>Pat Gunning wrote:

>Maybe the problem is the professionalization of economics, along
>with government-run and subsidized universities. We're all
>bureaucrats now.


This view is put forward by Joe Salerno in 'THREE DECADES OF PROGRESS
IN AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS: FROM SOUTH ROYALTON TO GROVE CITY', but as most
'economists' take the king's shilling, the economics of being an
economist is strictly off-topic!

Professionalist aspirations and the culture it engenders are
not only inconsistent with truth seeking in economics, however,
they are positively antithetical to it. For the professionalization of
a scientific discipline, particularly a social science like economics,
almost always proceeds hand in hand with the expansion of
government interventionism. The reason for this inevitable
connection rests on two facts. On the one hand, the State requires
a class of intellectuals and specialists for designing, implementing,
and providing rationalizations for various interventions into the
market economy. On the other hand, those intellectuals who seek
the regular income and prestige that accompany the
professionalization of their discipline are ever ready to oblige,
because the ability of an intellectual to earn his living researching
and writing in his chosen field on the free market is always
precarious at best.

available at www2.gcc.edu/dept/econ/ASSC/Papers2004/Progress_Salerno.pdf

and part republished in Associate! Sep 2009 as 'Truth or Self? Is
economics a vocation or profession?'

Arthur Edwards