The Sneering Arrogance Of The Lazy Simpletons

As I alluded to over on this EconLog post, economic discussions often reduce to two camps:

• People who think of the economy in a very simplistic (essentailly cartoonish) way, abstracting away all details and likening it to a machine you can control and tune – tweaking dials, pulling levers, opening valves, priming pumps.
• People who don’t, and who instead think the economy is pretty complicated, and details matter.

Now, fine. Two approaches, to each his own, right? But here’s what I find astonishing:

The former group thinks they are Smart and they look down with sneering contempt on the intelligence of the latter group.

This is quite inexplicable. I am at a loss to understand it. Trying to explain this curious role-reversal phenomenon almost belongs neither to economics nor even to the study of politics. I am convinced it belongs to the realm of psychology.

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