I learned a little something about the origin of my chosen profession, economists. Great debates on the state of French government finances were raging in the wake of France's loss in the
Seven Years War (known better to my fellow Yanks as the French and Indian War). The monarchy conducted a top-down review of the government, and even turned to the menagerie of regional parliaments to ask for their input:
"In 1763, unprecedentedly, it even asked the parlements [sic] to make proposals for economic and fiscal reform-which produced nothing very constructive, unwisely flattered their pretensions, and left them aggrieved when, ignoring their suggestions, ministers turned in preference to the untried theories of a group calling themselves by the new and unfamiliar name of 'Economists'."
Uh oh. And it seems like economic thought has evolved in 230+ years less than we'd like to think:
"Their founder was a royal doctor, Quesnay, who in a number of articles in the Encyclopédie in 1756...argued (in curious parallel to Rousseau) that there existed a natural, benevolent economic order which had been distorted by ill-judged and artificial human intervention. Economic wealth could only be unlocked by removing all unnatural burdens..."
Now this is a
familiar line of argument. Ah, but wait, maybe our thinking has gotten more sophisticated after all:
Paradoxically, the economic freedom preached by the Physiocrats [My Note: Another name for economists] implied a powerful, interventionist role for governments, for only they had the strength to sweep away artificial impediments to the natural economic order. Le Mercier even advocated a sort of despotism[bold mine], which he called legal because its sole purpose would be to bring in the greatest of all laws, that of nature itself.
Before we cringe, echoes of this are still
popular views in a few quarters.
Le plus ça change...
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