Douglas Carswell's Blog

Why do bad ideas come from the top?

What do Fannie Mae, urban tower blocks, low interest rates and the Euro all have in common?

They were, in their different ways, all pretty disastrous.

But more than that, they were projects based on the grand designs of experts and the elite.

Each of these innovations in housing and monetary policy were the product of those who, in thrall to various intellectual fads, believed they could achieve human social and economic progress by design.

Those who hold that human economic and social affairs are best arranged by grand design might see themselves as part of an avant garde.  They end up leading the rest of us off a cliff.

My new book explains why elites prove so bad at making public policy – and what we need to do to stop them lurching from one public policy disaster to the next.

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