“The economist must deal with doctrines, and not with men. It is for him to critique errant doctrine; it is not his charge to uncover the personal motives behind heterodoxy. The economist must face his opponents under the fictitious assumption that they are guided by objective considerations alone. It is irrelevant whether the advocate of a false notion acts in good or bad faith; what matters is if the stated notion is true or false.”
–Ludwig von Mises, Memoirs
Follow Circle Bastiat
Yet the ego-driven interventionists cannot possibly comprehend the infinite dynamics captured in the market process and so he or she are bound to error. Arbitrariness is flawed. In other words this method of the ego-driven interventionist is destined to pervert the system of social cooperation regardless of the personal motivations behind their ego-driven interpretations.
Out of the mouth of one of Austrian economics most relentless enemies, namely Paul Krugman, whose Keynesian doctrinal errors are so numerous they perhaps exceed even those of his mentor, Lord Keynes himself, occasionally comes snippets of economic wisdom. His latest column (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/opinion/krugman-prisons-privatization-patronage.html) contains just such snippets when he lambasts New Jersey’s and its governor, Chris Christie, for “privatizing” prison services. Krugman points out:
“But if you think about it even for a minute, you realize that the one thing the companies that make up the prison-industrial complex — companies like Community Education or the private-prison giant Corrections Corporation of America — are definitely not doing is competing in a free market. They are, instead, living off government contracts…Never mind what privatization does or doesn’t do to state budgets; think instead of what it does for both the campaign coffers and the personal finances of politicians and their friends.”
Of course every criticism Krugman levels at privatized government services, which are right on target, could as well be aimed at any other taxpayer-subsidized “private” businesses such as Solindra, Monsanto, G.M., most corn, sugar, and dairy farmers, etc., etc., etc., and so on ad infinitum. Any person or entity receiving–directly or indirectly–government funding is not private in the sense of as opposed to public or government. There is nothing free or free market about such consumers of OPM (sounds like opium, is equally addicting, stands for other people’s money). The operators of “private” companies receiving OPM are just another bunch of parasites, like their bureaucratic brethren, but posing as honest businessmen while their IRS agent/thugs are engaged in taking the fruits of their neighbors’ labors by force.
Sadly, the move to privatize government services as a way of saving taxpayers money may have originated and certainly has been promoted by some libertarians. While they may have been well meaning, they were woefully short sighted. They should have known that doing business with the devil (government) inevitably results in birthing Satan’s evil spawn.