The Intellectual Complex

Via Instapundit I find Stating the Obvious, which in five sentences fleshes out a point I made earlier this week reminding individuals who crave government influence in the marketplace that “if the 20th century taught us anything it is that concentrating power in the State and centrally planning economies is an EPIC FAIL:”

[S]tatism slows productivity growth, and in the end productivity growth is more important than anything else (GDP is just population x productivity). You’re about ten times better off being in the lowest quartile of the rich, unequal United States than a median forcibly equalized Cuban or North Korean, and the poorest U.S. state has a higher PPP GDP per capita than most of the Western European social democracies.

Eastern Europe and Asia are still recovering from their wasted 50 years chasing coercive equality at the expense of growth. China’s rise to relevance was powered by free market reforms that produced growth. The Arab socialist dictatorships haven’t done much better than the communists.

In short, relatively free economies are more prosperous – which is fundamentally good for societies, see above – than relatively planned economies. Yet, if political party affiliation is any indication, an overwhelming majority of the illiterati intelligentsia in American universities is antipathetic to free economic systems, preferring instead some measure (and many cases, a great measure) of government intervention and/or planning in the marketplace. For instance, law professor-turned-Obama-Czar Cass Sunstein so strongly believes in government that he would prefer government skepticism be centrally planned. In any event, assume for the purposes of this post that a majority of “intellectuals” categorically reject the premise of free markets in favor of government intervention and planning, that we may discuss why they do so.

In this video F.A. Hayek charitably offers the following to explain the broad source of American intelligentsia’s hostility towards free markets:

Intellectuals in most instances have a deeply ingrained intellectual attitude which forces them to disapprove of something which seems to them unintelligible and to prefer something which is visibly directed to a good purpose.

Essentially Hayek is saying that intellectuals “disapprove” of free markets because they are unable to grasp, analyze, compute, or measure the entirety of the economy, or even a single marketplace. Relying on a seemingly incomprehensible system simply doesn’t jive with the scientific method, and therefore intellectuals categorically reject free markets in favor of government measures “visibly directed to a good purpose.” In short, since intellectuals cannot understand free markets in their desired fashion they prefer government measures they believe they understand, Parmenides Fallacy (not to mention unintended consequences) be damned. Hayek would have enjoyed South Park’s Margaritaville episode, which mocks, in part, the idea that simply because the economy is a vitally important, but tangibly elusive entity, common fiscal sense should give way to (ultimately) central planning, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

I come to a different conclusion, however, than Hayek regarding intellectual hostility to free markets.  Hayek’s explanation forgets that there are many tangible entities and ideas intellectuals fail to completely understand, yet do not categorically reject (and, indeed, accept as Gospel). For instance, the big bang.

It is not a lack of understanding of, or a lack of capacity to understand, every microcosm of free markets that drives a large portion of intellectuals to categorically reject them in favor of central planning. Let me repeat: intellectuals’ antipathy towards free markets does not derive from the inability to completely understand free markets. Rather, it stems from the fact that the success of free markets does not require intellectuals’ input, approval, or understanding. Nor does understanding free markets require intellectuals’ purportedly heightened level of intelligence.

Ockham’s Razor, alone, explains why a particular free marketplace (such as the relatively unencumbered laser eye surgery market) is more successful than similar but restricted marketplaces. That free markets succeed without intellectual analysis, approval, and input fundamentally galls, or bores, them. And intellectuals hate that. By contrast, nuclear fission requires an academic, precise understanding of physics that, truly, only scientists, themselves intellectuals, can attain. There’s more, however, to the complex that precludes what appears to be a majority of intellectuals from proponing the economic obvious.

Intellectuals particularly enjoy having (a) something to write about, (b) a domestic field or industry to influence, and (c) a lower caste to juxtapose their (assumed) superior intellect. As such, believing in the big bang theory is intellectually perfect. There is a lot to write about the big bang, and doing so will directly influence a number of academic fields and industries. And perhaps most importantly, at least a third of the United States denies the big bang theory in favor of creationism, which permits intellectuals to snob NASCAR fans, broadly speaking.

By contrast, believing in free market economics does almost nothing for intellectuals. Sure there’s lots to write about free markets, and your research might influence any number of individuals (and perhaps centrally planned nation states. But a large proportion of Americans, including hordes of creationists non-intellectuals, already understand, at least in practice, that free markets produce more economic prosperity and opportunity than planned or regulated markets. As a result, believing in the efficacy of free markets puts intellectuals in the same ark boat as the untouchable caste they normally distinguish themselves from. Since no true Scotsman intellectual would stand for that, intellectuals categorically reject the efficacy of free markets.

After all, the real intellectual challenge lies in swimming upstream. And there’s no upstream swim like that against a current of historical precedent (see above, again) and established economic facts. As such, intellectuals rise to the challenge of convincing their students the rest of us that a centrally planned socialist-democracy is economically preferable to the individual liberty and robust economic prosperity free markets produce. Intellectuals adore the irony that beating back history and economic fact requires their allegedly heightened cognitive abilities. Put more bluntly, cogently reaching such dumb economic conclusions requires tremendous intellectual capacity.

Now, there are compelling moral and philosophical arguments for a great measure of social justice. Yet, intellectuals do not frame discussion of social justice as how to best, economically speaking, go about achieving social justice. The intellectual war drum beats only for more government. There is precious little intellectual debate as to whether a better system than public schools exists, in spite of the fact that private, charter, and home-schools consistently outperform the public system (while public schools appear to serve their employees better than their students). Nor do intellectuals contemplate providing national access to health through system more akin to Shriners Hospitals than the Veterans Administration. The debate is over. There is a consensus. And it is more government.

Intellectuals crave government intervention in the marketplace because its presence provides a forum for intellectuals’ otherwise unnecessary economic theories, gives intellectuals control of other individuals and industries, and distinguishes their caste from the untouchables they now control. This is the root of intellectuals’ hostility to free markets, and corresponding love affair with centrally planned economies.

Socio-Political