What Can be Known

 

             What Can Be Known

But the economy is not a car or boat: there is no helm, there is no wheel to steer it. Benevolent people at the “helm” are not enough to take a better direction, though bad or ignorant people messing with it can take it in a disastrous direction. The economy is more complex than anything a single set of benevolent human beings can steer, if we want to keep the economy rich and the society free. And non-benevolent people, of which sadly there is no shortage at any price, are very willing to use emergencies to seize riches and to crush liberty.--McCloskey

This is McCloskey channeling Hayek. It's an argument of the complexity of groups versus the limits of individuals to assess those complexities. This sounds so reasonable it makes opposition to it sound pathological.

But hubris is not pathological, it is the basis of every human failure from the Old Testament to the ancient Greeks. It is perhaps a flaw, but it is basic to us. 

That we do know.