“Why Are Voters Ignoring Experts?”
That is the question Jean Pisani-Ferry asks at Project Syndicate. In the wake of the Brexit vote there is a veritable chorus of experts and economists asking the same question. One explanation I don’t expect to see very often is that the supposed experts systematically ignore their own critical literature. Hubris.
Professor Pisani-Ferry inadvertently presents an example when he suggests that economists should “move beyond the (generally correct) observation” that “if a policy decision leads to aggregate gains, losers can in principle be compensated.” This is not a “generally correct” observation. It is, in the words of I. M. D. Little “unacceptable nonsense.”
This “compensation principle” — also known as the Kaldor-Hicks criterion — has been thoroughly refuted. I have documented the embarrassing career of this supposed principle in several posts over the last two years at EconoSpeak. Here are links to four of those posts:
Public Works, Economic Stabilization and Cost-Benefit Sophistry
#NUM!éraire, Shmoo-méraire: Nature doesn’t truck and barter
For the Euthanasia of Kaldor-Hicks/Cost-Benefit Pseudo-Science
Cost-benefit analysis as “unacceptable nonsense”
Opposed to the critical literature is simply a game of make believe. Let’s pretend those fatal criticisms don’t exist or that we didn’t see them or that they’re not all that important or that we can continue to use the fundamentally flawed criterion “until something better comes along.” This is not good enough. For a single economist to not know about the invalidity of the compensation principle would be malpractice. For the professional consensus to tolerate and even promote such malpractice is malfeasance.
People ignore experts because the experts have been systematically misleading them about what the benefits of policies are likely to be.
Sorry, but Brexit was well well polled. There were 3 million registered voters who were mainly “remain” that didn’t vote as expected. AKA, turnout was lower than expected. It wasn’t that impressive frankly.
The experts weren’t ignored at all nor were they wrong. Maybe you need to stop over analyzing and move on. The media keeps on trying to create stories. Maybe it is time to destroy the media.
Except, Rage, you are arguing against nothing I wrote. I didn’t say that the experts were wrong about Brexit and I wasn’t the one raising the question about why the experts were ignored. I was addressing the hand-wringing about voters ignoring experts.
One of the worst aspects of polemic is when polemicists argue against opponents whose actual views they don’t have the courtesy to acknowledge.
Seems to me the experts selling “remain” were selling what is best for the banking community.
The experts selling “leave” we fallaciously equated to Trump.
When the experts berate for your ineptitude in not being a bankster……..
Sandwich
“can in principle be compensated”
wrong because they can’t in principle?
or because they aren’t in reality?
and if they are compensated what becomes of the comparative advantage?
as for that, what becomes of the metalurgical engineers whose jobs are outsourced to china? do they become rice farmers? and what becomes of the industrial capacity, not to say know how, of a once great nation?
(i knew a former government head of “strategic materials” he observed that for all the book knowledge of engineers , every foundry had an “old polack” who knew just when to start the pour. something the college boys didn’t know. what are we going to do when all the old polacks are gone?)
Wrong because they can’t always in principle be compensated, let alone in reality. If policies enrich one group at the expense of another group a different set of productive capacities are brought into play and the outputs cannot simply be “redistributed.” Once it has been manufactured, a Lamborghini cannot “in principle” be redistributed as ten Hondas.