Why Elitists Fail

We expect those in government to know how to get things done. They need to understand organizational and political behavior, effective administration, and how to comply with the law.

We do not expect or want elitists and moral supremacists who believe that they know so much more about justice, the market, and how we should live. In his recent book Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell explains how the "anointed" believe that their advanced education and depth of knowledge in one field automatically makes them an authority on any field in which they wield an opinion. Thus Noam Chomsky, a noted scholar in linguistics, has written dozens of books condemning America's and Israel's foreign policy with only the illusion of authority.

Chomsky...has written dozens of books

Nitpicky off-topic point, but Chomsky hasn't written dozens of books. He's written a couple, and the rest are basically compilations of his articles with little new material.

The Obama Administration is like a pack of Business Consultants called in to help out a comapany. But not one of the consultants have ever worked in the industry.
They know the bottom line is bad so using the cookie cutter approach, what works for say a computer company should be good for a paper company.
The end result is a very screwed up company (country).

One reason elitists fail is because to the extent they impose policies that destroy free exchange, they are precluding mutually beneficial and voluntary transactions for coerced ones based on non-economic means. When coupled with the false Keynesian theory that spending by government is just as beneficial as spending by private citizens, then any government program is just as good as any other efforts to increase prosperity.

In short, elites cannot compute, that is they cannot allocate always-finite resources that society needs to function. Worse, as their misallocation schemes begin to fail, their only solution is even more misallocation. Thus we have government attempts to “fix” a health care system that is costly mainly because of the mess that government already has made of it. Their solution? To seize control, micromanage and threaten to imprison people who decline to buy the only plan they will offer.

In the end elites, especially those who are quick to scold us that “violence never solves anything”, must resort to using the coercive powers of government to force everyone to comply with their cherished solutions.

I sold retail hardware for almost 20 years. A big part of my job was advising customers what they would need for a job, and how to use it. The most hopelessly inept, all thumbs people wern't the guys in the bubba trucks, they were the doctors, lawyers and college professors. Most of them, outside their field, were helpless. Many of them were so arrogant that they refused advice and screwed up what they were trying to do.

It takes smarts and knowledge to be a good plumber, a carpenter or electrician. A mechanic needs to understand basic physics and sometimes chemistry. A good welder is an authority on metal alloys. While they are learning these basics a lot of collateral knowledge gets aboard as well.

I've never believed that the "elites" are neccessarily smarter, many of them are just more greedy and ruthless. They lust for power while most of us would just rather grow good tomatos.

We are fools if we allow them to control everything, some of them can't change a lightbulb.

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