A word of advice

We’re not saying that we agree with this specific critique, even as we hold the general opinion about those who rule us. It’s the next stage in the argument that interests us here:

Having read that lot I despaired, more than a little. How is it that the House of Lords, which is supposed to be a repository of wisdom, seems to know so little on something as important as economics?

As Hayek explained to us all it’s actually impossible for that centre to gain data, let alone process it into information, to be able to plan matters in any detail. We are also not wholly surprised, to put it mildly, that the usual run of PPE graduates are not all that up with the technical details of this and that.

So the idea that a parliamentary report, whether Lords or Commons - or, indeed, any set of deep thinking from the Man in Whitehall - misses a little to much of the necessary understanding doesn’t shock nor surprise us.

Which is why the next stage of the argument is, to us, that those in parliament, Whitehall, should have little and certainly less power over the lives of the rest of us. Simply because they do not grasp the detail.

Where we fail to understand Professor Murphy is in his dual insistence that the rulers don’t kno’ nuttin’ and also that they should have ever greater power and intervene in life to ever greater levels of detail.

Perhaps it’s some special code in academia, even some special insight. But the demand that incompetents and know nothings be given more power strikes us as illogical.