Keynesians Keep Trying to Control the Economy

Henry Hazlitt

President Obama’s economic policies have been based largely on his administration’s interpretation of John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1936). Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke likes Keynesianism also. Keynes became popular largely by proposing massive deficit spending as a key element for getting out of the Great Depression. Politicians loved the idea, because they like to spend money, and Keynesianism gave them cover to do so without raising taxes, should they so choose.

America has been accumulating the results of Keynesianism for decades, and is now dangerously close to a real day of reckoning concerning our huge national debt. Europe is already considering seeking a bailout from China. What Americans often fail to think about is: Who’s going to bail the U.S. when we get to that point? And we surely will unless some serious changes in direction are made fairly soon. The answer: No one. There is no one to bail us out. Would we end up repudiating our debt? Would we write it off in bankruptcy, allowing treasury bills to become worthless? Who knows?

Henry Hazlitt’s 1959 book, The Failure of the New Economics: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies (D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc.) refutes Keynes at numerous points, quoting extensively from his book. (Ebook version of the Hazlitt work is available for free download at Mises.org.) Hazlitt was closely associated with Austrian school economics of Ludwig von Mises, Fredrich A. Hayek and others, and was a prolific writer and champion of individual liberty. [1]

Since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Keynesians have dominated government economic policy and academic instruction, countered somewhat by classical theorists and monetarists, vastly growing the government, with some relief along the way, but leading to the distress we have experienced since the 2008 financial crisis and the concurrent recession. Keynes held “full employment” as the goal, but the Keynesians have delivered now-chronic high unemployment.

When Michelle Bachmann says that it “wouldn’t take that long” to turn the economy around, and when she says that her policies would lead us back to $2.00-a-gallon gasoline, she should be taken seriously, because she has a much better grasp of our economic situation than the current powers that be. She has some understanding of market forces, and does not have the contempt for the free market that the socialist regime has.

It is an axiom of economics that for economic growth, there must be saving and investment, and profits. Saving leads to availability of credit and it leads to investment. Keynesianism has led the Federal Reserve to set interest rates at near zero, and they have announced plans to keep them there for a long time. This stifles saving and investment. The Fed has encouraged easy availability of credit by pumping money, created out of thin air, into the system. Keynes discouraged individual saving and wanted low interest rates. He also wanted government to control investment. Small excepts from Hazlitt:

“The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live,” Keynes begins, “are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes” ([Keynes] p. 372).

There are four chief things wrong with this statement:
(1) The vagueness of Keynes's "full employment" concept …
(2) Prolonged mass unemployment is not the fault of our economic “society,” but of governmental interventions in labor-management relations, wage-rates, and money and
banking policy—the very kind of intervention that Keynes wished to increase.
(3) The distribution of wealth and incomes is in the main neither “arbitrary" nor “inequitable” in a competitive free market system. As John Bates Clark showed so brilliantly in “The Distribution of Wealth” (1899) “free competition tends to give to labor what labor creates, to capitalists what capital creates, and to entrepreneurs what the coordinating function creates.” Individual inequities are bound to occur, but they are not systematic. Capitalism itself tends constantly to reduce them by its rewards to production. If we are looking for really “arbitrary” and “inequitable” distribution, we can find it in the East, or in backward and “underdeveloped” countries, or in Communist Russia and China—in short, in either pre-capitalistic or socialist societies.
(4) It is even a misnomer in capitalist countries to call this process “distribution.” Income and wealth are not “distributed” but produced, and in general go to those who produce them. [Hazlitt, Pp. 374-375]

Keynes's arguments against “liquidity” and against “speculation” are untenable. Speculative anticipations and risks are necessarily involved in all economic activity.
Somebody must bear them. What Keynes is saying is that people cannot be trusted to invest the money they have themselves earned, and that this money should be seized from them by government officials and spent or “invested” in the directions in which those officials (seeking to hold on to political power) deem best. [Hazlitt, Page 430]
(Emphasis added)

President Obama has been accused of a “class warfare” attitude because of his insistence upon raising taxes on millionaires. His liberal base likes any policy aimed at going after the “rich,” or, redistribution of income. The president in his September 20 speech accused House Majority Leader John Boehner of having a “my way or the highway” position for not being willing to accept any tax increases, but Obama himself adopts a “my way or the highway” stance with the opposite position.

