Economists’ talk of public good actually means protection of their own professional interests.

Evidence

It should now become apparent that the way in which these deep conceptual commitments get translated into public advocacy helps ward off brickbats hurled by those offended by the role of economists in the crisis. Economists, the prophets of incentives, quite logically respond to their own incentives to service their various constituencies, and as they never cease to insist, life is nothing but a sequence of trade-offs. Whenever they make reference to the “public good” or “general welfare” in the course of their endeavors, they frequently mean nothing more than the brute fact of caveat emptor. Thus, when some rude outsider—say, Charles Ferguson in Inside Job—gets all steamed up about “conflicts of interest” while uncovering their prognostications, they react in a way resembling the Harvard economist John Campbell in the film; insiders are nonplussed, really at a loss to see what all the fuss is about. (There is also the barely disguised sneer: stop your cheap rabble-rousing and riling up the groundlings. We are Harvard.) There will be no perfervid eleventh-hour conversions, no dark nights of repentance, no rending of garments and gnashing of teeth for the economics profession. And this, in turn, fortifies their inclinations to mount a united front to mollify the greater public already familiar with Freakonomic insouciance, no matter what their personal politics might be. There has materialized no better way to face up to the rebuke of the crash. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 608

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Hayek’s ‘scientism’ critique and the broader Mirowski thesis about the economics profession resisting reform. — connects to: Public-choice logic applied to economists themselves reveals built-in incentives toward rent-seeking theories. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 597; Industries justify harmful practices by framing self-interest as advancing the common good; Industry self-regulation protects the firms rather than the public. (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Central bank independence doctrine advanced economists’ professional self-interest as much as monetary policy #exemplifies (0.95) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 477
• Public-choice logic applied to economists themselves reveals built-in incentives toward rent-seeking theories. #corroborates (0.92) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 597
• Policy goals created a self-perpetuating scholarly industry justifying itself. #corroborates (0.85) — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 153
• Industries justify harmful practices by framing self-interest as advancing the common good #corroborates (0.80)
• Liberal common-good theory rationalizes reckless private interest #corroborates (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 797
• Industry self-regulation protects the firms rather than the public. #corroborates (0.75)
• Neoclassical economists deliberately framed economics as an exact science to gain authority. #complicates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 209