Economists and Political Structure

The economics profession is inherently a political one. There is no such thing as a value-free economics, even if many economists would like to pretend to such a value-free social science in the same way that mathematics can be conceived of as a value-free science. But even the practice and respect for mathematics requires a functioning culture which isn’t present in most human societies in most places across most times.

Economics also has a certain political aspect to it that the economics profession tends to want to downplay in favor of the enlightenment narrative of ever-progressing social knowledge that moves from an ignorance-riddled past into a more informed and efficient present.

In real-life practice, economics has never been value-free. The practice has always been implemented under certain philosophical assumptions, which is why the profession is so fractured among incompatible sets of ideology with different fundamental assumptions.

Different governments and economic actors will employ different kinds of economists depending on their political ends. And they will ask those economists to facilitate their ends by either providing technocratic advice or justifying theories. Whether or not those theories correspond to reality as it is will tend to be secondary to whether or not their behavior supports the desired goals of a given government.

So, for the United States, the critical concern that the government might have to bring to economists would be figuring out how to fund the social programs put into place by the FDR and LBJ administrations without upsetting the rest of the apple cart of state. Higher questions about whether or not those programs ought to be in place will usually be off the table of discussion, because the programs are so popular. A great many things which are impossible are highly popular. A great way to end your career in what’s called ‘policy’ is to tell people that something popular that they want isn’t possible.

Under popularity-contest-government, the way to advance an economic doctrine is to come up with convincing sophistic argument for shimmying around public resources to make a fantasy seem like it’s real. Part of this involves creating a popular craze for an impossible doctrine while also telling the people that all they need is to believe in something hard enough and shout loud enough for it to be commanded into being. Presto-chango! Free drugs for everyone! Whenever the magic fails to materialize, the public can always blame heretics, nonbelievers, and saboteurs.

Attempts to argue that the masses should stop demanding impossible achievements from the profession of economics are doomed to fail, as are attempts to make every person into a philosopher-king. It’s hard enough to make one king into a philosopher.