Obama wants to take more money out of the hands of job creators to “invest” in things his administration would like to “invest” in, i.e., spend for. Government, in their view, owns all the money, and they only let us keep whatever portion of it they choose.



Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) appeared on Fox News Sunday the day before the president’s speech and indicated that Republicans would not be able to accept much of what the president was expected to propose, and characterizing it as “class warfare” approach. Ryan explained why more new taxes are not the answer:



Socialist policies lead to authoritarian controls and less freedom. Obama’s jobs bill and tax proposal, though unlikely to become law, do illustrate the Keynesian tax and spend philosophy. Obama’s wish is to get higher taxes now, and make “cuts” some time in the future – cuts which are unlikely to happen if liberals have their way.

As I have said before, class envy is the very lifeblood of liberalism, and exploiting and promoting the class struggle is the process. It has this in common with communism. Obama, the great uniter, is now reduced to pandering to labor unions by threatening “the rich” with higher taxes and more regulations, for his own political purposes. Neither his “jobs” bill nor his proposal for “paying for it” is likely to gain any ground, nor would they help with the actual problems if they were to be passed. The proposals are certainly no better than the previous “stimulus” and would create at least one more new government agency, the “Infrastructure Bank.” As if we didn’t have enough slush funds already (see Fannie and Freddie).


[1] See Keynes vs. Hayek rap video here. Sequel here.

Photo: Ludwig von Mises Institute, via Wikipedia.

Economic Principles That Should Be Put into Practice

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Paul Volcker, President Obama, and GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt

The same people in government who create economic crises and problems for America are the ones who propose to solve them, by doing more of the things that created them. The futility of this approach should be obvious, but somehow isn’t. Since so many economists have been taken in by Keynesianism, they are thereby largely precluded from considering other approaches. Therefore, we have things like President Obama’s latest “jobs” bill proposal. It’s like the previous “stimulus” plan, except it would also add an “infrastructure bank,” i.e. a slush fund/piggy bank for liberal politicians to fund union-friendly projects that would create little to nothing in terms of addressing the actual problems of unemployment.

The “jobs” bill would cost nearly half a trillion dollars, which the president proposed to pay for, initially, by letting the super committee figure it out, and then, more recently, proposed raising taxes on those awful oil companies and rich people.

Government officials could get a clue about how the economy works if they would listen to Peter Schiff in the following video of Schiff’s appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe (video via The Daily Bail, dated March 25, 2009) [1]:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Quoth Schiff: “Keynes. It's nonsense. He's like a witch doctor in medicine. You can't follow Keynes. Keynes didn't understand economics.”

That the economy should be based on savings, investment, and production, rather than endless borrowing and spending, ought not to be such a hard concept to grasp. Also, politicians should understand that propping up, even enshrining the mistakes that led to the crisis simply compounds the errors and prevents market corrections.

The more spending the government does to try to jump-start the economy, and the more money the Fed prints to put into the system, the worse the situation will become. Unless definite measures are taken to reduce the size and scope of government and to make actual significant cuts in federal spending, and to stop all bailouts, subsidies, and other corporate welfare, the outlook is for more economic deterioration to an extent determined by how much of this is not done.

Obama calls for “investment,” meaning government spending, but what is needed is for government and the Fed to step aside and let private saving and investment take place. If there could be some certainty as to low taxes and less regulation (get rid of Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, and rein in the EPA), the business climate would look much more favorable, and the economy would soon improve. If interest rates could be set by the free market, investors could experience acceptable returns, and would be willing to risk capital.

Until the GOP can take control of House, Senate, and White House, there won’t likely be a lot of progress, and even if they do, it will remain to be seen how they would proceed. But it isn’t yet too late to start improving things. It’s over a year until election time, and during the interim, we’ll have to cope with high unemployment, high deficits, and whatever the “super committee” comes up with. If the economy can be interfered with less by government and the Fed, some good things can still happen over the next year or so. Let the recession play itself out, and the market will begin correcting the economy.


