We are all carless and foolish humans in our time and fashion

I see Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is being widely mocked on the right for her ignorance. The current example? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quotes fake economist 'Milton Keynes' who doesn't exist. I do consider that AOC is both a lazy thinker and something of an indictment of the current state of American higher education.

But anyone who speaks voluminously in public is eventually going to say something stupid. Or a lot of stupid things. Hence the old adage from Proverbs 17:28 KJV.

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

More colloquially

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.

But we all speak and we are all subject to varieties of foolishness. The key is to learn.

Sometime in boarding school I began to take an interest in economics and suddenly began reading a lot of economic history including that of John Maynard Keynes, a brilliant man who was a giant in the field but who also demonstrated a capacity for error. He set a greater store in public planning than was probably warranted.

I happened to be living in Britain at the time. Post-World War II, the British Government committed itself to the socialist idea of New Cities to relieve crowding congestion in the southeast, especially London. They designed and built a number of these New Cities, including one called Milton Keynes.

Circa 1976-1980 as I was beginning to read economics, traveling back and forth from the US to the UK, I made the lazy connection between John Maynard Keynes, the advocate for some central planning, and Milton Keynes the centrally planned New City. It was a natural, if lazy, connection and hinged on overlooking the critical mismatch between Milton Keynes and Maynard Keynes.

Eventually, out of curiosity, I did some research to discover whether central planning economist Maynard Keynes had any involvement with the planning and building of the town named after him, Milton Keynes. At which point I was forced to connect the facts that Milton Keynes was not named after Maynard Keynes and indeed, he could not have had any involvement, having died a couple of decades before its construction. Milton Keynes was simply the name of a tiny village in the location where they chose to build the new city.

I have some empathy for AOC making the same mistake I made. Of, course, at the time I was younger than she is today, did not tout any credentials in economics (which I had not yet earned), and was not an obstreperous and vocal debater proselytising central planning and disparaging my opponents.

So perhaps my empathy is constrained, but it is still there. We are all careless and foolish humans in our time and fashion.