photo from www.ecuadortimes.net

The Washington Post’s Matt O’Brien has a great article about the current situation in Venezuela. Early on he relates what can be described in philosophy as the primacy of consciousness, the idea that what you think is of greater importance than what is actually out there in reality.

It shouldn’t be this way. Venezuela, after all, has the largest oil reserves in the world. It should be rich. But it isn’t, and it’s getting even poorer now, because of economic mismanagement on a world-historical scale. The problem is simple: Venezuela’s government thinks it can have an economy by just pretending it does. That it can print as much money as it wants without stoking inflation by just saying it won’t. And that it can end shortages just by kicking people out of line. It’s a triumph of magical thinking that’s not much of one when it turns grocery-shopping into a days-long ordeal that may or may not actually turn up things like food or toilet paper.

Sadly, such “magical thinking” is not restricted to Venezuela, but is quite prevalent in American government as well. Our government thinks it can raise taxes and impose regulations on companies without altering their decisions on where to expand their business, believes that it can force businesses to raise wages for low skilled workers without changing how these companies make their hiring decisions, that they can mandate banks make more sub-prime loans to unqualified, excuse me non-traditional, borrowers without causing a financial crisis and much more.

Until our government strictly and consistently adopts the opposite view, that which Ayn Rand called the primacy of existence, that what exists exists independent of our thoughts, I fear we are headed in the same direction as Venezuela. It may take us a long time to get there, but that is where we will be headed.