Your only argument is that there are no negative unintended consequences and that is simply idiotic. Just look at American Forgin policy, blow back anybody? How many more times does america have to invade iraq to fix the last time they where there. Or insert any other country america has been evolved with (exeption might be Japan and Germany but those where EXEPTION see http://www.amazon.de/After-War-Political-Exporting-Democracy...)

The same is true with strang economic policys that trie to patch up unintended consequences of there last economic policys. If you belive that the housing crisis is responsible for the larger economic crisis or not you HAVE to admit that the goverment in a huge way engourage housing and private house ownership. There mantra was for a very long time 'Every american should own a house' even if there is no evidence at all that societys with higher house ownership rates are any better of then nations with the same level of overall wealth. Now they have to bail out the half private half goverment 'lets press down housing prices'-agency.

Do you want to start talking about drug policy? I always fought the idea behind drug policy was to prevent people from doing drug, bot ohoho. It lead to civil war in mexico, america forces operating all over south america, 1% of the american population in prision, inner citys with high murder rates and bad schools, huge healthcare cost because of bad drugs and so on and so on (I could talk days about this alone).

Tell me more about that 'semi-religious, untested view'. Most of these are well known and exepted by most of social sience. There are some harder one where there is more disagreement but overall it is absolutly clear that when goverment tries to fix something unstable they probebly arn't understanding all ramifactions there actions have.

You might now argue but if we had better 'experts' (and im sure you have a list of who those are) and gave them enougth money (at least another 10-20% of GDP plus some extra debt) and power (see how wunderful that works with the NSA) they could fix all those problems. The would finally stop all the lobbying. If those expert fail because they two dont know enought to fix the problems and also get payed by buissness then we should find even other expert and give them more money. If we could just give the right people the right positions with the right abount of money and stop lobbying and fix govermental system and voting then everything would be well and the goverment could solve all the 'problem' (things you dont like) without unintend consequneces.

> without affecting everyone else

That argument comming from you? Isn't it you who wants to take my money (or your country mans) in order to fix some problems you think you have? Isn't it you that want to take my money and give it to whatever industry is failing at the moment (because you know the 'poor workers'). Isn't it you that does not want actual laber market in teachers because then teachers would act with a profit motive and that would be bad. Isn't it you who want to prohibite people from trading freely, or consuming whatever they want?

Note im using 'you' here as in people who think markets need to be constantly corrected and profit motive is a bad thing, since you have not actually given any examples of what these 'self-reinforcing loops that can tearing the world apart' are. Seams to me that saving industrys that nobody needs anymore is actully the oppsite of what you want. The market corrects it self, maybe it does not correct itself in a way that you want, maybe you dont want unemployed people in detroit, maybe you think that american farmes deserve huge amount of money in order to survive. But if you then stop that mechanism and start paying people in detroit to do nothing, sure you stopped had good intentions but in the long run it will only hurt people there and everybody else that has to pay for it (and do not have the benefit of profiting from those people actually working somewhere profitable).