Can Central Banking Ever be Un-Politicized? Can Economics?
March 8th, 2011
It isn’t really surprising to us these days when we hear that *gasp* the Federal Reserve isn’t being forthright about its operations. It doesn’t necessarily know ? Oops! Oh well! The simple act of auditing the Fed as proposed by Congressman Ron Paul was met with outrage when proposed, as it would “politicize monetary policy,” but can it ever be anything but?
I can respect the drive of economists to try and take their field out of the realm of normativity (the process of making moral judgments) and placing it square in the realm of positive science. It isn’t necessarily an unreasonable pursuit but faces major methodological limitations. To practice economics in a way which is exclusively descriptive is helpful only in understanding the most effective and ineffective ways humans have dealt with the confrontation between their unlimited wants and the world’s limited resources.
The process of saying what is effective isn’t necessarily political but it relates to a specific economic end which carries with it substantial political repercussions and moral/teleological (end-related) conceptions.
Even if you speak to someone who is strictly utilitarian in their economic calculus they are still assisting in the construction of policy which has already made a qualitative judgment of what is “the good” that the policy is pursuing. Competing conceptions of the good is the most basic definition of ethical theory and thus inherently moral. Advocating any sort of policy or practice of economics is perhaps inextricable from some moral precepts, good or bad, even if it is merely tangential or descriptive.
Having a central bank isn’t apolitical and amoral nor could it ever be because it has a teleological function which is in pursuit of the state’s idea of “the good.” Economists who are pure positivists and are researching the best practices of central banking are significantly aiding the moral pursuit of others even if they are not directly engaging in moral choices. Having an opinion about what is “the good” is an axiomatic political statement even when it is couched in the sterile language of the dismal science, and what’s worse is that the state’s idea of “the good” is almost always in conflict with yours. In this way, can central banking ever be unpoliticized? Can economics?
