Foundation Follies

The Circle Bastiat wonders if much of Paul Krugman can be explained by his life-changing encounter with Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy.  Krugman gives his synopsis of Foundation and explains how it helped guide his life toward economics.  He then compares Hari Seldon’s successful mathematical model of “psychohistory” with the academically acceptable theories of modern economics and social sciences.  Krugman pats himself on the back by pointing out the “success” of current monetary policies against the predictions of “common sense” and Austrian economics.  From the Guardian article:

To take a not at all arbitrary example, a standard macroeconomic approach, the IS-LM model (don't ask) told us that under depression-type conditions like those we're experiencing, some of the usual rules would cease to apply: trillion-dollar budget deficits wouldn't drive up interest rates, huge increases in the money supply wouldn't cause runaway inflation. Economists who took that model seriously back in, say, early 2009 were ridiculed and lambasted for making such counterintuitive assertions. But their predictions came true. So yes, it's possible to have social science with the power to predict events and, maybe, to lead to a better future.

Not that I’m an expert, and I certainly would never think myself worthy to counter the genius of Nobel-winner Krugman, but would it be presumptuous to point out that there has been no recovery?  How about the fact that there are fewer people employed today than when the predictions were made?  Is that part of the Keynesian model?  Is it a good thing from the Foundation’s point of view that 600,000 people were added to the food stamp program in one month?  How about the fact that, as Denninger notes, "... there are only 143,549,000 people in the workforce -- that is, people earning a wage.  There are presently 47,710,324 people mooching off those 143,549,000 people..."?  Is that all part of the plan?  If it is, the plan is doomed to fail. 

But, as Krugman points out, the Foundation often succeeded by appearing to fail.  Asimov was a clever and very egocentric writer who believed in himself and believed that he had a greater reach in knowledge and understanding than most people.  I enjoyed Foundation myself -- at my sophomoric cynic stage, but I grew up.  Still, I subscribed for a number of years to Asimov’s science fiction magazine and appreciated his work as a writer and raconteur.  Krugman is also a clever egotist who thinks that “…self-knowledge – an understanding of how our own society works – can change history for the better”.  Neither Asimov nor Krugman believed or believe in individual freedom – for anyone other than the elite while numbering themselves among that group.  The rest of us are just ciphers.  Krugman does not appreciate Asimov sufficiently in this regard, remarking that the characters in Foundation are two-dimensional.   What else would you expect when individuals do not matter to the Plan?

There is clearly some truth to the power of mass psychological manipulation, to the power of propaganda and the grinding chaos of the world system.  Those people like Krugman who think that such a leviathan can be guided and controlled will eventually be devoured by it.  Both Krugman and Asimov were fortunate enough to live most of their lives in a relatively free world, a world their vision would eliminate.      

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