[1] “Look Out Krugman, Belief In Keynes Is Belief In Self-Delusion: Peter Schiff Tells The Truth About The Recession And Government Spending (MSNBC Morning Joe Video),” The Daily Bail.

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Infrastructure Bank – Another Plan That Won’t – and Can’t – Work

                      Image via WikipediaWhen you see a “jobs creation” approach that didn’t work, doesn’t work, and can never work, why urge Congress to try it again?

Back in March of this year Eric Jaffe at Infrastructurist.com wrote

Democrats John Kerry and Mark Warner joined Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison to propose the BUILD Act yesterday. The bipartisan legislation would create a national infrastructure bank the senators are calling the American Infrastructure Financing Authority — the term “bank” being anathema these days. [1]

I’ve always admired Sen. Hutchison, but this may be evidence that her decision to retire from the Senate is a good one.

This proposal didn’t get anywhere at the time, but the “Infrastructure Bank” is on President Obama’s list of ideas for job creation. According to Jaffe’s article, the Federal Government would provide billions of dollars and many billions more would come from private investors (Wall Street, etc.) and these funds would be invested and applied to infrastructure projects. Wow, what an idea.

According to Jaffe, “The upside is clearly good. Less clear is whether the plan can get off the ground.” Of course it didn’t, fortunately, at the time.

Conn Carroll at The Washington Examiner (08/14/2011), has a better evaluation of the idea: it’s just another “stimulus.”

The first thing to note about this proposal is that it's not really a bank. Banks use deposits from some customers to fund loans to other customers, and they make money by charging interest to borrowers at higher rates than they offer to depositors.

Obama would run his bank a little differently. Instead of forcing borrowers to pay money back, Obama's National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund would “directly provide resources for projects through grants, loans, or a blend of both.” Another word for “grant” is “gift,” so basically Obama's infrastructure bank would be just giving money away.

But then how would Obama's bank stay in business? Simple. Congress would give it $5 billion to spend every year…. [2]

Tackling those “shovel ready” jobs, I suppose.

Carroll mentions other similar failed measures associated with “stimulus” projects. The article is well worth reading.

It’s clear that Keynesian spending will not bring about the desired recovery, but will likely put us back into recession. The August jobs figures (zero net jobs added, prior month revised downward, nominal unemployment rate still 9.1%) suggest that nothing being done now is helping much at all. And more billions added to the debt? As Victor Davis Hanson observes, the ever-present Keynesian excuse is that we haven’t spent enough.

But how much would be enough? We already have so much debt it will never be paid back except through massive inflation.

The entire approach of government intervention, and Federal Reserve intervention in the free market not only doesn’t help the situation, but promotes the false idea that somehow the free market has failed. In fact, the entire financial crisis and the current economic downturn are the fault of government and the Fed. Private sector blame consists of failing to adequately protest bad government policies, creating bad securities, and, understandably, accepting the bailouts when bankruptcy was deserved, which would have liquidated the debts rather than sticking the taxpayers with them.

But Keynesianism, as currently practiced, knows no real limit of spending to try to stimulate the economy. See how it has stimulated things so far.

[1] Eric Jaffe, “Kerry, Hutchison Propose National Infrastructure Bank,” 03/16/2011, Infrastructurist.com.


[2] Conn Carroll, “Infrastructure bank is just another stimulus boondoggle,” 08/14/2011, The Washington Examiner.

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Ron Paul Deserves Serious Consideration in the Presidential Race

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 Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Presidential Candidate

The fiscal and monetary mess America finds herself in these days, daily aggravated by the current administration and the Federal Reserve, brings positive attention to the candidacy of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). The establishment and the media usually try to portray him as a fringe candidate or “cult” figure who need not be taken seriously, and really try to ignore him entirely. But that is a tactic that won’t work as his principles become more widely known.

There is much about Ron Paul’s candidacy that is appealing, and to a lot of people. It’s true that his devotees are very highly motivated and loyal. But his presidential candidacy, if it is to have a chance at success, must reach people who know little to nothing about him, or are just beginning pay attention to him. Certainly he had been calling attention to the nation’s financial troubles well before they reached a crisis stage.

