from Cafe Hayek, First Day of Class by Don Boudreaux:

I add here only a summary of my teaching goal: It is to make my students aware that society in general, and the economy in particular, is far more complex than most professors, pundits, proselytizers, politicians, preachers, and popes typically assert it to be, and that this complexity is handled with surprising, if not nirvana-producing, success by the decentralized forces of the competitive market.  I aim both to inspire in my students awe that Manhattan gets fed daily and that pencils exist in abundance, and to help them understand just how and why their world is filled with such marvels – and, I add further, also to put my students on guard against the many errors typically committed by those who, ignoring the market economy’s incomprehensible complexity, insist too cavalierly that government intervention promises improvement

 

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