I don't agree with everything Jay has to say about economists, but I can see
his point. Just about every evil that has been perpetrated in the world
during our lives has been justified by "economics" (on both sides of the
former iron curtain). What this use of economics as a political blank check
for the high and mighty has to do with the economists' profession is a
rather complex question. Where I would disagree with Jay is in his premise
that economics and economists are the source of the problem.
By and large the great institutions that confer credentials, honours and
career paths on economists have succumbed to the obsequious waltz by which a
particular current of economic thought and a corresponding current of
political tyranny mutually flatter each other. But no economic school of
thought could have orchestrated the obsequity. It's more a matter of funding
and career opportunities, specializations and an institutional hierarchy
that always feels compelled to put a "moral" face on its crass pursuits.
In simple terms, it is not the best economists who rise to the top, but the
most ambitious. This is hardly a feature unique to economists or economics.
The Greek tragedians had a word for it -- hubris. For a more modern term, we
might turn sociologist C. Wright Mills' phrase, "professional ideology of
the social pathologists" on its head: a social pathology of the professional
ideologists.
Modern economics (including the advocacy of free markets) emerged as a
critique of political absolutism. The profession of economics has evolved
into an apologist for an even more total form of political absolutism.
Therein lies a contradiction. Some of the wisest things said about the world
-- including the most trenchant criticisms of the economic conventional
wisdom -- have been said by economists. How unprofessional!
Regards,
Tom Walker
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