PREFACE

At a PR lunch in the States I sat across from an American editor who told me how much she liked my work.

The conversation turned to racial and national stereotypes and I said there was a reason for the Canadian myth that Newfoundlanders are stupid.

I was going to tell her about traditional Newfoundland humor in which the person who tells the joke is always the butt. In most North American humor the joker tries to make someone else look stupid but in Newfoundland -- in the old days, at least -- that would be considered bad manners. In Newfoundland humor, the humorist pretends to be stupid.

I saw one classic exchange of wit in a mining camp in northern Newfoundland, while I was helping a friend change a flat tire. A couple of local fishermen stopped to watch.

One said we didn't have to change the tire. Couldn't we see that it was only flat on the bottom? Instead of changing it we could just turn it half way round, and ride on the part that was not flat.

The other said that wouldn't work because the tire would just roll down to the flat side again. Besides turning the tire, he said, we would have to jam the wheel so it couldn't turn while we drove on it. He said we should drive wedges between the brake and the brake drum to stop the wheel from turning.

The first fisherman didn't think that would be enough. If you want to stop a wheel from turning, he said, the best way is to drive nails through the brake drum and into the brakes.

My friend joined in with the joke, asking the fishermen's advice on what size nails to use and so forth. It was a hilarious exchange of outrageously stupid ideas, all offered completely dead-pan and accepted as though they were serious.

I knew my friend was bright and a couple of weeks earlier I had watched one of the fishermen pull the engine of his boat apart and pour new bearings in place -- a long forgotten art and a very high level skill indeed -- but if I had not known they were joking I would have guessed that the three Newfoundlanders between them had a combined IQ of about 2.5.

I was going to tell the American editor about this and suggest that other national stereotypes might also be based on misconceptions, but I didn't get the chance. When I suggested that there might be a reason why Newfoundlanders are considered stupid she left the table. She hasn't talked to me since and she froze me out of the magazine she worked for then, and another that she moved to later.

As I spoke she was listening ahead and guessing what I was going to say. When her guess about what I was going to say conflicted with her fine-honed sense of what is politically correct she walked out and she never did find out what I was talking about.

Another time an Ottawa businessman was reacting to a book I had written, and that he said he had read.

"I can see where you're coming from," he said. "You're a socialist."

The book included several examples of mistakes and double crosses by government and it advised small businessmen not to accept either advice or help from government. In fact my position was far to the right of the businessman but, because it was not his position and he was not a socialist, he assumed that I had to be a socialist. Because he assumed that I was a socialist he thought my book -- which was about as far from socialism as you can get -- was a socialist tract.

As John Stuart Mill said in {A System of Logic}, "the greatest of all causes of non-observation is a preconceived opinion."

This book contains some different ideas but they are neither right, left or center. If I thought any established view of economics was valid I would not have bothered to write mine. If you have an argument against my ideas I'd like to hear it, but please try to understand my ideas before you decide why they are wrong.

Several people helped with criticism and arguments for and against the ideas outlined in this book but, because the finished product may be contentious, most of them would prefer to remain anonymous. I offer my apologies to my friends and former friends who have been dragged into arguments they would rather have avoided.

back to Summary Page