Writing for AIER, Don Boudreaux explores here the disastrous phenomenon of childish thinking among our leaders. Name any problem and they have a simple solution that always involves coercion and ignores all trade-offs and underlying complexities.

Inflation is a good illustration. According to our “clerisy” (a term Boudreaux borrows from economic historian Deirdre McCloskey), it’s caused by greed and can be solved by government price controls.

The point I would add to Boudreaux’s analysis is that politicians and intellectuals (most of them, anyway) don’t have to suffer any bad consequences from being wrong. For ordinary people, superficial thinking leads to adverse results. If the owner of a business that’s losing money were to conclude that all he needs to do is increase prices to bring in more revenue, the pain would be felt quickly: still less revenue. And that’s why few business owners do think or act that way; with their own money at stake, they can’t afford to.

But public officials don’t have their own money at risk when they make decisions “in the public interest.” They’re easily swayed by faddish claims and glittering rhetoric. They often make horrible mistakes and then stay with them long after it’s evident that they’ve blundered. Our Covid experience over the last two years is a good illustration.

As government takes over more and more decision-making that used to be done by individuals and firms, we get more and more lousy decisions. To get out of the mess we’re in, we need to begin scaling back the scope of the state.