The State is Wise and the Market is Stupid

George F. Will recently wrote:

In his wise book "Capitalism, Democracy & Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery," John Mueller, an Ohio State political scientist, notes that John Maynard Keynes's central theme, according to his biographer Robert Skidelsky, was that "the state is wise and the market is stupid." Mueller continues: "Working from that sort of perspective, India's top economists for a generation supported policies of regulation and central control that failed abysmally -- leading one of them to lament recently, 'India's misfortune was to have brilliant economists.' " Many of them were educated in Britain, by Keynes's followers. In America today, everyone agrees that the president-elect's economic team is composed of brilliant economists.

I don't know anything about John Mueller, but he is correct in noting John Maynard Keynes' central theme: the state is wise and the market is stupid.

In other words, Keynes operated as though government, politicians, bureaucrats, laws, regulations, favored elites etc. are wise.

And likewise, Keynes believed the market (if you are a producer, that means you) is stupid.

Maybe Keynes was right. Clearly the free market is more productive, efficient, just and stable than any economic order government will ever be associated with engineering and thereby perverting and destroying.

However, someone, working on behalf of "government", has made choices which enable an elite few to pillage the producers. Maybe Keynes was part wrong; "the government" is certainly not wise. Interventionist government is sly, coercive, deceptive and destructive. But Keynes may have been right that the market (that's us) is stupid.

Even if you are one of those persons who know how the game is played, meaning you know how to operate so that you are pillaging your neighbors rather than being pillaged, your knowledge is useless unless you keep playing the game. When you stop pillaging, you are pillaged. Even as you go about your business of accumulating wealth, you participate in a system that can only move closer to destruction. Anyone who knows the truth and remains silent is helping to produce for their children and fellow citizens a legacy of doom and destruction.

I am an ardent supporter of capitalism and wealth. I strongly oppose theft through currency debasement, otherwise known as inflation. I strongly oppose forced income redistribution.

Benchmarking by the ravages of inflation and burgeoning government, we are productive, efficient and stupid.

Not to speak poorly of mules, but we seem to just bear up silently under the load like an old mule.

What happened to men and women of honor?

Where are our leaders?

Why have the citizens of this nation (and many other nations) been silent for nearly one hundred years while our homes, businesses, property and heritage are pillaged and destroyed through the process of inflation?

It makes me angry to think about those questions.