change is viewed as having “negative feelings about reality and science” because, for Boomers, sacrifices for the environment are, “incompatible with sociopathic desires.”
Boomers didn’t have a chance because their moms read Dr. Spock, were too easy on their kids, and parked us in front of the television. “TV’s essential characteristics make it the perfect education for sociopaths, facilitating deceit, acquisitiveness, intransigence, and validating a worldview only loosely tethered to reality,” the author opines. The current president’s obsession with TV watching is thrown in as a prime example.
Along comes chapter six, “Disco and the Roots of Neoliberalism,” and who is quoted in the chapter’s pre-matter? Ludwig von Mises. “Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories.”
Gibney writes that Boomer neoliberalism “is more free market à la carte.” Who knew that Boomers had the government doing “a dead minimum, limiting itself to arbitration of disputes, national defense, and the supply of a few public works like the post.”
The author would have us believe that Boomer liberalism was put in place coast-to-coast and laissez faire has ruled the day. Gibney writes of the “capitalist utopia…the omega point of the modern neoliberal revolution. This is what the various neoliberal acolytes (the saints Paul: Ryan, Rand, Ron) are excited about, smacked on the head by Atlas Shrugged on their roads to Washington.” He even contends the Mont Pelerin Society has been influential.
Mention is made of “Austrians” and the “Chicago School” that both believe government should get out of the way and let individuals take care of themselves. The author contends that “neoliberalism depends upon key and problematic assumptions: that individuals are rational, prudent, and informed, and that they therefore can be relied upon to meet their own needs.”
However, citing Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, not all humans are rational. Humans are not homo economicus, but insteadhomo sapiens, with Boomers being, in his view, homo sociopathicus.
However, Gibney’s lumping together of the Chicago School and Austrians misses the mark. In Mises’s view, economics doesn’t deal with homo economicus at all, but with homo agens: man “as he really is, often weak, stupid, inconsiderate, and badly instructed.”
In Epistemological Problems of Economics, Ludwig von Mises explains that the homo economicus would be the perfect businessman, conducting an enterprise for maximum profit: “By means of diligence and attention to business he strives to eliminate all sources of error so that the results of his action are not prejudiced by ignorance, neglectfulness, mistakes, and the like.”
However, Mises continued, “It did not escape even the classical economists that the economizing individual as a party engaged in trade does not always and cannot always remain true to the principles governing the businessman, that he is not omniscient, that he can err, and that, under certain conditions, he even prefers his comfort to a profit-making business.”
Government and its budgets, debt, and intrusiveness have done nothing but grow under Boomer leadership, despite Gibney’s chapter musing about free market philosophies.
The author rants that Boomers don’t save enough, while aborting, divorcing, and overeating too much. Boomers caused; high inflation, crime, poor educational standards, the setting of corporate tax rates, the hiring of adjunct professors, not replacing the crumbling infrastructure, and avoided doing their wartime duty.
He summarizes, “the whole idea of Boomers as Good People is absurd,” and “The Boomers deserve America’s displeasure and they ought to repay what they can.” What the author most wants is for Boomers to pay higher taxes.
Ironically, in his hedge fund days Gibney worked for Peter Thiel who, just so happens to have more than a passing interest in the work of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Rather than blame Boomers for all of America’s societal ills, Hoppe blames democracy and its increasing of society’s time preference in his book Democracy: The God that Failed.
Government’s taxing with impunity, violating its citizen’s property rights, “affect individual time preferences systematically differently and much more profoundly than does crime,” Hoppe writes, explaining that future property rights violations become institutionalized.
Instead of a societal falling time preference, government intrusion causes an increased time preference. Instead of savings, capital formation and increasing civilization, the process is “reversed by a tendency toward decivilization: formerly provident providers will be turned into drunks or daydreamers, adults into children, civilized men into barbarians, and producers into criminals.”
Not every government decivilizes equally, Hoppe points out. Democracy, with its constant changing of government, has a president, who doesn’t own the capital value of government resources, but “will use up as much of the government resources as quickly as possible, for what he does not consume now, he may never be able to consume,” professor Hoppe writes. “For a president, unlike for a king, moderation offers only disadvantages.”
The illusion of democracy, that the government is us, means “public resistance against government power is systematically weakened.”
So, what has caused America’s demise: Dr. Spock, TV and the Boomers, or was it democracy?
