Also, the self-interest argument proves far too much. Consider:
Second of all, there is the obvious problem of self-interest. Central economic planning like in the Soviet Union raises the income and status of economists, and strokes their ego. It lets them work cushy, secure high-paying high-status jobs where they get to do what they enjoy and feel like they are Gods in charge of the economy entirely. They can flatter themselves that they are controlling things and fixing the world while pulling in a nice income doing the work that they like.
Economists were far more supportive of general central economic planning than the evidence ever supported. A lot of very, very smart, talented, sincere economists worked for decades to make communism work, and it was a terrible failure. if self-interest as I described it didn’t play a very important role in motivating economists to support central planning, then...what did, exactly? Not the evidence, that’s for sure.
You’re signalling a ton of confidence about a politically loaded topic and claiming that self-serving bias is keeping a mainstream academic field, of which you are an amateur, from seeing the truth about a central question in their field.
Take the outside view about yourself for a minute.
Anyway, economics in the Soviet Union barely resembled Western economics and Marxian Political Economy really shouldn’t be considered a part of the economic establishment you’re critiquing. To the extent there were talented Soviet economists trying to make an impossibly flawed system succeed is poor evidence of self-interest bias. But that really isn’t the point: the point is that economists generally minimize the roll of policy-making relative to other opinion-makers. You can say they’re just following the evidence in those cases but then you’re getting awfully close to “they’re following the evidence when they agree with me and are biased when they don’t agree with me”.
Also, the self-interest argument proves far too much. Consider:
Economists were far more supportive of general central economic planning than the evidence ever supported. A lot of very, very smart, talented, sincere economists worked for decades to make communism work, and it was a terrible failure. if self-interest as I described it didn’t play a very important role in motivating economists to support central planning, then...what did, exactly? Not the evidence, that’s for sure.
You’re signalling a ton of confidence about a politically loaded topic and claiming that self-serving bias is keeping a mainstream academic field, of which you are an amateur, from seeing the truth about a central question in their field.
Take the outside view about yourself for a minute.
Anyway, economics in the Soviet Union barely resembled Western economics and Marxian Political Economy really shouldn’t be considered a part of the economic establishment you’re critiquing. To the extent there were talented Soviet economists trying to make an impossibly flawed system succeed is poor evidence of self-interest bias. But that really isn’t the point: the point is that economists generally minimize the roll of policy-making relative to other opinion-makers. You can say they’re just following the evidence in those cases but then you’re getting awfully close to “they’re following the evidence when they agree with me and are biased when they don’t agree with me”.