Why were they so gullible?

I've been watching some of the impeachment proceedings. Sometimes it's impressively good. Sometimes it puts me to sleep.

I saw only part of it, so I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that something has been left out. I don't think the impeachment prosecutors asked this about the people that believed Trump: Why were they so gullible?

Do we really think, for example, that Trump supporters believe the Q-anon story that Democrats eat babies?

I don't think so. A few of them believe it, maybe. But I think most of them are just so fed up with the way things are that they're willing to go along with the joke, and perhaps they take some pleasure in how frustrating it is for people on the other side. Dunno, but that would be my view, if I was one of them.

Seeing it this way, I must also ask: Why are they so fed up?

 

 
On this blog I do economics, or what to me is economics. So of course I think those people are fed up because the economy has been so bad for so long.

I don't expect that they see it that way. They seem to see themselves as political revolutionaries who can no longer accept our existing government. But as I said, I do econ, and I happen to think politics (and almost everything else in the modern world) is driven by economic concerns.

I can tell you exactly why I see the world as driven by economic concerns: F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, chapter 7. You can get a PDF of the book (with a few chapters missing).

Here are three quotes from chapter 7, by which I hope to show how I came to prioritize economic concerns above political concerns:

So long as we can freely dispose over our income and all our possessions, economic loss will always deprive us only of what we regard as the least important of the desires we were able to satisfy. A "merely" economic loss is thus one whose effect we can still make fall on our less important needs, while when we say that the value of something we have lost is much greater than its economic value, or that it cannot even be estimated in economic terms, this means that we must bear the loss where it falls. And similarly with an economic gain.

And:

Economic values are less important to us than many things precisely because in economic matters we are free to decide what to us is more, and what less, important.

And one more piece:

Once we realise that there is no separate economic motive and that an economic gain or economic loss is merely a gain or a loss where it is still in our power to decide which of our needs or desires shall be affected, it is also easier to see the important kernel of truth in the general belief that economic matters affect only the less important ends of life, and to understand the contempt in which "merely" economic considerations are often held.

In chapter 7 Hayek was writing about totalitarianism. Turns out, totalitarianism is bad for economic reasons.

 

So anyway, I think the Trump supporters are not pleased with the US economy, and they blame the government, and they think it's time to end the government.

1. I'm sure not *all* of them are angry about the economy. I think most of em skip over the economy and go direct to anger at government. But even a view like white supremacy can tentatively be traced back to economic roots.
2. Blaming the government is correct, yes and no. Yes, because it is the government's responsibility to "promote the general welfare" of the people. No, because if you want a better economy, the way to get it is not by trying to kill politicians (if that was the goal), but by studying the economy for as long as it takes. That's what I do, anyway.
3. To get from blaming the government to ending the government is one hell of a big jump to conclusion. That shows how fed up they really are.
   

And that's all I have to say on that, for now.