… writing for the layperson is an important task that economists must undertake. Unlike experts in the natural sciences, who can apply their knowledge without soliciting the understanding and sympathy of the general citizenry, experts in the field of economics must educate the public. We can have market solutions to economic problems only if the participants in our political process can see through the fallacies of socialism and interventionism and accept the outcome of the market process.

In fact, the US healthcare system has endured substantial government intervention — albeit intervention of a different variety than that of Europe or Canada. And the areas in which the government has intervened in the market have seen substantial increases to costs for consumers. None of the causes of higher prices identified in this essay are adequately addressed by the recently passed healthcare legislation.

You did not ask me why intellectuals are all such pessimists. And my answer is that pessimism gets attention – from funders, from the media, from governments. Also, for reasons I do not fully understand, it sounds wiser than optimism.

So is Obama now prepared to admit that Arizona was right all along? That its complaints about lax federal enforcement were legitimate, and not motivated by racism or hysteria? And that if National Guardsmen can enforce immigration laws without resort to unwarranted racial profiling, so can Arizona law enforcement personnel? Of course not. Obama is just trying to get out from under one more bad decision that has caused him to take a thumping in the polls. It would be nice, though, if he learned a lesson about slandering his fellow Americans.

The answer lies in a new idea, borrowed from economics, known as collective intelligence: the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural change of a population is the amount of interaction between individuals. Even as it explains very old patterns in prehistory, this idea holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead—because ideas are having sex with each other as never before.

Is the new banking bill really as bad as the press is making it out to be? Is Congress really passing a bill that fails to address either of the two problems that caused the financial crisis? I have to assume I am wrong, but I am reading nothing about bans on subprime mortgages, and nothing about reining in F&F. (I don’t have time to read these long bills.) Someone say it ain’t so. Does Congress really believe the crisis was caused by “derivatives,” and not by foolish loans that people couldn’t repay?

At a time when widespread polling data suggests that a majority of the U.S. populace no longer trusts the federal government, a Pew Research Center report has found that the vast majority of the federal government doesn’t trust the U.S. populace all that much either. According to the poll—which surveyed members of the judicial, legislative, and executive branches—9 out of 10 government officials reported feeling “disillusioned” by the populace and claimed to have “completely lost confidence” in the citizenry’s ability to act in the nation’s best interests.