There is a difference

Today on NPR I heard a woman, in the context of privatizing water rights, confuse the difference between the concept of and the existence of "economies of scale." People do analogs of this all the time; the difference between concept and existence is not "academic", or "theoretical", or whatever. It's completely practical.

Practically, it is as easy to win against the concept of "economics of scale" as it would be to eradicate the usage of a word from the english language ("politics", for example), to wipe a disease from the face of the planet, to halt an internet meme, or to uninvent the atomic bomb. Less rhetorically, YOU WILL FAIL.

Practically, it is significantly easier to demonstrate the existence of "economies of scale." Due to the vagaries of statistics, I would bet real money that it's even easier to actually do what this woman wants to do (though she never says it), which is: disprove the existence of "economics of scale" in the case of water. By the way, there are terms for the lack of "economies of scale", before anybody tells me the jargon of economics itself limits the discussion. They are: "diseconomies of scale" and "constant returns to scale".

So, when you confuse concept and existence, you get a mixed bag of arguments; depending on the composition of the bag your opponents may be required to defend their position by doing anything from
a) stand around watching you defeat yourself to
b) ignore you

The bottom line is the level of economic ignorance in this country is staggering. And it's not because people are disconnected from the economy. 95% of the population has a job, more than that use money day-to-day. The government subsists on money flows; companies are some of the most powerful institutions in the country. But, left and right we still have people making logically incoherent statements about this system they are irrevocably entwined with, all the while expressing an intense dislike for the people interested enough in the system to study it. And when I say study, I do not mean profit.

Because when we discuss the people who study and the people who profit, we are talking about two different sets, neither of which is fully a subset of the other. In economics there are many things to discuss which do not offer opportunities for profit (succeed in making the study of poverty as profitable as investment banking, and I guarantee the world you create will look NOTHING like the world of today). In profiting there are many ignored economic concepts which offer opportunities for loss (pollution is an "externality", or something which a free market does not price into the cost of manufacturing something; this failure to account properly is known as a "market failure").

And don't get me started on the people who think they can use non-economic rhetoric to effect markets. This includes: politians; moralists. But specifically, not McCain or Hillary - these two belong to a slighty different crowd who believe they can craft excellent economic policy on the basis of:
a) sheer willpower
b) blinding charisma
c) how it sounds
d) whether they thought of it