Also, Ron Paul calls for strict adherence to the Constitution and wonders why this should make him seem extreme. Let’s take a look at some of his main positions on issues. He has shown himself to be a principled and consistent advocate on these things, and can show documentation and make convincing arguments for most, if not all, of his stands. One may agree or disagree, but one doesn’t have to be in doubt about what he thinks.

1. He is a proponent of individual liberty. This is supposed to be a purpose of the Constitution and yet his detractors think that this is somehow unseemly, and are too willing to ask Americans to give up liberty in exchange for promises of security. As a libertarian, one might expect individual liberty to be high on his list of priorities. It certainly is not high on President Obama’s list. The top thing on his list seems to be expansion of government size and power.

2. He believes in protecting property rights. This is another aspect of the Constitution which has been too often ignored, but the right to own and use one’s private property is a fundamental principle of freedom. As Thomas Jefferson said, “He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force.” [1]

3. He believes in protecting life. Dr. Paul is a physician who has delivered many babies and has an understanding of not only the physical beginning of life, but also the tragic brutality of abortion. His concern extends to all stages of human life.

4. He understands the facts of economics: the futility of deficit spending, the dangers of fiat money, and the unsustainability of America’s current economic trajectory. A hit piece on Rep. Paul and Austrian School economics appears at The Daily Caller, but its points are well refuted by some who commented on the article.


5. He wants to phase out our central bank, the Federal Reserve, and get America back to the gold standard. Otherwise, we will never see the end of the boom-and-bust cycles, constant inflation and thereby, devaluation of the dollar. The ability to create money out of thin air must lead in due course to monetary collapse. Paul would like to restore to Congress its constitutional duty to deal with monetary policy, which they have handed off to the Fed, whose main interest has been in protecting big banks.

6. He opposes our constant wars. In addition to Iraq and Afghanistan, we now have military operations in Libya, Yemen and other places, possibly soon to include Syria. These wars are either not approved beforehand by Congress, or not being fought with a view to winning, or both. These wars are a constant and huge drain on financial and other resources, and especially human life, and mostly fail to actually advance our vital interests. I believe he would want to maintain a strong defense capability, but he certainly is not interested in forced nation building around the world, or trying to maintain an empire.

7. He would end foreign aid. Most of it is wasted on regimes that oppress their people and don’t wish us well either. I would rather maintain some support to countries, such as Israel, that are our actual allies, so I would disagree with him here.

8. He would scale back government regulation. He does not recognize the Executive Branch as having legislative power. He would help the states to claim their constitutional rights and responsibilities.

All these things and others, to me, represent legitimate conservative views that deserve serious consideration. The media say Paul has no chance of becoming president. Despite a virtual media blackout on Ron Paul, even though he was barely edged out in the Ames, Iowa Straw Poll by Michele Bachmann, he did manage to appear on Piers Morgan’s TV program (interview video here), and also was defended on The Daily Show by Jon Stewart.


To say the least, the election of Ron Paul as president would be something of a shock to the establishment (like the Tea Party?) He would make some fairly fast changes in our government, but he would still have to deal with Congress and the bureaucracy. I think he would be far better in the White House than Mr. Obama.

There are some good GOP candidates. The campaign will give each of them a significant test. I believe that Ron Paul deserves consideration as a leading candidate. He will get his message out, whether the MSM wants him to or not. It is true that the establishment has some fear of him. They have a vested interest in the status quo. Maybe Ron Paul just makes too much sense.

[1] Thomas Jefferson, to Bancroft, 1788. Quoted by Patriot Post 08/17/2011.

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Our Tax Dollars at Work: Obama’s Bus Tour

Not Obama's bus

No one doubts that an incumbent officeholder has some advantages when running for re-election. President Obama, of course, has the power of his office working for him during the presidential campaign. But to what extent is this advantage ethical or even legal? It would surely be hard to get anywhere with legal action against Obama’s campaign activities, but one might question a couple of the excesses. I mean (1) his supposed need for  two taxpayer-funded buses costing $1.1 million each on which to make his (2) taxpayer-funded campaign tour.

