There is nothing more practical than a good theory.
Unfortunately, there are many preconceptions that tempt people to take a depreciatory view of theory.
Nothing alerts me more than a person taking pride in being "a practical man," thereby implying a corresponding disutility of theory.
We live in a civilisation that is abstract (i.e. ruled by evolved abstract principles) and cannot survive unless we are in a position to mentally (i.e. theoretically) reconstruct and act in accordance with the theoretical scaffolding of the human environment in its hitherto most advanced state.
Regrettably, the contemporary economist does not understand the rule of law, as being the precondition and originator of a free economy, while the contemporary lawyer does not understand that the rule of law of necessity and quite naturally produces a free economy, which, at the same time, instantiates the benign nature and superior civilizatory performance of a social order protected against arbitrariness.
Rather than appreciating this systematic nexus, economist and lawyer consider it their calling and duty to meddle with the social order on the basis of ad hoc intuitions largely separated from a sound theoretical framework, increasingly so when political correctness (i.e. compliancy with the powers du jour) promises far greater rewards (especially from a practical point of view) than intellectual honesty and thoroughness.
Today, we are in a mess because of a severe lack of good theory, which Don Boudreaux expresses in a statement that fully corresponds to my experience:
Quotation of the Day ...
… is from pages 4-5 of what is perhaps the single book that has had the greatest impact on my thinking, Hayek’s 1973 Law, Legislation, and Liberty: Rules and Order:
One of the main themes of this book will be that the rules of just conduct which the lawyer studies serve a kind of order of the character of which the lawyer is largely ignorant; and that this order is studied chiefly by the economist who in turn is similarly ignorant of the character of the rules of conduct on which the order that he studies rests.
The source.
