Government spending accounts for a huge amount of the economy — some 40% or so in many modern economies. It’s not a matter of whether the government should try to influence the economy — it inevitably does. The question is in what ways it should try.
Also, it’s impossible to have a modern economy without a central bank and the central bank should be a government agency to keep it responsible to the nation as a whole, so monetary policy is inevitable as well.
2ND ANSWER IF THE 1ST ONE DOESNT WORK
Not even a little. Their motives are not pure and they can never have sufficient information or understanding.
Famous Hayek quote that needs mentioning in this sort of thread:
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.
The Fatal Conceit : The Errors of Socialism (1988), p. 76
I would make an exception for prizes for innovation. They will probably be gamed, but they’ll keep the pols busy and might produce something useful.
