Thanks for sharing. We could spend hours drawing from this essay.

Let's consider this part:

"A hundred years ago the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent men who were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are; the result was that they dominated politics and that the world advanced rapidly both in intelligence and in material well-being."

Another example of this is neo-liberal capitalism: from Hayek [1] and his disciple, Friedman [2], to myriad think tanks, Reagan and Thatcher, SCOTUS (eg Powell [3]), etc. We're still living with the outcome of a generation of intelligent, organized, ambitious people united by a [flawed] ideology.

[1] Hayek - "The Road to Serfdom" http://amzn.to/1PRWyDj [2] Friedman - "Free to Choose" http://amzn.to/1QKIewt [3] Powell - "Attack on American Free Enterprise System" http://bit.ly/1Q2bHR7

Naked Economics[1] is a good basic introduction. Hayek's Road to Serfdom[2] is also a key text if you want a historically embedded one. An interesting point about it is that Orwell reviewed it, with qualified praise, shortly before writing 1984. Like 1984 it is wider in its scope (i.e. even if you had the bandwidth and the models, how do you stop the people running them from becoming corrupt?). Finally "From Marx to Mises: Post-capitalist society and the challenge of economic calculation"[3] has a very comprehensive review of many aspects of the debate.

[1]http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Economics-Undressing-Science-Rev...

[2]http://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Documents---Definitive-Co...

[3]http://www.amazon.com/Marx-Mises-Capitalist-Challenge-Calcul...