Dear Friends,
It seems to me, an economy is an organic thing, like a horse or a flock of birds, as such it cannot be controlled it can only be ridden. Control is a science and riding is an art. Science can only be applied in a scientific, (controlled) setting. An art can be plied in the real world, where everything is messy, and where “control” is a relative term. This is one of the fundamental reasons communism and socialism cannot work with human beings. Socialism and communism require an economy to be controlled. An economy cannot be controlled. Whenever someone tries, the economy explodes, destroying lives, fortunes and families.
The economy of even a tiny nation or city state, is far too complex to be tightly controlled, and if control is attempted, a long tailed event always occurs, destroying the economy. The random inputs to even a small fruit business are too many to be controlled. A small business person will tell you that he or she does everything possible to control costs, monitor employees and maintain quality, while satisfying the customer, but that it is impossible to control everything. That is where intuition and experience come in, a business cannot be controlled it must be managed, or in other terms, ridden.
Riding a horse is an art, as is, managing a business, herding cattle, painting a picture and running a government. What do arts have in common? All these endeavors seek only a portion of control. They take elements that are disparate, and keep just enough dominance over them that those elements work together, but not so much it breaks the system. If a cowboy tried to control every single cow, the herd would immediately scatter, if the rider tried to control the placement of the horse’s feet, the horse would quickly fall, if a manager tried to micro manage every action of every employee, the business would rapidly fail, an art requires domination of that which can be mastered and accepting that those elements that cannot be mastered will look after themselves. Only those things that can be completely manipulated with absolute mastery over every input and reaction can be controlled, everything else must be ridden.
To control something one must have a way to control any unforeseen exigency. In a complex system control is impossible because there is no way to have a mechanism in place to deal with any possible emergency. The universe of potential emergencies are too vast to be thought of let alone controlled for. Only when someone has total power over every facet of a system, process or reaction, can he or she be said to control it, and even that level of control is subject to God’s laws. In fact that is the scientific method. It is the way scientists have gleaned out the nuances of God’s laws in Physics, Mathematics, and Chemistry… Economics, sociology, psychology and even history are pseudo sciences and while subject to God’s laws they escape humanity’s grasp due to their complexity.
A pseudo science is a field of study that approximates a science but in fact is an art. History for example is written by the victors and as such cannot be a perfect illustration of the facts. A Periodic Table of the Elements would not be science if large portions of it said, “Dragons be made of this…” It would not be chemistry it would be alchemy. Chemistry is a science where alchemy is mere pseudo science. Economics cannot be a science in the true sense until sociology, psychology and a whole slew of other pseudo sciences become real sciences, because economics depends on them for many of it’s theories and assumptions, if an assumption is that “dragons be made of this,” then it is not scientific. Someday, economics may become a science but until then, it is only a pseudo science approximating science.
And so, if all the inputs, the wants, reactions, fears, hopes, desires, knowledge, work ethic, illness, cheating husbands and wives, etc… for every human being in existence cannot be controlled, an economy cannot be controlled. What is the next best thing then, if we don’t want a chaotic economy that doesn’t do what we want it to? To ride it, control what we can and accept that which we cannot, set the parameters and incentives such that most of the economic actors stay in the herd, go after the strays and bring them back into the fold, establish standards, eliminate micro managing regulations, and accept the truth that total control of the economy or in other words, the planned economy, is impossible. Only when we give up trying to control our economies and instead ride them, can we have better functioning economies that do what we all want them to do, create widespread prosperity, keep our nation’s militarily strong, (to protect that wealth), and provide a rising standard of living to our children and their children.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
