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However, before Conservatives swing into line behind O’Leary, they should be every bit as rigorous as O’Leary can be when he’s taking apart one of those on-air Dragon’s Den pitches. That means bringing the same critical lens to O’Leary’s proposed economic policies that they apply to Liberal policies.

Conservatives should be concerned when Kevin O’Leary proposes his own versions of activist government.

Despite usually coming down on the side of lower taxes and fewer regulations, successful businessmen are not necessarily good economists. Many voters, especially Tories, tend to conflate the two. But to borrow an analogy from American economist Don Boudreaux, suggesting that business success implies knowledge of economics is akin to assuming that somebody who lives to be 100 years old must know a lot about medical science. Centenarians might have some useful tips on healthy living, but few of them are medical experts.

Overseeing a national economy and running a business are two completely different things. A market economy is a self-generating or spontaneous order — “the result of human action but not of human design,” as Hayek argued — entirely different from a business firm or a centrally designed socialist project.

As Hayek understood, no person, firm, committee of business experts, or government has anything close to all the market’s knowledge, which is widely dispersed among the entire population (it’s why he said centrally planned economies will always fail). That’s why conservatives should be concerned when they hear O’Leary denouncing incompetent central planning by the Trudeau, Notley and Wynne governments, only to propose his own versions of activist government intrusion.

O’Leary isn’t against the government meddling in the private economy, he just says that he can fix it so Ottawa makes better deals that will, under him, somehow finally start turning out well for taxpayers. At last year’s Manning Centre Conference for conservatives, he outlined his grand plans for Bombardier, for instance, saying “I think we should save that company.” The difference between his support for funding Bombardier and the Liberals’? He would demand governance reforms, so “you make money” on the bailout. But if Bombardier is failing, it’s strictly due to a business failure, not what economists would call a market failure (where government intervention can at least be somewhat justified). So, if anyone needs to save Bombardier, that job should fall the private sector, not the government.