The Problem with Experts
One of the primary talking points of Mr Obama’s campaign is that what is needed (as a change) are “smart” policies. But there is a fundamental problem with that, it’s wrong. Let’s start with this quote which is in line with what I’m trying to say:
America’s regulatory structure is mostly the child of the Progressive Era, when well meaning, well educated protestants thought that they could save the world by putting bright technocrats from the right kind of families in charge of the messy, sprawling economy and make it clean and tidy and safe. That sounds sarcastic, but it wasn’t entirely unreasonable. The first great victory of the Progressive Era, the major revolutions in public health, did just that: made life safer and nicer for everyone, with minimal inconvenience, by putting experts in charge of things like sanitation and quarantine and the water supply. Before Hayek, we didn’t have all that much reason to think that this feat couldn’t be repeated elsewhere.
But now we have had Hayek, and the failure of the Soviet Union, and a hundred other ways to learn that in any sizeable economy, the information problem is simply too big. Even leaving out the various incentive problems ably detailed by both Marxists and public choice economics, a well-intentioned bureaucrat cannot know enough about what’s going on in the world to thoroughly manage even a static economy, much less one that has to cope with millions of constant changes, from hurricanes to new babies.
In the context of the current financial kerfuffle, an oft noted claim has been that what is needed is “better smarter regulation.” As if that will somehow so fundamentally change the market structure so that risk will not be taken and occasionally those risk takers will overreach. Economic and social management cannot be done by “being smarter” as the complexity the problem means it is intractable. The only solution is to yield control. The setting of policy has to be done by the millions not by the hundreds of experts. Individually those experts may be nominally smarter than a great majority (but likely not all) of the millions for whom their decisions are replacing. But the complexity of modern society means the problems and issues cannot be comprehended by any single or group of experts no matter how smart they are.
What is not needed is an Executive who believes he can either by himself or a counciliar consensus of “experts” figure out the “solution” to the problems that will face him. This is exactly the opposite of what we need. We don’t need a smart leader who thinks (or knows) he’s smart and is seeking an inteligent solution. We need a wise leader who knows he isn’t smart and the best he can do is to suggest a direction and perceptive enough to notice which of us have figured out a “better way” and pass the word.
Filed under: Democrats • Mark O. • Politics
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I know what you’re trying to say, and I agree… except on one point.
I think we do need a chief executive with the integrity to PROSECUTE and JAIL those in both the public and private sector who break the law. I’m especially angered at the unaccountability of those in government who do lethal damage to, and subvert, the “dynamics” of the constitutional system. George Washington warned of it in his Farewell Address. This is intentional on the part of Democrats, but spinesless Republicans let them get away with it because they are unconcerned with princples, engaged in “bipartisan” handshaking, looking the other way in order to not rock the boat, “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”, pandering to special interests, or just plain old corruption. Meanwhile, the marxist subversives got away with national murder.
Why isn’t Sarbanes-Oxley being applied to that Gorelick witch, on whose watch the accountants at Fannie Mae were happily cooking the books? She ought to be in prison for what she did at the Dept. Of Justice!
Who will hold Rangel accountable for tax evasion? Of all people, he chairs the committee that writes the tax laws! He should get double the sentence of the usual tax evader.
Who is ultimately responsible for perverting the regulatory focus away from the application of solid economic, financing and credit principles to promoting their “social engineering” schemes?
Personally, I think that Jefferson was 100% correct when he argued for the independence of all three branches of government: quoting from http://www.answers.com/judicial-review:
If there was a strong principled Executive, coupled with an original constructionist Supreme Court, the sedition of these socialist Democrats could be checked right there in Washington. But where are those kind of people? Terrified of being crucified by a venomous lying media.
Even if they were willing to run for office, We the People are too dumbed down to elect them.
Maybe I’ll change my mind if Palin can carry McCain across the finish line. But even that comes at the high cost of another Amnesty boondoggle. Clinton may have been our first “black” president, but McCain may be our first “latino” president. Obama, well he might well be our first Caliph, presiding over the New Politburo.
We are in deep trouble.
Aaaahhh! Run for your life!
Latinos, Caliphs and negros! Oh, my!