I’ll take Hoppe’s argument over Gibney’s. However, I’m just a lowly Boomer.
I don’t buy it…It is actually the WW2 “greatest” generation that set the seeds of our own destruction with the misguided civil-rights (for some) laws, enforced (illegally) by American troops at the point of bayonets, as well as the 1965 “Hart-Celler Immigration Act” which excluded whites and opened up American immigration efforts from third-world. Let’s not forget NAFTA and other one-sided “free-trade” agreements that were pushed by the WW2 generation. Yes, the boomers have a lot to be responsible for, but the seeds of our own destruction were planted by the previous generation.
Seriously, anarkist, is there ANYTHING you do not lie about? Hart Celler did not exclude whites. That is an outright fucking lie. It did no such thing.
You will, and do, lie about anything in pursuit of your agenda. You either believe the bullshit you are fed on the racist websites you visit without checking, or you make this shit up on your own.
I can post chapter and verse showing that statement is a damn lie. What say you show anything substantiating that lie. Sound of crickets to ensue.
Hart-Celler DID exclude whites and redirected immigration toward third-world countries. This “plan” was implemented to dilute white political power at the behest of those of the “tribe”, who continue to wreak havoc to this very day. Read the bill…
Lying again. Whites were never excluded. Never. Again, provide your evidence. Continuing to lie is not evidence. You are a piece of shit.
To help you out, here is the definition of exclude:
verb (used with object), ex·clud·ed, ex·clud·ing.
to shut or keep out; prevent the entrance of.
to shut out from consideration, privilege, etc.:
Employees and their relatives were excluded from participation in the contest.
to expel and keep out; thrust out; eject:
He was excluded from the club for infractions of the rules.
Whites were never excluded. That you continue to lie is despicable.
In the 1970s, 700,000+ immigrants came to the US from Europe, and in the 1980s 800,000+ came in from Europe.
Whites were excluded? It is a fucking lie.
Excluded is not the correct word, limited is.
Calling it a lie is equally misused.
The law placed a cap of 120,000 on immigrants from Northern Europe, something that had never been done before. This forever altered the makeup of our Nation.
When you look at the demographic change between 1965 and today based on country of origin, the result is inarguable.
Kennedy was the one who stated that it would not alter the demographic makeup of the United States and the result is that it clearly did.
I appreciate your desire for clarity and precision in the choice of words, but you simply cannot dismiss the reality of the 1965 Immigration And Naturalization Act. It promoted immigration from Asia and Africa at the expense of the native stock and previous immigration sources, reducing the percentage of “Whites” (those of European descent) from 90% in 1965 to somewhere around 60% today. That’s just a fact.
HSF – I do not dismiss a goddamn thing. He did not misuse the word – he intentionally lied. You know it and I know it. He knows what excluded means.
He and others do it all the time, and I am sick of it. They do this stuff intentionally. They throw out lies, time and again, as though they are truths. And whites were not excluded. What was done, in a nutshell, was that the policy of only allowing from Nth Europe was blown up.
I know what the act did. He could have made the case you mentioned honestly. Instead he chose to push his fucking propaganda. I have many, many times said the US fucked up by nit controlling its borders.
But no, to push his agenda, he has to outright lie.
That is fucked up and bullshit.
Do not come and defend his fucking lies by saying he misused the fucking word. Because you and I both know better. Seriously, HSF, what the fuck is that bullshit?
Your adding in of blacks into the discussion is also disingenuous. The black pop as a percentage of the whole is little changed, but it is up as a ratio of white European to blacks. Almost the entirety of the change came from the Hispanic population. And unless the borders were sealed that was always going to be the case. And the majority of the change in the black to white European ratio would have to do with birth rate differences. Africa is not the issue, and Asia is not the big issue. Many of the Asians are the types I would think the US needs – smart, educated, hard working, family oriented.
The issue is 1) the US opened the floodgates to the south, and did not seal the borders. Even the legal migration was probably manageable. But not the tens of millions who came illegally. And 2) white birthrates plummetted. Do not be so naive or simplistic in your discussion. It is not just one issue that changed the demographics so severely.
Most Americans sicken me. It is not just boomers but the millenials, the X’ers, etc. The whole American society, and for that matter Europe is just a rot for the most part and has been for along time. My frame of reference goes back to the 60’s. Between the money grubbing 80’s and 90’s, and the gamer/phone addicted yout, it makes one long for a secluded country spread, much like Hardscrabble. Out.
