We can’t just leave decisions to the free market, can we? We need experts to tell us what to do instead.
Ludwig von Mises addressed that idea in Chapter XX of Human Action:
[T]he assumption that all entrepreneurs regularly fall
prey to certain errors tacitly implies that all practical men lack
intelligence. It implies that nobody who is engaged in business and
nobody who considers engaging in business if some opportunity is
offered to him by the shortcomings of those already engaged in it, is
shrewd enough to understand the real state of the market. But on the
other hand the theorists, who are not themselves active in the conduct
of affairs and merely philosophize about other people’s actions,
consider themselves smart enough to discover the fallacies leading
astray those doing business. These omniscient professors are never
deluded by the errors which cloud the judgment of everyone else. They
know precisely what is wrong with private enterprise. Their claims to
be invested with dictatorial powers to control business are therefore
fully justified.The most amazing thing about these doctrines is that
they furthermore imply that businessmen, in their littleness of mind,
obstinately cling to their erroneous procedures in spite of the fact
that the scholars have long since unmasked their faults. Although every
textbook explodes them, the businessmen cannot help repeating them.
There is manifestly no means to prevent the recurrence of economic
depression other than to entrust ? in accordance with Plato’s utopian
ideas ? supreme power to the philosophers.
