What would a world ruled by economists look like? Paul Krugman thinks that in such a world, there would be no need for the World Trade Organization, because all countries would understand that trade is mutually beneficial. Regardless of what others did, each country would follow the principles of free trade. And today, we see this idea of economists in power reflected in reality: Mark Carney, an economist who served as the central banker of two G7 countries, is now the prime minister of Canada. Other economists are also rising to power, take Javier Milei in Argentina, for example. This brings us back to an important question: What is the use of economics in a free society?
A world without barriers to trade, entry, and entrepreneurship may seem like a utopian fantasy — until you imagine the right economists in charge. But there’s a problem: not all economists think the same. And beyond that, politics isn’t just about good ideas; it involves interest groups, voter preferences, and post-rationalization. Often, the best policy doesn’t get chosen. But that’s not the core issue.
The real concern is that when experts make decisions for others, experts become rulers, and this sacrifices individual autonomy for expert rule.
Governing with Econometrics
There was an interesting exchange between Mark Carney and former New York governor Mario Cuomo. Carney quoted Cuomo: “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” Then Carney added, “As the assembled media will tell you, I campaigned in prose — so I’m going to govern in econometrics.” To economists and policymakers, this sounds appealing. Why rely on the old-fashioned political process when we can fine-tune the economy and achieve optimal societal outcomes?
But the problem with this way of thinking is that it sees economics as a tool for social engineering rather than for social understanding. In this mindset, markets are only a part of the technician’s toolbox. When markets help achieve policy goals, they are to be left free. But when they don’t deliver ideal outcomes, they must be corrected or intervened in.
That’s not how we should think about markets. Markets are the institutional embodiment of liberty, not a policy tool for achieving perfect outcomes. They create the environment in which unplanned action — what we call innovation — can take place. They are not systems to be engineered, but processes of discovery that should be left alone to do what they do best: create prosperity.
As Deirdre McCloskey and Art Carden put it: “Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich.”
Experts in a Free Society
But the question remains: What should economists do in a free society?
Roger Koppl offers a helpful framework in his book Expert Failure, showing how experts can exist in a liberal order. He lays out four types of expert-public relationships.
First, when there is a monopoly of experts and experts decide for non-experts, we face the rule of experts — central planning is the prime example.
Second, when we have competing experts, but experts still decide for ordinary people, we get a quasi-rule of experts, such as in school voucher systems.
Third, if there is a monopoly of experts but people decide for themselves, we get expert-dependent choice — priests are a good example. But the fourth option is the one that preserves individual liberty: competitive experts and self-rule, where citizens decide for themselves. This is what Koppl calls self-rule or autonomy.
The idea that experts — including economists — should not run the world is not a critique of expertise itself. It’s about putting experts on equal footing with citizens. In a free society, experts are part of the political process — not above it. In self-rule, people are free to make their own decisions and consult experts when needed to reduce information asymmetry and make better choices.
In this system, both ordinary people and experts learn from experience and bear the costs of their mistakes — something that doesn’t happen under the rule of experts.
From Managerialism to Liberalism
It seems that the managerialist mindset of the post-WWII era is making a comeback — the age of technocrats and experts. The justification is always the same: emergency. Whether it’s global warming or artificial intelligence, we are told that more state power and more expert rule are necessary to solve the problems we face.
This is not how societies solved their greatest challenges over the past 300 years, however. The doubling of living standards and the lifting of billions out of poverty weren’t achieved through central plans written by expert committees. They were the result of the freedom of ordinary people to discover how to improve their condition.
The managerialist mindset makes a fundamental error: it assumes that the means and ends needed to solve social problems are already known, and the only task left is to implement them correctly. But in truth, the relevant data is incomplete, and the answers are not merely technical — they are discovered, not designed. And in this process, centralized planning becomes a barrier, not a solution.
The role of government is not to deliver predefined social outcomes — it is to uphold the rule of law and allow people to decide for themselves, even if the outcomes are not perfect. As Adam Smith put it:
Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
The technocratic mindset disagrees. It assumes that if people are free, they may fail to achieve the “optimal” outcomes defined by economists and social scientists, so they must be guided or forced toward perfection.
But this illusion is dangerous. As William Easterly wrote in The Tyranny of Experts: “The technocratic illusion is that poverty results from a shortage of expertise, whereas poverty is really about a shortage of rights.”
When society forgets this, it risks trading freedom for technical control.