No.
Why even give this nitwit any attention? Does he possess some modicum of cultural influence that I’m unaware of?
I would say our undoing started with the passing of the bill that permitted the establishment of the Federal reserve . Most of our nation’s money problems go back to that time. This has allowed Congress to get all the money they wanted to buy votes and set up the massive welfare/ warfare state. But that 1965 immigration act combined with The supreme Court decisions that has basically kicked God out of society has sealed our Doom . Only destruction coming once the government can no longer counterfeit money. Hopefully I will be far away in a mountain cabin looking down upon this coming train wreck.
That and property tax.
Hopefully there’s somebody in that cabin willing to pay for your frequent surgeries, since you won’t do it and expect others to pick up the tab.
I’m a PhD in Computer Science. I’ve contributed to many DoD and Commercial Projects. And I continue to do so. Even when some companies (like GE Defense Systems) ask me about code I’ve written over 20 years ago.
No. Some BabyBoomers have a fucked up view of the world. Llpold should respond to this.
Dutch – folks such as you, and I have, contributed more than we will ever get – far, far more. You have done your part, and continue to do so. Such as you earn my respect.
But vast numbers of Boomers will take far more than they ever have given. They will take, and the bill will fall to the young, and that is disgraceful in the extreme. Today, I read the most recent month’s deficit hit an all time high. And given welfare is the largest portion of that deficit, and boomers the largest consumer of welfare, it certainly seems the boomers as a whole are causing a lot of fiscal damage.
You are to be commended for all you have done, but those that shriek “But I paid in!” whenever reductions to SS, Medicare, etc., are mentioned have zero idea that they are taking from future generations. They have zero consideration as to the burden they are creating. I understand the young and their follies, but the old have no excuses. They should know better. But they simply do not care.
And as I have said, it is an epic disgrace.
I see some SS parasites are voicing displeasure at my post. There is a surprise.
How in the hell could you know if / that ANYONE “will take far more than they ever have given”? Measured how? Using what numbers?
I was a first-year engineer out of college working research for Texaco in Pt. Arthur, TX. The OCAW decided that going out on strike was a good idea; they went out. As in previous work stoppages, the research center, along with nearly everyone else who could turn a wrench / oil a pump / do grunt work , was put on refinery duty. I really was a grunt: my job titles were “outside man” (operator) on the CRU and “cat and frac helper” (operator) on the FCCU. For 7.5 months I did twelve-hour shifts, day in and day out, seven days a week (with a total of 20 days off, defined as 36 hours not working, the entire time).
Port Arthur refinery made 450,000 bbls / day of crude oil into everything from gas and diesel to asphalt to “sewing machine oil” and everything in between; we set production records because the engineers would write up tickets to FIX things, not try to find ways to ignore them or slough around them. We essentially kidnapped one instrument man and kept him fixing instruments, calibrating meters, etc. for a month. When he came on the first day, our “board man” Steve said, “Valley, (the “Stillman” / supervisor’s name) I don’t see how this unit runs. Every instrument is on manual, nothing tracks, and anything I change cascades from one end of the unit to the other, one after another. Nothing holds setpoint, nothing runs in automatic, and it’s all I can do not to mess something up!”. When the instrument man’s work was done, every instrument ran in automatic and Steve had almost nothing to do but write duty sheets of numbers.
The whole refinery was like that, apparently; all on manual and nothing working right. When the strike was over we had set records for on-spec production in nearly everything.
Now, an “environmentalist” would say my time working strike was a calamity; I made so much carbon-based fossil fuels that nothing I could do would “repair the damage” my work had created; after all, TENS OF THOUSANDS OF GALLONS of on-spec gasoline, diesel and such resulted from the time I spent keeping the units running properly (as an operator, adjusting heater burners, oiling pumps, etc.). In the REST OF MY LIFE I could not burn as much gasoline as I helped make, or relieve the “pollution” like CO2 that gasoline created.
An economist would say I CREATED MORE VALUE turning black goop into gasoline during those months than I could ever CONSUME during the rest of my life. And this says NOTHING about all the stuff I’ve done since 1983!
