Not often a blog post begins with a statement that I find profoundly true and important, but there was this the other day:

Economic Illiteracy and Global Economic Worries

An economist used to be a person who was able to explain why the economy works well without interference by the state, and, indeed, better than if such meddling were to be effected. Nowadays, an economist is a person who affirms that the economy can only work properly thanks to interventions by the state.

The economist – versed in knowledge about the invisible hand – has metamorphosed into a staunch proponent of economic policy, the politician’s advisor ambitious to steer the visible hand.

Which then continued as follows which was even more pleasing:

Steve Kates writes in his superb Free Market Economics. An Introduction to the General Reader:

The approach taken to teaching economics has become one in which the market mechanism is … taught only so that there is a basis for explaining why markets … [do] not operate properly. The market mechanism is seldom explained as what it is: the sole means to achieve prosperity and the basis for a continuing improvement in living standards for an entire population [p.284]. … [F]ew are any longer taught that economies have major properties for self-adjustment and are able to recuperate on their own without major government involvement. [p.287]

One of the great dangers of a state monopoly in education is that it provides inordinate leverage for uniform patterns of thought.

The massive distortions in the leading modern economies do seem to be intimately related to the prevalence of the politically both subaltern and ambitious(-for-power-and-status) “economics” of market failure and dirigiste conceit.