It’s become common to rubbish Serious Economists, and given their track record, it’s not hard to see why. Among other reasons, the ones that have a better grasp on how the provisioning of society actually works are usually relegated to the heterodox wilderness. That is because they lost the plot. The purpose of mainstream economics is to defend the proposition that “free enterprise” systems will (or can be organized to, with the help of said right-thinking economists) to beat command and control systems, as in evil Commies. This was a legitimate concern since both Russia and China industrialized in a generation, accomplishments that gave capitalists pause.

The top editors at the Financial Times, such as Gillian Tett and its chief economics editor, Martin Wolf, are particularly subject to orthodoxy pressures despite having exhibited some independence of mind in the past. Wolf’s latest piece, The old global economic order is

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