A Dogmatic Slumber
December 1, 2013·0 comments
Financial professionals operate inside a collective fiction. Everyone from money managers to central bankers acknowledges privately that dominant economic theories don't produce their claimed results, yet the entire system continues as if they do. The contradiction isn't between what people say and what they believe, it's that they've chosen to genuinely believe something they know to be false.
- The confession nobody makes public. Money managers don't believe quantitative models or Fed policy actually drive markets. They participate in them anyway because everyone else does and the institutional incentive structure demands it. The fiction has become self-reinforcing.
- Voluntary surrender replaces external coercion. Unlike historical tyranny, modern control operates through the voluntary adoption of group-generated reality. Individuals rationally choose to act as if they believe something precisely because it's in their economic interest to maintain the charade.
- Economic theory is becoming superstition. The entire edifice of modern economics rests on the assumption that individuals make independent rational decisions. As that assumption collapses under the weight of coordinated collective behavior, the entire theoretical framework becomes less a toolkit and more a set of rituals recited out of obligation.
- The current system benefits from this instability. Institutions promoting false dogmas don't need them to be true to maintain power. The voluntary participation in a shared unreality actually strengthens institutional control over how people think and act.
- What happens when enough people wake up? The more the economy depends on collective performance of false belief, the more fragile it becomes. Historical paradigm shifts only occur when powerful institutions find a better framework that serves their interests.
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