Beat the System: Here’s how to handle racists such as Marc Faber

Nobody else is going to speak up for Marc Faber, so I will — and everyone can demand my head.

Faber, of course, is the elderly investment guru who was fired by basically everyone for saying, in his most recent market commentary, “thank God white people populated America, and not the blacks.”

We all owe him a debt of gratitude.

No, not for the racism.

But for actually saying what he thinks.

People who agree with Faber, or who think he might have a point, will simply retreat still further into their own echo chamber.

Faber is surely not alone in his opinions. He’s an old-time, gloom-and-doom gold bug. Many such people are reactionaries, on all sorts of issues, including race.

The question is: How should we deal with them?

It should by now be obvious even to the dimmest person in America that policing the public square in the name of political correctness is no longer paying many dividends — if any.

Echo chambers

Do you think there is a single racist anywhere in the world who is going to change his or her mind because Marc Faber has just been dumped as a non-executive director by a couple of small gold-mining companies?

Do you think anyone, anywhere, is saying, “Gee — I used to think black people were inferior to white people, but now that CNBC won’t have him back on “Squawk Box,” I’ve suddenly and spontaneously changed my mind”?

Do you think one single person anywhere is saying any such thing?

If this latest politically correct shaming will change anyone’s mind — and it probably won’t — it is more likely to push someone the other way, if only through sheer irritation.

Some may respond that this doesn’t matter, that the firing of Faber is important simply because it shows what “we” as a society will tolerate and what we won’t.

The only problem with that is that there is no “we.” Anyone who thinks Americans are still united by shared values is still clinging to the fairy tales they were taught in propaganda class in school.

It is more credible to argue we have degenerated into a second, undeclared civil war.

People who agree with Faber, or who think he might have a point, will simply retreat still further into their own echo chamber. As last year’s election showed, we are increasingly becoming two societies that have little in common and rarely speak to each other.

Power of debate

If we really want to persuade racists to change their minds, surely we are more likely to do so, not by public shaming, but by engaging them in debate.

You know, facts, logic. Anyone remember them?

Few things depress me more than going on social media and realizing that hardly anyone can handle rudimentary logic. Even people with law degrees and seven years of college can’t handle a basic syllogism. Maybe this is partly because we don’t debate anymore. (No one, by contrast, has forgotten how to shout.)

The correct way to respond to Faber’s claims is to direct him to the analysis first unveiled 20 years ago by academic Jared Diamond in his breathtaking, seminal work “Guns, Germs and Steel.”

In it, Diamond made two basic arguments.

First: Yes, of course, societies in western Europe leaped ahead of the rest of the world in economics, output and technology around the 18th century.

Second: This had nothing whatsoever to do with skin color or genetics. Nothing. It was the result of a fascinating series of accidents of geography, climate and environment, all of which Diamond explains in great detail. (My favorite data point in the book? Apparently zebras are far harder to tame than Arabian horses — so Africans, unlike Europeans, did not have access to easy and plentiful horsepower.)

Engaging people like Faber in debate would, of course, be harder work. Public shaming might feel like the virtuous option. It looks to me more like it’s just the lazy one.