Prime Minister of Japan Noda's Pretense of Knowledge

Prime Minister Noda of Japan sends a weekly blog email to subscribers. Below is his blog for Wednesday, August 8, 2012.

Prime Minister NODA's BLOG" E-mail Service (August 8, 2012)
"The challenge of opening up frontiers": http://nodasblog.kantei.go.jp/2012/07/120731-1.html

Here is the key point from the blog posting:

"Over the next three years we will be engaged in concentrated efforts, setting "green" innovations, "life" innovations, the agriculture, forestry, and fishery industries, and small- and medium-sized enterprises as our four major project areas. Moreover, the Strategy lays out 11 strategies and 38 prioritized policies and is accompanied by a progress schedule that specifies for each area matters including "what to undertake by four years from now" and "what kinds of
results to aim for by 2020." We will also strike a balance when formulating the budget and realize these policies one by one."

So, how do Japan's politicians know that these are the proper goals? Hayek would call such grandiose plans "the pretense of knowledge". Of course, Japan's politicians have no special insight into the future; they are confiscating the nation's resources to fund politically connected and/or currently populist projects. This is euphemistically called "doing something".