How is an economist indoctrinated?
John Cassidy (2009, How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities) tells of his own education and how he was indoctrinated. He has remained true to his liberal faith, of course, and would not agree today that he was indoctrinated, although he himself describes the process. “When I began studying economics at Oxford during the early eighties, Hayek was widely seen as a right-wing nut. True, he had received the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1974,” but Cassidy “made it all the way through undergraduate and graduate school without reading any of his articles or books, and I wasn’t unusual. Until recently, few economics textbooks mentioned Hayek’s name, and there was no scholarly biography of him available.”
I received the same kind of indoctrination in college with Professors simply demeaning opposing names, intellectual movements and ideas without analyzing or explaining systematically and simply ignoring inconvenient evidence and facts. If you found there ideas lacking in credibility,it was simply because you were stupid and unsophisticated. In those days, however, the goat was not Friedrich Hayek, but Milton Friedman, whom my fellow graduate students referred to as “Uncle Milty.” Since Friedman was working very effectively in a compelling field, monetary economics, Keynesians could only mock for so long. Friedman ultimately was the leader of a rather revolutionary movement. Other conservative groups in economics, public choice scholars and the so-called Austrian school, for example, ultimately broke the Keynesian lock on economic thinking in the United States.
If professors are biased, whom can you trust?
It is crystal clear that nobody is completely without bias. But all biases are not equal. One cannot accuse conservatives of having being indoctrinated while in school or in college, since the academy as a whole is basically quite solidly liberal or progressive. In my view, the description of “socialist” may be just as appropriate today. So how can you trust someone with strong convictions if they have simply been indoctrinated or have lost the capacity to judge objectively?
I have a suggestion for this problem. It is more prudent to pay attention to the people who were democrats and who can give you good reasons why they actually traded the ideology for a market-
oriented philosophy of economics. There are not many of such people, but I know one such individual who, incidentally, was the author of my book, Socialism. Actually, I would hope that people would be willing to consider with an open mind the powerful verities I have revealed in my book. There, I lay out the reasons why I left the political faith I grew up with and actually began to worry about the implications of a society that might follow Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, and other socialists.
I did not adopt a political ideology in lieu of religion. I actually grew up with religious beliefs which have become stronger through the years than when I was a schoolboy searching for answers. I mention this only to point out that I do not see my socialistically-oriented brothers and sisters as enemies who are to be hated with the partisan fervor of a CNN or MSNBC. Rather, the Christian scriptures suggest we are to love our fellow men, not excluding those of different religions, those who are obnoxious or unlovable, publicans, pharisees, Red Sox fans, or socialists. The scriptures do not suggest, however, that we may not try to reason with different-thinking individuals, even if they do not reciprocate our positive feelings.