The rhetoric of statism fosters a cult of experts, of wise, all-knowing politicians and government bureaucrats able to identify exactly what the public wants, even when the public remains silent. They are the real life action men of our time. Nothing’s too complicated for them. They have their charts and numbers telling how to run even the most unpredictable of human activities: the economy. The language of statism works most effectively when it can channel concerns into what state officials label as policy. These public policies are preached as panaceas for everything: from fighting racism to bank regulation, and from monetary policy to linguistic guidelines. They are the tools of political pragmatism and efficiency.

 

This is how bureaucrats, the press and sadly many of us have come to understand the role of government. Economic competence has come to define not only what businessmen strive for but also what politicians hope to achieve, erasing the difference between two opposed areas of activity: politics, with law enforcing as its only purpose; and the economy--with individual wealth supply on its agenda. Welding the two together gave way to crazy expressions like economic policy and economic recovery plan. What made this political rhetoric possible?