It wasn’t long into the Preface of my new Economics book that I got a little worried. I’m not sure of what to think about “The Economics of a Liberal” as the author of my introduction to Economics. And since Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize, I’m not sure what to think of the whole Nobel Laureate moniker anymore.
ECON2105 was the hardest class I’ve ever taken. To put that in perspective, I LOVED Physics, Computer Science, etc. and done “ok” in Calculus, etc. But here’s why it was so hard for me. I actually had to learn to change my responses on the tests in order to “pass”. Unlike traditional learning where you genuinely understand and believe the right answers to be true, I had to learn a different “way of thinking” to succeed in this class. Some might call it lying to oneself, while other’s would call it doing what is necessary to achieve the desired results. I call it sick.
The Nationalization (or Stateism?) of our banks and heavy manufacturing (automotives like GM and Chrysler) flies in the face of our Market Economy. I learned from the book that when there is a central authority telling people what to produce and where to ship it, picking winners and losers and incentivizing “desired” outcomes, you are not operating in a free market. Watching what has happened with GM, cash for clunkers and knowing my history about the former soviet union and long lines and product scarcity (that really did happen, right?), I guess we’re NOT the free market economy that I grew up believing we were. Oddly enough, I remember my social studies/civics classes in the late 80s being titled, EBFE, which stood for Economics, Business and Free Enterprise. What happened?
IMHO, the banks have been failing over the last quarter century NOT because of fiscal economic policy, but more so as a post-industrial, free market information aggregator response to the lack of value that the banks are providing to the modern prosumer. (But more on that later!)
I wonder what my three kids are learning. I hate to think by the time my daughter is in Highschool (thankfully several years from now) she’ll be learning about how wealth distribution is “Good for Everybody” instead of Smith’s Invisible Hand and the teleological “good of the many”.
I frankly prefer the “unplanned chaos” of a free market economy than the results of any “central planning” committee. Thank GOD for the invisible hand! I had always kind of intuited that being “enterprising” was a good thing, and know I know it to be true. I have even found that I need to re-watch a Beautiful Mind to catch what the protagonist (Russell Crowe) was saying in the beginning at the bar when he’s talking about Smith. BillG always got that. Not many liked him (or his means) but I think in the final analysis he will go down in history as a net benevolent societal and economic benefactor.
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