Dumb Smarts

Intellectuals just don't understand:

Many of them fail to understand the nature of capitalism as an economic order that emerges and grows spontaneously. Unlike socialism, capitalism isn’t a school of thought imposed on reality; free-market capitalism largely evolves spontaneously, growing from the bottom up rather than being decreed from above. Capitalism has grown historically, in much the same way as languages have developed over time as the result of spontaneous and uncontrolled processes. Esperanto, invented in 1887 as a planned language, has now been around for over 130 years without gaining anything like the global acceptance its inventors were hoping for. Socialism shares some of the characteristics of a planned language in that it is a system devised by intellectuals. Once we’ve grasped this essential difference between capitalism, as a spontaneously evolving order, and socialism, as a theoretical construct, the reasons why many intellectuals have a greater affinity for socialism – in whatever form – suddenly become obvious. Since their own livelihood depends on their ability to think and communicate ideas, they feel more in tune with an artificially planned and constructed economic order than with one that allows for unplanned, spontaneous development. The notion that economies work better without active intervention and planning is alien to many intellectuals.

Maybe they need to spend more time on planet Earth...