We are always chasing the illusory Best and ignoring the usefully Good.

From The Economists Self-Censored and Inflation Is a Result by Jayanta Bhattacharya and Mikko Packalen.  

Philip Tetlock has done interesting and good work on the nature and reliability of "expert" forecasting (and it is poor) and forecasting in general.  The fundamental un-nuanced take away on "experts" is that they aren't.  More specifically, they are full of confident but generic or ambiguous forecasts.  When they accidentally get specific and measurable, they are as bad at forecasting at the public and worse than the informed public.

Covid-19 pandemic has proven to be an interesting test-case.  The government and its experts quickly focused on being seen to be doing something, anything, about the pandemic.  In that pursuit, they ditched much or most of their established pandemic playbook, essentially winging their decisions.  Their decisions ended up being almost consistently wrong at every decision branch.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the chosen policies were far more detrimental to public health and economic performance than was anticipated by the government experts.

Outside of government and universities however, there were some voices that spoke up, generally calling for us to abide by well-established public health protocols and to adhere to the balanced drug approval processes.  Many, if not most, of those voices suffered career and reputational damage from government, mainstream media, and academia.  Despite being right.

Now we have a similar issue.  We had a new administration as of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, which also had major economic, ideological and policy goals to implement in the midst of trying to navigate the response to the pandemic.

The consequence was a raft of spending measures far out of the norm, dramatically increasing the national debt.  By all normal rubrics, increased federal spending, deficit spending, and consumption spending ought to drive up inflation, particularly in the context of the global economic environment.  And there were some saying that that was what would happen.

But, as with Covid, most of the experts in academia bowed to the government messaging, disparaging any concerns about inflation or the need to take precautionary measures (such as cutting back on rampant spending.)

But again, the experts were notable for their silence in the face of the obvious or their complicity in parroting public messaging which was improbable to the point of being false.

Consumer inflation rate in the US has remained above 4% since April 2021, 5% since June 2021, and 8% since March 2022. This last month’s inflation report came in at 8.4%, above analysts’ forecasts, disappointing hopes that the inflation rate might start to subside.

[snip]

High inflation is forcing people to adjust their lifestyles and consumption patterns and accept a diminished standard of living. Consumers’ widespread and deep frustration has linked inflation with a stiff political cost. The public has good reasons to ask whether politicians should have pursued more prudent policy measures that would have avoided high inflation.

But politicians are not the only group facing questions about inflation. The economics profession is also under scrutiny. The one profession tasked with evaluating and informing the public about the pros and cons of different policies failed to raise the alarm about inflation.

Did economists not see inflation coming? Or, if inflation was not a surprise, why did economists not raise the alarm about the policies that led to it?

The answer to these questions is disheartening. Many in the economics profession did see that government policies of the last couple of years would result in high inflation. But most who saw it coming chose not to inform the public or raise the alarm until it was too late. 

We are seeing this time and again across multiple fields.  Knowledgeable people do not have the courage to make their case to the public.  Cases which are well established with empirical foundations.  This isn't about uncertainty about ideologically driven policies.  This is about not doing what we know needs to be done.

Examples:

We know that schools should focus on educating children against established standards but we are backing away from doing so.

We know that vaccine mandates were morally, legally and scientifically suspect but we imposed them anyway.

We know that school lockdowns entail major learning lost but we did so anyway and without any supporting evidence as their effectiveness vis-a-vis containing the spread of Covid-19.

We know that shrinking police departments lead to increasing crime, but we have done so anyway.

We know that decarceration leads to increased crime but we have done so anyway.

We know that phonics and directed learning work lead to improved learning results but we keep focusing on unproven teaching fads.

We know that printing money leads to inflation but we did so anyway.

We know that Head Start makes no sustained difference but we keep investing in it.

We know that IQ tests (or any of its variants) are predictive of academic outcomes but we keep trying to move away from them.

We know that raising taxes (above a minimum) reduces economic prosperity but we keep doing so.

We know that regulation reduces economic prosperity but we keep multiplying the regulatory processes.

And so on.  The list is almost infinite.  Of course there are always exceptions.  We know that there are differences at the margin.  But for the most part and for most people, the above heuristics are simple, known, and reliably true.

But we keep avoiding them in the hope of achieving best results instead of just better results.  We are always chasing the illusory Best and ignoring the usefully Good.

And experts, who should know better and who should be educating the public and reminding us of what actually does work, instead go with the flow and cheer on whatever the fad of the moment might be.  And get proven wrong despite their actual intelligence and knowledge.