… is from pages 68-69 of Frank Knight’s 1944 paper “Economics, Political Science, and Education“:
In economics in particular, education seems to be largely a matter of unlearning and “disteaching” rather than constructive action. A once famous American humorist observed that “it’s not ignorance does so much damage; it’s knowin’ so derned much that ain’t so.” But a purely negative conception would be an oversimplification. It seems that the hardest things to learn and to teach are things which everyone already knows, which are banal when explicitly stated.The main “principles” of economics are obvious, even insultingly obvious, to people at the intellectual level we should like to assume in the literate public, as well as university students. The problem here is to get generalities to “carry over” into political discussion and action…. In other connections, as will be shown, the problem may have the opposite form, of keeping professed principles from being taken literally or too seriously.
The situation is illustrated by the great American political issue of protectionism. No one denies the general advantage of specialization, or its enhanced advantage for parties living in different regions and differing in natural resources and culture. And no one holds that the facts are altered by political boundary lines. All that can really be said about the issue, in economic terms of the effective use of resources, is covered by Adam Smith’s example of wine-growing in Scotland, or more pointedly by Bastiat’s petition of the candle-makers for legal prohibition of windows in houses, to exclude the destructive competition of cheap light from the sun.
The post Quotation of the Day… appeared first on Cafe Hayek.
