Beware of Wonkish Libertarianism

Fundamentally, at its core, wonkishness is an example of what Friedrich Hayek famously called “the fatal conceit,” the idea that policymakers can deliberately design and optimize societal institutions. Furthermore and relatedly, the policy wonk, as such, is defined by his overreliance on and faith in statistical information and economic modeling, another example of the planner’s conceit identified by Hayek.