Hey Caesar, End Poverty!
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Businesses, provided they are not rent-seeking enterprises, produce goods and services which produce material welfare, and, not colluding and left to their own devices, with come up with product and process innovations. There are important services (very seldom goods) that businesses are ill equipped to provide. The intelligentsia provides some services, but their activities are suffused with rent-seeking. Some members of the intelligentsia may impart human capital, most do not. Common provision, which may correct deficits of well-being in segments of the population, is something the intelligentsia has a hand in only if they are employed by agencies or government corporations which produce useful services.
When the intelligentsia have been genuine empirical scholars sifting historical data (like old-style economists) they have no doubt uncovered patterns of use to the business and financial community. When they have remained litterateurs in love with their own ideas, they have been worse than useless.