The WaPo's Ezra Klein and the Dream of Philosopher-Kings

Here is an absoutely fascinating, if completly obtuse, article by the leftist WaPo columnist Ezra Klein . What is both fascinating, and obtuse, about Klein's column is its utter obliviousness to the nature of power. The ideal bureaucrat, in Klein’s view, is a scientific person indifferent to material wealth who wants only the ability to institute his judgments, independent of public favor or commercial concerns.

It is, of course, the dream of the totalitarian philosopher-king that has seduced Western intellectuals ever since Plato. What it ignores is Friedrich von Hayek’s discovery that there can be no philosopher kings, and James Buchanan’s discovery that, even if there were, they would not be indifferent rulers.

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