The Classical Liberal is inherently humble, accepting the limitations of man

From The Humble Capitalist by Richard Hanania.  The subheading is The central planning fallacy never dies.  

Take the issue of whether a nation should have an industrial policy, which is defined as a strategic effort to develop specific parts of a national economy, or manufacturing in general. A country may decide it wants to, say, manufacture cars, rather than let the market send price signals about what its citizens should be doing.

When I hear such plans, I’m taken aback by the faith it puts in intellectuals and politicians. At most, I think the smartest human beings might be capable of being small cogs in vast machines that no one can understand or control. I trust that the guy who runs a single car factory, or the logistics manager of a major hotel chain, might know what he’s doing in his limited domain. I am, in contrast, inherently suspicious of those who think they have answers to questions like “What kinds of jobs should most people have?” or “Which goods should we manufacture at home instead of buying from China?” If you believe that you have 20 extra IQ points on proponents of industrial policy, but it would take a superhuman AI to even have the possibility of doing central planning well, is that arrogance or humility? Sounds like arrogance relative to fellow humans, but humility in the sense of understanding your limitations.

Markets take into account the information necessary to allocate goods and resources in efficient ways. Through the price system and individuals making decisions that they’re directly responsible for, they provide answers to an endless array of questions that no central planner can even begin to consider and weigh in their entirety.

Is your nation any good at making cars? Are the people culturally or temperamentally suited for that kind of work? Would forcing them to manufacture their own cars make them better off than just doing whatever produces the most value and then buying cars from other nations? Are you sure, from all the goods and labor it takes to produce a car, the market can’t figure out a better way to create wealth or make technological breakthroughs? Can the supply chains for each product that goes into making a car be put together at a reasonable cost? What are the second and third order effects of distributing resources toward what are, based on the choices of those who could risk their own money, inefficient uses?

Many conservatives who support industrial policy seem to see economic efficiency as no more than a secondary concern. They somehow think manufacturing jobs are better for people getting married, forming families, and instilling virtue. As someone with a background in the social sciences, I find the idea that one can not only plan an economy, but also predict the cultural impacts of an economic policy to be absurd. That project is way beyond any tools that we have. Just because in previous decades the US had better manufacturing jobs and higher rates of family formation does not mean one can recreate through trade policy the culture of Eisenhower’s America. This is pure cargo cultism.

I like that - "cargo cultism" as a term for the rent seeking mind in the national policy context.