Most of the schemes advocated for perfecting society assume a supernatural authority of last resort that can resolve conflicts, guarantee outcomes and make the wounded whole again. Those of a religious mind sensibly locate this authority and the promised satisfactions beyond space and time, and so beyond mundane verification. Those who can't so believe, less sensibly try to relocate supernatural authority to government institutions.

This basic defect is overlooked in the hurley burly of wonkery. Policies and institutions that can't possibly work are theorized, designed and implemented anyway. When they fail, causal analysis ignores the basic defect and focuses on irrelevant details that can be altered in a new round of unrealistic implementations.

These facts are very occasionally explored, recently in discussion of a new movie adaptation of the comic book series Watchmen. The question of ultimate authority and watching the watchers bubbles fitfully in social consciousness.

The problem for those of us who are not religious is that facing cold reality can be pretty depressing. There's really no solid footing on which to stand or rest. For me this frustration is sometimes expressed in criticism of knowingly false academic statements, especially from scientists or other experts in fields where there can be such a thing as a correct statement (which clearly excludes a great deal of scholarship).

Economics - obviously not a field where there are many opportunities for correct statements - isn't particularly interesting but it dominates a large segment of public consciousness due to its failures and political implications. There are many small observations and analyses which are amenable to truth tests - most often in microeconomics - but no grand synthesis or credible over arching systemic explanations. It is mostly a supernatural belief system, like religion and politics.

The irritating bit for me is that economists make this already muddled reality worse by concealing relevant data.

The revival of Keynes has much to contribute both to economic analysis and to policy, but the net has to be cast much wider. Even though Keynes is often seen as a kind of a "rebel" figure in contemporary economics, the fact is that he came close to being the guru of a new capitalism, who focused on trying to stabilize the fluctuations of the market economy (and then again with relatively little attention to the psychological causes of business fluctuations). Even though Smith and Pigou have the reputation of being rather conservative economists, many of the deep insights about the importance of nonmarket institutions and nonprofit values came from them, rather than from Keynes and his followers.

A crisis not only presents an immediate challenge that has to be faced. It also provides an opportunity to address long-term problems when people are willing to reconsider established conventions. This is why the present crisis also makes it important to face the neglected long-term issues like conservation of the environment and national health care, as well as the need for public transport, which has been very badly neglected in the last few decades and is also so far sidelined—as I write this article—even in the initial policies announced by the Obama administration. Economic affordability is, of course, an issue, but as the example of the Indian state of Kerala shows, it is possible to have state-guaranteed health care for all at relatively little cost. . .

This excerpt is from an extended tongue bath for Obama by Amartya Sen. It's full of dropped names, decontextualized quotes, and twisted analyses in service of political objectives. Normal economic writing in other words. But does it make any sense to use Kerala, India as an example of a possible model for US health care? Not if you consider that this is a small place that can't support itself. It exists by exporting people since there are no jobs. The local economy is utterly dysfunctional. The state is supported by money earned elsewhere and sent back home to destitute families. It even has a department of Non-Resident Kerala Affairs to administrate the millions of citizens working abroad, about 25% of the population. Where would 25% of Americans get overseas jobs? The whole world can't work in the oil states and send paychecks home keep the family afloat.

It's the Potemkin ruse. Some small example is held up as a model for large scale adoption though it doesn't even work on a small scale without external support.

There's a lot of that in agriculture. A more recent and applicable example than Potemkin villages might be Gaviotas villages. The problem - as noted in the post Regulation Seeky - is that such potted examples don't work if you consider all of the external supports required, and certainly can't scale up to a world food system capable of providing food, fiber and fuel for over 6 - soon to be 9 - billion people on the planet. Indeed, it is precisely the wrong thing to do.

Any useful agronomic or economic system must begin with the basic requirement of being able to satisfy existing and expected demand. If a proposed system can't feed and employ the population then it is at best an academic curiosity from which some small lesson may be gleaned and used to make incremental improvement in a full scale system. There is no earthly magic. Leave the supernatural authorities of last resort safely beyond space and time, and make peace with the necessity to haul our own water and ashes in this life on earth.

Update:

Here's an example of muddled thinking about ag.

"Almost every farmer is aware of organic techniques for fertilizing crops, yet the majority still use chemical fertilizers — why is that? Dig a little deeper (excusing the pun) and you will find that it is not uncommon for a family farm to have an organic garden for their own vegetables, but still use chemical fertilizers on their commercial crops. They know organic is better, so why use chemicals?

The answer lies in simple economics. Preparing compost is labor intensive, and labor is expensive. Also, specialized farmers rarely produce the right mix of high-carbon and high-nitrogen materials to produce compost in sufficient quantities to keep large acreage productive. Then there are the issues with pest control, which is easier with chemicals. That is one area I can’t claim biochar will help much — but for the soil fertilization it solves several problems at once.

The rising cost of petroleum-derived fertilizers has some traditional farmers taking a second look at organic methods already — add biochar to the mix and the equation turns around completely."

No, the equation remains the same. Add biochar to the existing commercial fields and fertilizer costs drop. The basic asymmetry of supply and demand remains unchanged. If organic dogma worked in large scale systems it would already be dominant.

The lesson for agriculture in-the-large is that good soil health reduces costs. Attending to soil carbon in both mineral and organic forms is cost effective since it can reduce other input costs such as water and fertilizer. This is the same lesson taught by no-till methods, though it often comes with herbicide use to control weeds without tillage - definitely verboten in organic ordnung - as are GMOs and other technologies that together serve to reduce costs and environmental impacts.