Letter from the Editor

Only you can prevent inefficiencies in your life. Also forest fires. That's on you too, apparently.

By: Kelly Bowers -- Editor in Chief

     In this issue, you’ll read about a young woman who recommends hunting for sustenance. You’ll hear from a gentleman who, having lived in the technocracy of England, defends the choices of Capitalism. And, if you didn’t skip the front page, you know that there are students and faculty who long for the liberal arts education that once built a classical intellectual foundation – and indeed the foundation of the West (if you did skip the front page, please reconsider your unfortunate, hasty decision!).
     Outside of these pages, however, there are people who dismiss outdoorsmen as uneducated, bands of young people across the nation “occupying” metropolitan areas to achieve some goal of social design and ownership, academics who view themselves as sacred cows of thought so immersed in absurdly obscure fields they feel smart enough to force every world problem through the limited lenses of that field.
     Now, I don’t mean to suggest that my team of writers are somehow more original than the rest of the world, no. While they are incredibly intelligent and gifted intellectuals, they are simply individuals; individuals who want the freedom to make their own way. They are individuals who are justifiably leery of the alternative.
In contrast, academia surrounds us with professors and peers who promote central planning as policy – almost exclusively.
     For example, I have an economics professor who, though confident in a market system, would have the government provide disincentives to pollution and incentive to “green technology.” The latter was the goal behind the Solyndra loans and we all know how that turned out.
     Of course, the ultimate failure of government investment in Solyndra is only one part of the problem and arguably it wasn’t even the biggest slice of that pie.
     By all accounts, this professor is a highly intelligent man (some of these accounts are his own but that doesn’t make it any less true). He isn’t necessarily wrong – government intervention could affect pollution and green technology.
      His logic behind it is exceptionally sound, intellectually and economically (in that depressingly Keynesian way). The goals of the environmentally concerned economist may in part be achieved by giving money to “green” companies and taking it (via taxation) from…ummm… “brown” ones.
     Indeed many people ivtn favor of central planning happen to be quite intelligent. One would hope that the government agents and bureaucrats chosen to execute this planning are also intelligent. That isn’t the point. The point is that any action has so many unforeseeable reactions. As F. A. Hayek put it, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” I quote Hayek for several reasons. First, as a catty attempt to mimic Dorian Electra (seriously, go to YouTube and run a search for “Roll with the Flow;” she’s adorable – how’s a girl supposed to compete!?!). Secondly – and I swear there’s a point here – is to explain that government intervention, economic or otherwise, is wildly inefficient. There may be an infinite number of variables
     As Miss Electra’s buddy Frédéric Bastiat believed “a bad economist looks only at the obvious” (her words). Even the best economist can only dream up a handful of scenarios (and the trendy economists are too busy looking for a correlation between school teachers and sumo wrestlers, and really, who can blame them?). The same is true for scientists who can only dream up a handful of scenarios – all within the realm of their particular field – and don’t have the training to consider political ramifications. Or for politicians who won’t consider economic and scientific causes and effects. And not a damn one of those experts knows how to give every member of the population the solution that benefits them.
     These people are smart and they do mean well, but they can’t micromanage the world.
The economy is basically an ecosystem – an incredibly complex ecosystem with different creatures of varying thoughts, hopes, dreams, or – for the economists in the world – units of utility are achieved and earned in an absurd number of different ways.
     Hayek, in his final book, called this principle the “fatal conceit” (indeed, this moniker was the title of said book). He argued that private property – and as an extension capitalism and free trade – were the basis to modern civilization. Socialism is the deviation from this foundation and, as he proposed, fatally flawed. Any attempt by a social planner to actively organize a society disrupts the order that naturally occurs by letting players in the economy make their own choices with respect to their assets.
     The desire of intelligent men to step into a problem and fix it in a way that seems absolute and infallible to him has existed as long as intelligent men have. It is one of the main arguments in Plato’s The Republic. Plato’s solution to protect citizens from tyrants is to install a morally incorruptible “philosopher king.” Leave it to a philosopher to assume a philosopher would not be tempted by power. It has been suggested that this philosophical stance inspired minds like Hitler and Stalin.
     Even without jumping to Godwidian extremes, the fatal conceit of philosopher kings is apparent. By arguing that philosopher-kings are better than the average citizen, Plato reveals that he believes them to be inherently different. Let’s give Plato the benefit of the doubt here, and take that difference for granted. How could we assume these social planners would have the same goals and visions for their society?
The assumptions of this conceit occur even today. Politicians, commentators, economists, world leaders, environmentalists, policy makers and academics all think they know how to solve the problem they thing is the greatest.  They are convinced they know better than laymen and experts who choose to focus on a different field. Even if they were somehow able to account for every single variable – even those outside their expertise – would their vision of America match yours? Your parents? Your neighbor? Your friends? A mother in Kentucky? A dog breeder in New York? How about their parents, neighbors, friends?
     There are individuals who derive sexual pleasure from pain, men and women who dislike chocolate, and people who can afford BMWs buy Toyotas. Who can say they are “wrong?” Applying a “correct” answer to an even broader group of people is an even broader mistake.
     I know what I want for my life, I know how to achieve it, and I’ll work hard to do so. Out of respect for you, I’ll stay the hell out of your way while you discover or execute your plans. Shouldn’t a government comprised of men you’ve never met do the same?


Kelly Bowers is a fourth-year economics major. She can be reached at thebruinstandard@gmail.com