This article is a part of the Symposium Honoring the Honorable Joshua Wright symposium.
Imagine a world where competition and consumer protection authorities base their final decisions on scientific evidence of potential harm. Imagine a world where well-intentioned policymakers do not use “possibility theorems” to rationalize decisions that are, in reality, based on idiosyncratic biases or beliefs. Imagine a world where “harm” is measured using a scientific yardstick that accounts for the economic benefits and costs of attempting to remedy potentially harmful business practices.
Many economists—conservatives and liberals alike—have the luxury of pondering this world in the safe confines of ivory towers; they publish in journals read by a like-minded audience that also relies on the scientific method.
Congratulations and thanks, Josh, for superbly articulating these messages in the more relevant—but more hostile—world outside of the ivory tower.
To those of you who might disagree with a few (or all) of Josh’s decisions, I challenge you to examine honestly whether your views on a particular matter are based on objective (scientific) evidence, or on your personal, subjective beliefs. Evidence-based policymaking can be discomforting: It sometimes induces those with philosophical biases in favor of intervention to make laissez-faire decisions, and it sometimes induces people with a bias for non-intervention to make decisions to intervene.