The following video, via Dakota Voice tells something about this:

The president has carped and lectured on excesses of spending to private jet owners, Las Vegas vacationers, etc., but he has seen no reason not to send Michelle and friends on a vacation to Spain, where they had to clear public beaches to allow the First Lady’s group to frolic in the sand, nor to use Air Force One for personal “dates” with the First Lady in New York, Europe, or wherever.

I haven’t heard from anyone who doubts that the President’s “listening tour” is simply a campaign tour, or that the ultra-fancy bus is a campaigning vehicle. The expenses of these things should be paid for by political supporters, not taxpayers in general.

Of course, the president can also get free TV time whenever he wishes, but by now, he may be reluctant to use it too much, since each appearance lately seems to be followed by a drop in the stock market, and also his poll numbers.

I suppose the president believes in public funding for (his) political campaigns. But where does this cross the line? Of course, all this is a minor issue compared to the economic threats currently facing our country. But Obama’s tactics do not seem to represent financial caution or much concern about the public treasury.

Further reading:

Emily Miller, “MILLER: Obama’s Bus Force One,” 08/15/2011, The Washington Times.

via GDS44’s Blog.

“The Magical Misery Obama Bus Tour Begins with $1,100,000.00Custom Made Buses…. Two of em at a cost of $2.2 Million for 3 days use,” 08/15/2011, The Last Refuge. (with quotes from a CNS News article)

Illustration: Public domain image courtesy of The Crittenden Automotive Library.

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Don’t Blame Me, I’m Just the President

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President Barack Obama

News item:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Monday he inherited many of the country's problems with high debt and deficits when he entered the White House, sounding a theme likely to dominate his 2012 re-election campaign.

* * *

President Barack Obama would have us believe that he’s doing, and has done, his dead-level best to get America’s economy back to where it should be. But he’s been obstructed by everyone else, especially those Tea-Partiers, GOP leaders, and European problems, not to mention the Japanese tsunami, and probably global warming.

There are numerous issues on which Obama and Company are so wrong that the U.S. economy is being wrecked, or, as Ben Stein mentioned a year or two ago, they’re standing on the economic oxygen hose and the patient is getting worse.

“A Theme Likely To Dominate His 2012 Re-election Campaign”

In 2008, Mr. Obama campaigned as one who seemed to have the answers, knew the best strategies, and, while criticizing the Bush Administration, offered no hint of thinking that they had created any problems that he couldn’t overcome. Yet now, Bush is going to be blamed as Obama runs for a second term? He’s going to have to spend eight years undoing Bush’s damage? Seems that will be his message, according to Reuters.

“Tea Party Downgrade”

A recent Democrat talking points memo had David Axelrod, John Kerry, and others putting forth the phrase “Tea Party Downgrade,” as though the intransigence of the Tea Party is what resulted in the credit rating downgrade of U.S. securities by Standard and Poor’s. The agency followed up on Monday, August 8, 2011, with downgrading Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other federal institutions. The explanation for blaming the Tea Party for any of this is the ludicrous claim that they refused to “compromise,” and that, as Axelrod stated, the ratings agency was looking for revenues. Standard and Poor’s explicitly said that they weren’t addressing that aspect, but they were concerned with the increasing debt, and the lack of any viable efforts to get it under control.

I suppose it’s George W. Bush’s fault that the Democrats in Congress have not passed a budget in over two years, and that the budget Obama submitted would have accelerated spending and the deficit. Congress could not support it. Nor could they support a bill to increase the debt ceiling without regard to the deficit or spending cuts. Republicans, meanwhile, have submitted actual plans, Paul Ryan’s, and the Cut, Cap and Balance proposals, for instance. All of which were said to be DOA in the Senate and/or on the President’s desk. Tea Partiers were trying to do what they were elected to do, and in the end were influenced by Speaker John Boehner’s fear of allowing a default, and got into line to vote for the insipid plan that finally passed. But at least they held the line on taxes, a not-insignificant thing.

“The Grand Plan”

Obama wanted a “grand plan.” That way, he could put off any cuts until two years down the road (slowed acceleration of spending being regarded as a “cut”), get significant tax increases quickly, and spend several hundred billions more in “stimulus.” But of course he bears no responsibility for the credit rating downgrade. If you believe that he doesn’t, perhaps you’d be interested in a bridge for sale in Brooklyn. But even the “grand plan,” never saw the form of an actual proposal written down on paper. So of course the President couldn’t be held to anything he might have said.

