On the Eternal Return of Economic Controversies

Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of attending a conversation featuring Micah Watson of Calvin University and Samuel Gregg of the American Institute for Economic Research on ‘Nations, Markets, Families, and the Challenge of China’. The event was put on by the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal and co-sponsored by the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity & Politics. It was hosted at Calvin University’s Prince Conference Center.

The subject of the conversation was grounded in Gregg’s most recent book The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World. Definitions and economic analysis of state capitalism and the market economy were at the center of a conversation that unfolded through economic theory, economic history, international geopolitics, American politics, and ideological contests within the American conservative movement. As fitting a Kirk on Campus event, the ideas took center stage.

During the conversation I was struck by how frequently both the history of economic thought and economic history loomed over the conversation.

Gregg observed that there seems to be an eternal recurrence of these debates at the level of theory and politics despite a rather clear historical record favoring markets. This is explained partly, he observed, by just how counterintuitive the insights of economists can be. This is why education in economics is so essential to material human progress and the advancement of human freedom.

The battle of ideas is conducted on the field of rhetoric.

As Lane Green in Writing with Style: The Economist Guide so brilliantly states:

“People like and trust things they can easily understand.”