by Jason Stotts
Pajamas Media recently ran an op-ed by Paul Hsieh called “Why the ‘Unexpected’ Keeps Happening.” I highly recommend this article and I think that more people should consider that when theories consistently fail to predict what will happen in reality (socialism, Keynesian economics), we should abandon these theories as obviously false.
If an irresponsible teenager repeatedly crashed his car into a tree whenever he had a few beers, we would never say his accidents were “unexpected.” Rather, they would be foreseeable consequences of driving while drinking. Similarly, we shouldn’t let journalists get away with describing as “unexpected” the foreseeable negative consequences of bad government policies.