One of the harmful notions that many Americans accept is that government (politicians and their minions, the bureaucrats) can manage the economy through wise laws to make people do good things and prevent them from doing bad things. It can’t work because politicians and bureaucrats have neither the knowledge nor the right incentives to make better decisions than people who have a direct stake. Having millions of laws and regulations is thus far inferior to our original system of profit and loss backed up by the common law.
Political scientist James Payne discusses the belief in government economic management in depth in this Freeman article today.