What rubber ruler are you using to measure my worth? Whose worthless inches / millimeters is it measured in? WHO DECIDES WHETHER MY LIFE WAS “WORTHWHILE”?
You have no way to know or calculate what “Boomers” did or gave; you have no way to measure what they contributed, and using politicians as examples is a flawed way to evaluate a generation.
We did what we had to , what we thought was right and what was necessary, each and every one of us, as did you.
Liberalism is at fault, not any one generation. The 15th Amend (1870) gave Negros the vote and the 19th (1900) gave Women the vote. The creation of the Federal Reserve Central Bank, the IRS and the Income Tax in 1913 turned the US Levers of Power over to the Rothschilds. Social Security passed in 1935. Public Prayer was banned in 1962. In 1965, the first Boomers were only 20 when the Civil Rights Act (Affirmative Discrimination, Busing, Quotas, Total Forced Integration etc were passed). I rest my case.
Doug French is full of shit. To put the Pauls in the same class as Paul Ryan proves it.
It’s the Mises Institute, what do you expect? That place is a rat’s nest of propaganda if there ever was one. Robert Siddell nails it. “Liberalism is at fault, not any one generation.” The rest of his comment is pretty spot-on, too. Unlike the Mises Institute, Robert doesn’t seem to have an agenda, just simple common-sense truth-telling
Star, We all have an agenda. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
this guy is partly correct & partly incorrect–
those in the 1st few years of the boomer gen were/are pretty screwed up but from 1958 on we were the best generation–
i’m glad to see that i’m not the only one to notice how screwed up you older guys are–
The entire comment is premised on the belief that the citizens have any control over the criminal actions of the useless pieces of shit that infest our local, state, and federal governments…….they don’t. Since 1913 (at least), the banking cartel has run the show. As the government has grown, various other cartels have seized their piece of the pie and have used it to control the actions of the regime that benefit them. That the “Greatest Generation” fell for the con that they were “fighting fascism” in Europe while it was being implemented in spades right here in the good old USA, only goes to show the power of propaganda and blind government faith in the face of both war and bankster-created economic collapse. What will the next Depression produce? As for their children (the Boomers), why would you expect anything different. Modern government monopoly schools have been in place since the early 1900s, brainwashing and shoveling on government-worship propaganda by the truckload. Colleges and Universities have always been the haven of big government power types, and that message has been well-communicated too. Once the media forces of radio and television got a hold on the nation, the future was secure.
Fully 95% of the calls coming in to Congressional offices leading up to the infamous bank bailouts, were running anywhere from NO to HELL NO, according to media reports. The bailout bill passed with flying colors, and the too big to fails are now 10 times bigger and with an even tighter grip on the balls of any Congressman with any left.
We can pin down dates of failure, and we can try an assign blame, but I know plenty of Boomers and Gen Xers who make up the core of people screaming at the top of their lungs against ALL of this shit. And it makes virtually no difference whatsoever. Voting has NEVER changed anything, but that is the only outlet Americans are told they are allowed.
Mad dog Meathead ,where have you been ? I know where I’m going. Yes sir I will have my cabin in the mountains sooner or later. Just me and little bb . Maybe a big dog just in case.
Good comment, Mr. Liberty.
I think there is lots of blame to go around in the generations. The worst mistake America made was letting the Govt educate the children and young adults thinking the the govt would always have good intention. That laid the foundation to where we are today. They have shaped minds at the most impressionable times of their lives.
Hey, with this being a rant about boomers, where the hell has Clammy been lately?
Kind of miss her. It’s been a while.
I wouldn’t pin the blame on any particular generation. We all believed in our government no matter how naive that appears now but there was a time we did believe they were our wise fathers and learned men . It was the laws written during the greatest generations timeframe that applied to the Boomers. Though I wouldn’t blame them. Most Boomers I know (myself included) never gave the deep thought it all deserved. The rules were in play and we adhered to them, by and large, again believing in the wisdom of our elders. Looking back it’s always easier to see the faults we should have known, not unlike armchair quarterbacking. It does no good anyway. We know the damage done by those we entrusted. I know it is my children who will suffer the most and that for me is burden enough.
I had an enlightening conversation with my boomer father last night. The amount of propaganda/programming he received growing up in the 50’s and 60’s was staggering, and he’s just now beginning to understand it.
