Saturday, February 5, 2011

False prophets

David Warren sees Marxism/socialism, economics and environmentalism as bad parodies of Biblical religion:
Marxism was an elaborate, and really bad, parody of Christian and Jewish teachings. (To say nothing of idolatrous.)
.... in the latest permutations -- "green" ideologies have been replacing "red"
... Marx, Engels, and all the other luminaries of the left, have persistently cast themselves as prophets, pointing the way to this radiant future.
... At Davos, Switzerland, this week, where the world's most self-regarding prophets were assembled for their annual Pentecostal parody, which they call the World Economic Forum, a session was devoted to discussing why economic forecasts always turn out wrong.
... the Messianic prophecy, that "no man can know the day or the hour" -- nor even the angels -- is not a prediction, but a statement of deep fact. It is the way things are. There are more things in heaven and Earth, than economists can dream of, and there is no model that can begin to incorporate all the "geists."
And yet we have constructed vast bureaucracies, that work on the premise that these forecasts will come true. The sheer idiocy of it, takes one's breath away. Centuries of "the triumph of reason," and it comes to this.
All too true.  Friedrich Hayek called it "the fatal conceit".

Update: Speaking of "the fatal conceit", Hunter (in the comments) recommended this rap video:


3 comments:

hunter said...

Seeing as Keynesian economics was a big flop in this and every other recession (Harper should have known better), you might like this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk

johndoe124 said...

It's actually kind of scary that economists are making excuses for their models and the politicians are giving them credibility. In the meantime, those with privileged access to the politicians, the MSM, are so completely clued out that there is no one taking these imbeciles to task for their self-aggrandizement.

JR said...

Just so. This also applies to climate "models" and why we should be deeply skeptical of them.

I liked that video, Hunter. Who knew you could set economics theory to rap?