DEMOCRACY CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT FIRST AGREEING THAT TRUTH EXISTS
There is no better description of the current anti-capitalism, anti-democracy movement spreading across Western democracies, and that seems to have a stranglehold on half of America, than what Eric Hoffer wrote about Nazi Germany in 1958. “I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.” There are many things we can point at if we want to assign blame for what is happening, for America’s reality not living up to its dream, and for so many people in Western democracies choosing to abandon all hope of freedom by voting for and bowing down to authoritarian leaders. As an economist, I put a lot of the blame on economists. I blame economists because the failure of free-market economics to evolve past a fictional world created by philosophers and into the real world in which we live continues to be responsible for slower than possible economic growth, recessions, depressions, extreme