A Statist Nobel

The Turkish-American Daron Acemoglu this October received the Nobel Prize in economics. The other two who got it are his co-authors, the economist Simon Johnson and the political scientist James Robinson. Neither were essential. It’s nice of the Swedish Academy to spread the joy around. And it’s nice for Turkey to have a Nobel. Erdogan will be pleased, because Acemoglu’s theme fits the current regime. Top down. Hurrah for the Masters. Bigger government. Ah, glorious.

Acemoglu was fated to get the prize eventually. He has been writing for twenty years in favor of two claims. One is that the state is all wise. The other is that all we need for the good society are institutions such as a supreme court, an election, and a time clock in the factory. Such institutions will suffice to ensure that good decisions about free speech will be enforced, that the wisest leaders such as Lula and Bolsonaro will come to power, and that workers in every Brazilian factory will always work hard and for eight hours, to the minute. 

I react to Acemoglu’s prize as I react to Donald Trump’s daily fascisms. On the one hand, I’m made unhappy—I can think of dozens of others, such as Israel Kirzner or Arjo Klamer, who deserve it more than this B+ economist. But on the other, I’m not surprised—the Committee regularly gives the prize to B+ statists, for what is popular today, such as behavioral and neo-institutional economics. His theory, which is both, fits smoothly with what people nowadays love to hear, on their road to serfdom—that good policy is super easy and that our masters are super skilled at doing it. The theory makes us feel safe, like children waiting to be fed. We don’t individually need good ethics, professionalism, or high political ideals. Mama and Papa State take care of all that.

Acemoglu loves the state. The Brazilian state, for example. He recently signed a petition praising a certain supreme court justice in Brazil—you may have heard—who went after Elon Musk’s free speech. Elon is a fool, to be sure. He is showing it again in the U.S. election by supporting Trump. But, after all, in a free society rich people can buy newspapers and book companies and the like, and spread foolish opinions and non-facts. 

Acemoglu prints his own foolish opinions and non-facts. He claimed in a book with Johnson, for example, that “Government subsidies for developing more socially beneficial technologies are one of the most powerful means of redirecting technology in a market economy.” Like the declared leftist economists Thomas Piketty and Mariana Mazzucato, whose names are oddly absent from Acemoglu’s writings, he regards the private economy as mainly imperfect and the U.S. or Brazilian state as perfect in fixing the imperfections. There is no scientific evidence for either. Though it’s popular among the childish serfs whom modern states have crafted, one stands amazed at such a belief. On what planet, you ask, does Acemoglu live?

Answer: on a planet in which the Swedish Academy reliably favors statism from B+ economists.

Weekly column in Folha de São Paulo, Brazil
Translated into Portuguese for the newspaper.