Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers

An account of how political change actually happens, built from Keynes’s line about madmen in authority being the slaves of some defunct economist and Hayek’s account of intellectuals as second-hand dealers in ideas. The authors’ framework has three parts — incentives, institutions and ideas — and their argument is that public choice explains why bad policy persists but cannot explain the cases where it suddenly stops; for those (airline deregulation, welfare reform, the end of the draft) you need ideas that changed what political actors believed was possible.

Why it’s on the list: It sits in the Public Choice Theory section as the section’s constructive half: having shown why political incentives entrench bad rules, it asks what it takes to change them anyway.

Where I saw it: Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the section on Public Choice Theory. A structured curriculum shared March 9, 2026 and saved to Kyle’s Apple Note “Books To Read”; the full 211-entry transcription is on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• Government — the policy changes the book explains.
• Economics — public choice as the analytical frame.
• Institutions — the middle term of the incentives/institutions/ideas framework.
• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.