At 84 I’m somewhat ashamed to say my own is not. A year or two ago he and I had a conversation about the false flag attack which was 9/11. He looked me square in the eyes and told me that even if what I was saying were true, he didn’t want to know.
In my mind, the problem grew ten fold at that moment. My dad is an awesome old dude and I love him very much. My respect for him diminished. How many more are there like him? People choose ignorance. Ignorance is comforting. Problem is… major discomfort is likely right around the corner ignorance not withstanding.
A serious conversation with most females is impossible. They immediately change the subject to their husband’s tomato garden, their grandchild, last vacation, home addition, illness, why I should not judge someone, that hate speech and guns must be banned, etc.
Said another way, you can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. I think our current distopian reality is just too much for most normal people to accept.
And I do think that progressivism is a mental disorder, in that what you are told to believe is so removed from reality that the cognitive dissonance created is causing mental illness.
Thing is, the man is absolutely no “progressive”. You’re right about the cognitive dissonance. I believe a deep seated fear of what’s real (what actual horrors each and every one of us is capable of – accountability and consequences be 100% removed) is at the root. He simply refuses to believe in the inherent evil (selfishness) of man and the depths to which it can sink a soul.
If mankind were inherently good, would the world be in the condition it’s in?
Yeah, we boomers did it. Yet for the most part we’re nothing but a large sandwich filler between generations that accomplished much more than we have. Our one crime is we are a gullible lot, impressed by everything other than our elders and their elders. However our biggest crime was to embrace the idiot notion debt was an asset necessary for growth. No the usury is still slavery. But you gotta admit, Ronnie Reagan was one helluva salesmen for our doom.
No one generation can be blamed for ruining the country when it has been deteriorating since the signing of the U.S. Constitution. Certain periods have only enhanced the deterioration, and it’s going even faster now. We should have stuck with the U.S. Confederation.
As a boomer, I approve Gibney’s position. I don’t say I like it, but the truth always hurts, doesn’t it?
We boomers are karma; the consequences of the previous generations’ willingness to enter a war (WW II) they had no business fighting by stupidly believing the ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ propaganda perpetrated by the banksters who funded (profiting handsomely) both sides of the conflict.
Payback’s a bitch; “visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” Exodus 34: 7
Of course we realize such a statement from God was directed solely at His covenant nation Israel and to no one else on earth…
The problem is not a generation but a species. It’s Boobus Americanus. They have been accepting stupid stuff like homosexuality and fake science (global warming and gender choice) in exchange for free shit. As a nation we are getting what we deserve and getting it good.
I think the so-called “greatest generation” or their parents set up an unworkable, unsustainable system that looked like it might work for a while because we had amazing prosperity after we blew up and bombed the rest of the world out of production capability for a decade or so following WW2. Then the PTSD’d WW2 and Korea vets proceed to repopulate the country and involve their kids in the Vietnam Quagmire while taking us off Gold settlement for balance of payments which sent inflation in a hockey stick moon shot that stands on graphs like an exclamation point. They sent us to an unwinnable war and took away the real money at the same time.
Those who say the west has never recovered from WW1 may in fact be correct. Sadly I see nothing to make me believe the clown car of tattooed socialist shitheads of the new generations have anything but less of a clue.
Stucky from days gone by …..
“Hey, Stucky, you Boomers destroyed America!”
Oh, yeah? Well fuck you, suck my balls, you stupid piece of shit, you understand nothing about history, I hope you fucken die in your vomit, blah blah blah blah …. hey, I’m gonna write a few 3000 word articles about how great Boomers are (which I did) …. go to hell, motherfucken cocksucken donkey dick sucken’ blah blah blah blah blah
===========================
Stucky in 2018 …..
“Hey, Stucky, you Boomers destroyed America!”
Sure! Whatever makes you feel better. Have a nice day.
[P.S. I think a person making such a statement is still woefully ignorant dumbfuk. But, who has the time and energy? )
I’m sure glad I never bashed Boomers.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/103202-the-shallowest-generation
Sure!
Great article, too!
The Constitution didn’t last “four score and seven years”. What generation was that?
Lol a boomer Austrian got mad that a Keynesian told the truth about what subhuman filth you are. I think once you dip below 22% of the electorate things will change. Hope you live to see the purification of America from your kind.
LOL You’re commenting on a TWO YEAR OLD article.
You must be a slow reader. Or, retarded.