Professor William Easterly authored an insightful book entitled “The Tyranny of Experts.” It focuses on the international development community, highlighting the damage that occurs when experts impose their pet solutions on regions and cultures that they don’t know, don’t understand and don’t really care about. It is about saying you are helping them while ignoring and denying the interests and rights of the people themselves.

The same goes for other experts. Economists, education consultants, climate scientists and other smart, educated people likely have important things to say, but even among experts, there are differences of opinion. When opinions of any group become unquestioned dogma that cannot be challenged, their ideas become harmful. When they replace markets with politics, they harm the people they purport to help. When individuals forfeit their rights for the greater good, that is the formula for tyranny and, as all tyranny does, it blocks genuine economic progress.

The nutrition industry has been under the sway of experts promoting anti-fat, pro-carbohydrate dogma for decades. Most health and nutrition organizations adhere to the doctrine even though an impressive and growing body of evidence suggests that they have it very wrong. It became the food gospel back in the nineteen seventies, and since then obesity and diabetes has skyrocketed. More and more health professionals are recognizing that fat and cholesterol are not the culprits.

It is good that researchers try to figure out what causes disease and to try to use their expertise to help people overcome problems. That expertise, though, regardless of how cutting-edge it may be, is never settled. It is merely one step in the long progression of ideas. When Senator McGovern convened his Senate Select Committee on Human and Nutrition Needs to recommend an American diet via the United States Department of Agriculture, nutrition became politics, with all of the lobbying by special interests and the federal programs and policies. It froze the “fat hypothesis” for heart disease in place for nearly forty years, to the obvious detriment to alternative research and the health of the American people.

The American healthcare system in general is in the mess it is now because of experts. It also has been synonymous with politics for decades. It is merely a system of markets, but rather than let competitive markets work, as they did fairly effectively before interventionists took over, central planners try to control everything and create a hodge-podge of distorted incentives, spiraling costs, incredibly inefficient regulation, and massive lobbying efforts by those who want a bigger share of the taxpayer pie. Distorted markets serve politicians and special interests, not consumers.

Global warming research has been a big-money political game for about as long as the others. Again, the official dogma is not to be challenged, despite of the obvious errors of the prevailing narrative. The experts don’t allow dissenting views and have been aggressively imposing their wishes on the populace using law, politics, and force.

The community of experts in the various fields of endeavor can certainly be a positive influence. Some of them might have specialized knowledge that could improve the lives of millions of people. Then again, maybe they don’t. Maybe other experts or other non-expert innovators have the answer. The best way to find the best way is to let a thousand flowers bloom. Let people try lots of different things, and those that are effective will rise to the top unless, of course, they are stifled by politics.

Under the current system of expert control, those thousand blooms are smothered and strangled. Those who replace markets with expert planners should be reviled and resisted for the damage they do and the rights they violate.

Dan McLaughlin is the author of “Compassion and Truth-Why Good Intentions Don’t Equal Good Results.” Follow him at daniel-mclaughlin.com.