… each of these questions, like the larger point made here, applies not only to proposals for complete, economy-wide central planning of the sort that was fashionable during the mid-20th century. These questions apply to any proposal for government direction of economic affairs, however ‘partial’ it might be (or seem to be).
We can all agree, for example, that economic equality is fine thing – but do we count only monetary income as relevant for assessing equality, or do we count monetary income plus monetary wealth? What about the value of voluntarily chosen leisure: does it count? if not, why not? if so, how is it weighed against monetary income or wealth? And even if we all agree upon just what sources of utility do and don’t count as relevant for assessing economic equality, and agree also on the weights of the various sources of utility for making this assessment, how is the goal of economic equality itself to be traded off against competing goals – such as economic growth, or environmental sustainability (however that might be defined!)?
The previous paragraph gives only one small example of a huge problem that confronts those who believe that entrusting the state with the power to engineer economic outcomes is really just a matter of science, of empirically discovering the allegedly objective costs and benefits of various economic arrangements and then choosing that particular arrangement that best satisfies society’s object preferences.
The very notion that there is an objective ‘best’ arrangement of economic affairs that can be discovered independently of actual market processes and then imposed by the state to improve everyone’s, or most everyone’s, well-being is, truly, a fatal conceit.
Don Boudreaux, “Quotation of the Day…”, Café Hayek, 2016-09-03.
July 3, 2018
QotD: The fatal conceit
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