Open Mic May 25

mclever,

I think the rea­son JCP’s new pol­icy is hurt­ing them is that the pub­lic is now cyn­i­cal. They think that this “no sales” and hon­est pric­ing is just a gim­mick that some­how allows them to charge more. I could be wrong, but I sus­pect that’s part of it.

Con­ser­v­a­tives have been push­ing this idea that no one is “smart enough” to know how much stim­u­lus to inject into the econ­omy dur­ing slow times, or how much to rein in spend­ing dur­ing boom times. I remem­ber on the old 538, a cer­tain BdP used to claim that libruls “wor­shiped” those Very Smart Peo­ple whom we want to put in charge of our econ­omy. Lately, this has mor­phed into the idea that no one is really “smarter than” the “invis­i­ble hand of the Market.”

I’ve fig­ured out how to describe what really both­ers me about this silly argu­ment. The idea that no one is “smart enough” is an argu­ment against doing any­thing, ever. Who is really “smart enough” to be a doc­tor? Why do you “wor­ship” that Very Smart Sur­geon who’s going to per­form your heart trans­plant? Hell, do you really trust your car to the garage mechanic? Who can pos­si­bly be smart enough to know what pres­sures your brakes are going to be under dur­ing a rain­storm at 80 MPH?

But the sil­li­est one is this idea that no one is “smarter than” the “invis­i­ble hand.” Please. Indi­vid­ual peo­ple can be pretty damn bright. When you put peo­ple together in groups, they can be awfully dumb. Who’s smarter — Stephen Hawk­ing, or a lynch mob? Hell, Stephen King is smarter. Don King is starter. Don Imus is smarter.

Where do we find some­one smarter than the “invis­i­ble hand”? Per­haps in your aver­age third-​​grade class­room. The “invis­i­ble hand” is invis­i­ble because it doesn’t exist. It’s not a per­son. It’s not a thing. Being a not-​​a-​​thing, any­one is smarter, by def­i­n­i­tion. I’m smarter than my pet rock. The pet rock is not a per­son, either.

At best, the “invis­i­ble hand” is the col­lec­tive action of a bunch of peo­ple who are act­ing in their own nar­row self-​​interest — and that is, in fact, how Adam Smith described it, and he came up with the idea. A bunch of peo­ple each act­ing in his or her own nar­row self-​​interest sounds more like a group­think lynch mob than any sort of exam­ple of bril­liant ratio­nal ana­lyt­i­cal process. Group­think lynch mobs are pretty dumb.

The nice thing about the “invis­i­ble hand” the­ory is that it gives you per­mis­sion to do what­ever you want, act in your own self-​​interest with­out regard to any­one else, and raise self­ish­ness to the sta­tus of a Grand Eco­nomic Theory.

This “who can pos­si­bly be smarter than the Invis­i­ble Hand?” idea is yet another attack on edu­ca­tion, a slap in the face to those who devote their lives to some­thing more com­plex than pizza and beer and Amer­i­can Idol. Con­ser­v­a­tives and Repub­li­cans have been on the warpath against ratio­nal­ity and learn­ing for a long time. We should have a Reg­u­lar Guy in the White House — you know, like a cow­boy who clears brush and says “newkewler” for “nuclear”. That turned out well, didn’t it? San­to­rum reminded us — the idea that Obama wants our chil­dren to go to col­lege — What a snob!

This is just another exam­ple of that. Deny global warm­ing. Teach cre­ation­ism in pub­lic school sci­ence classes. Den­i­grate the value of edu­ca­tion. No one can pos­si­bly be smart enough to out-​​think the myth­i­cal “invis­i­ble hand.” And if any­one was that smart, we’d stone him to death anyway.