40410b0446f86f380edacf20_pa662c.jpg

Intelligent Economic Design

America is poised for another debate over whether its economy evolves or is designed, with Barack Obama’s opponents claiming that everything good in America’s economy has always evolved with no guidance, and that everything bad has been designed by government. If they win, America – and the world – will lose.

BERKELEY – As Stephen Cohen, with whom I wrote The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money, likes to say, economies do not evolve; they are, rather, intelligently designed. He also likes to say that, though there is an intelligence behind their design, this does not mean that the design is in any sense wise.

The first claim is, I think, incontrovertible. Since long before Croesus, King of Lydia, came up with the game-changing idea of standardized “coinage,” what governments have done and not done to structure, nudge, and put their thumbs on the scales has been decisively important for economic development.

Just look around you. Notice the hundred-fold divergence across political jurisdictions in relative levels of economic productivity and prosperity? I dare anyone to claim that the overwhelming bulk of that disparity springs from causes other than history and the current state of governance.

https://prosyn.org/hdB8q3r