Some regard economists as rather too influential over public policy – politicians seem to fall under their (two-handed) spell. I found this out when strangers would walk up to me at parties and blame me for the latest economic reforms they did not like. They go into offensive mode without even introducing themselves or knowing my name.
George Stigler argued that ideas about economic reform needed to wait for a market.
Stigler contended that economists exert a minor and scarcely detectable independent influence on the societies in which they live. As is well known, Stigler in the 1970s toasted Milton Friedman at a dinner in his honour by saying: “Milton, if you hadn’t been born, it wouldn’t have made any difference.”
Stigler said that if Richard Cobden had spoken only Yiddish, and with a stammer, and Robert Peel had been a narrow, stupid man, England would have still have repealed…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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