Indeed, willingness to challenge professional economists and other experts is a foundation stone of democracy. If all we have to do is to listen to the experts, what is the point of having democracy?
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The problem is there is no such thing as a viable democracy made up of experts, zealots, politicians and spectators.
What free-market economists are not telling us is that the politics they want to get rid of are none other than those of democracy itself. When they say we need to insulate economic policies from politics, they are in effect advocating the castration of democracy.
Democracy doesn't require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in a while, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are.
Democracy demands trust. It demands that sense of mutual understanding. And - it's a two way street. You've got to give - as much as you take.
Economists create their own worlds. We're like little gods with our artificial economics, wanting to see what happens.
Economists want their discipline to be a science, and they have nailed down a few precepts, but many of their debates are still clouded by ideology.
At the heart of both democracy and capitalism is a simple assumption that, across the board, people make free and relatively rational decisions: that we are, to borrow a medical term, Gillick Competent.
When you cover the economy as a reporter, there's one part of the job that is always easy: finding economists who disagree.
So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy.
Democracy actually requires that the whole public be able to see common problems and address them and step outside of their own sort of narrow self-interest to do so.
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