More myths - one dangerous, another just plain wrong

Here are two more myths that need to be dispelled like fog on a sunny morning.

Myth #1. The market can decide best policies for us all.

The market can mean the New York Stock Exchange or the souk in Marrakesh, or any other venue where money, goods and services are exchanged or bartered. The way the term is generally used - for example in the Wall Street Journal - the market (sometimes capitalized, as in The Market) is endowed not merely with intelligence but with superhuman wisdom. The reverend Charles Mackay exploded the myth of the market's wisdom in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds - a classic work first published in 1841 that everyone should study when tempted to plunge into the stock market. Mackay explored the mediaeval dancing mania, the South Sea Bubble, Tulipomania, and other passing crazes that separated well-to-do but greedy-for-more folk from their life's savings. Money, and the way it changes hands, are usually involved in these varieties of madness based on myths and fantasies. But not always. The myths and fantasies of threats to national security involve vast sums of money that are willingly - eagerly - transferred from national treasuries to the share holders of multinational corporations that manufacture armaments; but there is an associated national paranoia which doesn't require vast expenditure yet is often extremely harmful. Perhaps the worst example of this in my lifetime was in the USA in the late 1940s, early 1950s. The Un-American Affairs Committee of the US Congress, chaired by Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s, destroyed the careers of some gifted performing artists by accusing them of communist sympathies and placing them on a black list so they could not work in the movie industry. At the time I had only recently become politically aware, and my homeland, Australia, was as severely afflicted by national paranoia as the heartland states of the USA. I found myself utterly out of step with national sentiment and might well have got myself into political trouble if I hadn't left for the more tolerant British Isles.

Like other issues I've touched upon in posts on this blog, the myth of the all knowing, preternaturally wise market requires a book-length essay to do it justice. This short paragraph might be enough to provoke debate, I hope.

Myth #2. Females are too flighty to be entrusted with important decisions best left to wise men.

Like most of my male classmates when I was a medical student in the 1940s, I resented the presence among us of a whole bunch of flighty females. Medicine was a serious profession for us capable men, and these "girls" as we called them, had no place in it. Only really weird women went into medicine. They were certainly weird in one important way: they got most of the prizes and medals for excellence. Working a few years later as the principal investigator on well-designed research studies for the UK Royal Commission on Medical Education, I was at first a bit disconcerted to find all the evidence that pointed to more determined motivation, higher intelligence, better exam performance, by women than men. By then, too, I had seen enough sick men and sick women to be well aware that women reacted better than men to the pain, suffering, distress and disability associated with serious diseases and injuries. The evidence I gathered did a lot to convert me from a male chauvinist to a card carrying feminist.  Over the 55 years of my marriage I found also that my beloved Wendy was a better manager, a wiser homemaker, emphatically a far better parent, and a better cook, than I was.  Now I fully understand the truth. Intelligence, ability, and wisdom are not evenly distributed between the sexes.  Women have a distinct advantage in these important qualities. I think we can find the explanation in evolutionary biology: the survival of the species over the millennia has depended on the survival skills and expertise of the females, who must care for their young as well as for themselves. As for the men, once they have fulfilled their biological purpose, they aren't much needed.  Like the cavalry, they can love and ride away (or if motorized, screw and bolt). Perhaps that's why among parents there are more irresponsible fathers than mothers. I'm condensing much well studied evolutionary psychology here as well as evolutionary biology. It's deliberate. I want to provoke argument and discussion.