There is No “Third Way” Between Cooperation and Destruction

Just as astronomy is anti-astrology and medicine is anti-quackery, economics is anti-politics: politics destroys peaceful social cooperation and hampers its potential, while economics describes all of its productive nuances and beneficial intricacies; politics promotes social myths that crush the developmental drive of creative human action, while economics dispels those myths by explaining the enriching power of commerce and entrepreneurship; politics stokes artificial divisions and collective hatreds, while economics describes the processes whereby strangers become friends without even being acquaintances.

In other words, as a perspective on the world, economics is no more reconcilable with politics than astronomy is reconcilable with astrology or medicine with quackery. There is no “third way” between cooperation and destruction, production and plunder, or education and propaganda. Every such “third way” turns out to be at best a dead end of stagnation, and at worst a highway to social disintegration, and sound economic knowledge is the most reliable means of avoiding both.