Obamacare’s Jonathan Gruber and the Superhero Oath

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Obamacare’s Jonathan Gruber and the Superhero Oath

 

NOVEMBER 22, 2014Gary Galles

TAGS HealthInterventionism

Economic analysis is a powerful tool. But while powerful, it is also amoral; not inherently moral or immoral. Whatever you want to accomplish, applying accurate economic analysis to the issues can help you do it better. If the purpose is good, you can achieve more of it; however, if the purpose is to impose harm, you can achieve more of that as well.

“The Best Buyable Minds”

 

Those two points must be made or remembered in every economics course, from principles onward. In fact, I have taken to following up my discussion of these issues in my classes by telling students they must sign a “superhero oath” on their final exam — they must promise to only use their new skills to do good. In particular, they cannot use them to become part of the political process that Henry Hazlitt described in the first paragraph of Economics in One Lesson:

 

While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The group that would benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue for them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible.