‘The Infallible Dicta of the Holy Mother Church of Political Popery’

Abstract

This chapter turns from objections to what economics asserts, to objections about how these assertions are tendered. This chapter turns to the grievance that economics adopts an authoritarian consciousness in dealing with the public; lecturing those who listen, ignoring those who dissent,² and brandishing authority in the face of any who persist in dissent. This chapter turns to the grievance that economics deserves no such authority, and that the public has erred in conceding even a partial authority. In the minds of this criticism economics should forgo its presumption of a right to the public’s intellectual allegiance, and ought instead to engage in dialogue and debate with those who disagree (see, for example, Manne 1993).