We Must Stop Saying “Must”
Brian Albrecht, ICLE Chief Economist, was recently mentioned in Marginal Revolution article discussing commonly misused terms in economic analysis like ‘need,’ ‘afford,’ ‘exploits,’ and ‘vicious circle.’ The author proposes adding the word ‘must’ to the list. Read the full article here.
Brian Albrecht has an outstanding new post that nicely illustrates the problem:
This approach eliminates human choice entirely. [Michael] Pettis treats markets as foreigners imposing their will: “the United States has no choice but to run a corresponding trade deficit.” Capital flows are just forced upon you like the weather if the government doesn’t do something about it. In his telling, Americans are passive victims who must automatically adjust their saving and spending when foreigners decide to invest here.
The starkest example: “If a country organizes its economy in such a way that its savings vastly exceed its investment, the rest of the world must automatically adjust either its savings or its investment.” I mean that must be true, but how does that framing help us? If I sell goods, does it make sense to say the rest of the world “must” buy them? Only under weird definitions of “must.” In both cases, we are looking at an outcome (savings > investment, or my sales > 0), not some abstract goal. These are the traded quantities. And, again, it removes any choice. Why am I selling the goods? Can policy change my sales? Sure.