[pm90]

This is a strange argument.

Government departments dedicated to planning are often required to publish their guidance/research publicly making it difficult to get away with cherry-picking metrics.

Having a team of professionals who understand the basics of our economic system tackle the problem seems to have a higher probability of success as compared with business leaders who often lack formal training in statistical methods.

There are more arguments but this should be enough to prove this false equivalency.

[baryphonic]

I see a few problems with this framing: First, professionals in government can and do often get into turf wars about their research. I think anyone who has ever worked in government knows this is the case. If you doubt me, ask government researchers to publish their hypotheses ahead of time before running a study, and see how many government researchers are willing to do this. (I'd be surprised if you got an email or even a tweet back.)

Second, decision making is always inherently political; it cannot be assumed away by throwing "professionals" at the problem. This is a consequence of "value" being entirely subjective. When economics was "political economy" (or even a field within "moral philosophy"), the field understood this. But that arrangement didn't give the professionals and academics enough status or prestige, so American economists in the late 19th century who had studied in Bismarck-era Germany rebranded themselves as "economists" who were practicing a form of science not too different from, say, physics.

Third, business leaders have to make a profit and maintain positive cash flows in order to sustain themselves. If they don't, the business dies. This is an extremely hard constraint that disciplines any business leader regardless of statistical literacy. States, on the other hand, can always subsist on the use of force to extract revenue. Central planners can publish metrics till they're blue in the face, but what constraints are they under to make the metrics any good?