If you listen to the president and his helpers, you get the idea that our economic problems would be solved if only those corporate jet owners and the “rich” would pay their fair share. Not mentioned is the fact that the top percentiles of earners pay the overwhelming majority of income taxes, and about 47 percent of American workers pay no income tax. But the problem is not taxes. The problem is spending. You can be sure that if taxes were increased today, Obama would quickly find ways to spend every cent of any increased revenue (and not toward retiring the debt), and soon revenues would actually be lower because the economy would shrink even more.  Liberals will never reduce spending and they will always want higher taxes. This should be axiomatic by now. Promises of future reductions are made, but never fulfilled.

So far, there have been no spending cuts, and the Democrats are calling for more spending. Somewhere, John Maynard Keynes is probably smiling. But most of us are not.

Thoughts on the Federal Reserve and the Banking Cartel (OK, a Rant)

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Mayer Amschel Rothschild

“Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes her laws.”   – Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), “founder of the Rothschild family international banking dynasty….”

The well-known formula for making money, “buy cheap and sell high,” is practiced to the extreme by the Federal Reserve, which has monopoly control of the nation’s currency. They literally “make,” i.e., create, money out of nothing, and then loan it out at interest. As Ron Paul has reminded us, the U.S. owes $1.6 trillion to the Fed (a “debt” which he has introduced a bill to cancel). A nice business to be in, and the private banks that own the Federal Reserve system likely wouldn’t trade it for anything. The big banks are able to rely on the Federal Reserve for bailouts, if needed, allowing them to keep their earnings privatized, but socializing their losses, i.e., charging them to the taxpayers, if they get into trouble from, say, high-risk transactions.

And the Fed and the Treasury Department are all too ready to come to the rescue if needed, as they did in 2008. They even forced some banks to take money whether they wanted to or not. That way, they could keep secret the identities of banks that were actually in big trouble. The bailouts also included some foreign banks. One can’t help wondering why Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail, but others were not.

Well, that’s water under the bridge now, I suppose, except it really isn’t. Nothing prevents further bailouts, and there are still entities “too big to fail.” It must be nice being part of a cartel where profits are assured, and if for some reason they don’t happen, government, or the Federal Reserve, or both, step in to save the day. Within months, the situation is well in hand, and executives who drove the organizations to near-bankruptcy are (with some exceptions) back to receiving their large bonuses, and waiting for the next bubble to burst.

With the government’s gracious assistance, the Fed has to its credit numerous booms and busts, the Great Depression, the abolishment of the gold standard (and therefore, the end of sound money), the confiscation of citizens’ gold, the dollar’s continuing shrinkage in value, the meltdown of 2008, big bailouts, the dollar’s currently threatened status as the world’s reserve currency, and the current sour economy that shows very little sign of improving much any time soon. Yet the computers of the Fed continue to create whatever quantity of money might be desired, often with the stated hope of creating inflation. The ideal level of inflation is zero. Anything above that steals purchasing power from everyone who holds dollars. The ideal interest rate is that set by the free market. The artificially low rates rob savers of any appropriate return on savings, yet retains high-interest costs of commercial bank credit, e.g., credit cards, etc.

It seems the government wants everyone in a state of fear or anxiety over what government fiscal and domestic policy is going to turn out to be, leading to the likely conclusion that the government authorities are perfectly OK with the economic and social turmoil they create, as long as it helps increase and bolster government control of the economy, and expands citizen dependence upon government. I have about given up on thinking that either the Fed or the Obama Administration is really interested in improving the economy, and am inclined to think that they are accomplishing what they set out to do, that is, impoverish and control people more and more. If this is not the case, they must be hopelessly inept. But they are very willing to cooperate and plan things together, things which now threaten to topple our currency and our economy.

I am optimistic that, with strong and sustained effort, this trend can be reversed; but there will be no cooperation from the Fed or the current administration, and success is far from assured. It’s either staying optimistic or studying those conspiracy theories more.

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