You might have missed it, so here's economics writer Noah Smith's recent tweetstorm related to his post "Free-Market Ideology and the Burden of Proof." I've highlighted Smith's work before on his Peak Oil writings and his latest post is also great and I hope you check it out.

Policy choices should be guided by data and evidence.

OK, time for a tweetstorm riffing on this blog post: http://t.co/KePUu928VY
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015

1/In the econ world, I often see hardcore free-market-ism - the belief that less government is ALWAYS efficient - treated like a religion.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015

2/Relatively few economists subscribe to this religion. Most think a mixed economy is best. Here's proof (PDF): http://t.co/YRWOUT3l07
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015

3/More fundamentally, econ has tons of models of market failure, and a huge percent of economists spend their lives studying/testing them.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015

4/But when the few econs who DO believe in the religion expound their beliefs (at conferences, etc.), nobody speaks up to contradict them.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015

5/Everyone just sort of nods noncommittally, like people do at cocktail parties when someone says the Earth is only 5000 years old.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015

6/Telling these guys "We don't KNOW less government would boost growth" is like telling a born-again Christian that "Jesus was just a dude."
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015

7/It's just rude. It's something you're not supposed to do. Hardcore free-marketers have their beliefs and we must respect them.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015

8/The minority religion of socialism gets no such respect - make a socialist assertion, and the eye-rolling and groaning begins.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015

9/(Not that I tend to assert socialist stuff, but I have a couple friends that do, e.g. @robgillezeau, and they often got that reaction...)
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015

10/This is despite the fact that most economists have policy positions that are somewhere between socialism and hardcore free-market-ism.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015

11/This culture is weird to me. In what other science is a small-minority viewpoint treated with such automatic deference and respect?
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015

12/Is it because economists got props for helping fight communism in the Cold War? Is free-market-ism crucial to the profession's prestige?
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 22, 2015