{"id":4676,"date":"2019-11-28T02:11:24","date_gmt":"2019-11-28T02:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=4676"},"modified":"2019-11-28T02:13:05","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T02:13:05","slug":"word-of-the-day-sagacious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2019\/11\/28\/word-of-the-day-sagacious\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Sagacious"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The WordThink.com word of the day for today is sagacious<\/em>. According to the website,\nsagacious is an adjective that means \u201cShrewd; showing keen mental discernment\nand good judgment.\u201d It is first recorded in the language around 1600, according\nto www.etymonline.com<\/a>, and it is\nderived from the noun sagacity<\/em>, about\nwhich etymonline.com says, \u201cc. 1500, from Middle French sagacit\u00e9<\/em>,\nfrom Latin sagacitatem<\/em> (nominative sagacitas<\/em>) \u2018keenness\nof perception, quality of being acute,\u2019 from sagax<\/em> (genitive sagacis<\/em>)\n\u2018of quick perception, acute,\u2019 related to sagus<\/em> \u2018prophetic,\u2019 sagire<\/em> \u2018perceive\nkeenly,\u2019 from PIE root *sag-<\/em> \u2018to track down, trace, seek\u2019\n(source also of Old English secan<\/em> \u2018to seek;\u2019 see seek<\/strong><\/a>).\nAlso used 17c.-18c. of animals, meaning \u2018acute sense of smell.\u2019”\nDictionary.com lists \u201chaving an acute sense of smell\u201d as obsolete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date 46 years ago, President Richard M. Nixon signed\nthe Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act, passed by the Democrat-controlled House\nand Senate. It was a response to the embargo imposed upon the USA and a handful\nof other countries by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC),\na group dominated by Arab countries, specifically Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and\nKuwait. OPEC began this embargo to punish nations that it perceived were\nsupporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War or Ramadan War, also known as the 1973\nArab\u2013Israeli War, which was fought from October 6 to 25, 1973, by a coalition\nof Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The oil embargo created the first oil crisis in the US, and\nled to some real changes in the way we looked at oil. Gas stations put limits\non how much customers could buy and still, occasionally, ran out of gas to\nsell. Customers waited in long lines, often just to top off their tanks in case\nthey would be unable to find gas later. The price of gas rose almost 50% over\nabout a one-year period, and the price of crude oil rose far more than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wiki on the 1973 Oil Embargo says, \u201cPrice controls\nexacerbated the crisis in the US. The system limited the price of “old\noil” (that which had already been discovered) while allowing newly\ndiscovered oil to be sold at a higher price to encourage investment.\nPredictably, old oil was withdrawn from the market, creating greater scarcity.\nThe rule also discouraged development of alternative energies. The rule had\nbeen intended to promote oil exploration. Scarcity was addressed by rationing\n(as in many countries).\u201d Further, it says, \u201cRationing led to violent incidents,\nwhen truck drivers chose to strike for two days in December 1973 over the\nlimited supplies that Simon had allocated for their industry. In Pennsylvania\nand Ohio, non-striking truckers were shot at by striking truckers, and in\nArkansas, trucks of non-strikers were attacked with bombs. America had\ncontrolled the price of natural gas since the 1950s. With the inflation of the\n1970s, the price was too low to encourage the search for new reserves.\nAmerica’s natural gas reserves dwindled from 237 trillion in 1974 to 203\ntrillion[clarification needed] in 1978. The price controls were not changed,\ndespite president Gerald Ford’s repeated requests to Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, in response to a politically-manufactured\ncrisis, the politicians in Washington, DC, responded with regulations and\ncontrols, and, not surprisingly, these regulations and controls made the\nsituation worse. The victims of the rationing that followed were not the\npoliticians who enacted the laws nor the bureaucrats who enforced the\nregulations. Some businesses undoubtedly suffered, but they were mostly the\nsmall businesses. Mostly, average Americans suffered from the rationing and the\ncontrols, from the rules made by the Washington elites. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did the politicians create the price controls in order to\nhurt people. Probably not. The fact of the matter is that the people who rule\nover us are not particularly sagacious. They think they are, which is part of\nthe problem, because they never question their own decisions, their own wisdom.\nThey just assume that their wisdom and their experience will lead to positive\noutcomes, and, sadly, it makes no difference to them how many times they are\nproven wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, it doesn\u2019t matter at what level of governance\nthese political types work at. They can be presidents, dictators,\nrepresentatives, mayors, police chiefs, or even just college presidents,\nprovosts, or deans. Especially when they\u2019ve been in power for a few years, they\ncome to believe in their own discernment and judgment despite frequent\nfailures. And often they will not brook disagreement. After all, they are where\nthey are because of their sagacity, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image is from the NPR website: \u201cCars line up in two\ndirections at a gas station in New York City on Dec. 23, 1973.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The WordThink.com word of the day for today is sagacious. According to the website, sagacious is an adjective that means \u201cShrewd; showing keen mental discernment and good judgment.\u201d It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4677,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4678,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4676\/revisions\/4678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}