‘Economics puts parameters on people’s utopias.’
Yes. That’s exactly it. That’s why the politicians hate economics. That’s why the media are so… selective over which economists they call on to talk about policy.
That’s why the economics departments in colleges are put down by the sociologists, philosophers, literature professors and just about anyone else who has romantic longings for a coerced utopia.
‘The teachings of the principles of economics should inform as much on what not to do, perhaps even more than providing a guide to public action.’
That’s it again. Don’t control prices. Don’t socialize medicine. Don’t raise taxes. Don’t inflate the money supply. Don’t put up trade barriers. Don’t go to war. Economists just keep bursting people’s bubbles. And it’s because economists say these things that the ruling class wants them to shut up.
It’s been going on for hundreds of years. Every generation for the past 500 years has seen the battle wage between those who want to use the power of the state to fit some daydream on one hand and the economists who have seen the futility in this manipulation and warn against it on the other.
This post was published at Mises Canada on SEPTEMBER 8, 2017.
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