Language and the Economy

On language on economic discourse, Max Borders at the Library of Economics and Liberty writes:

“Metaphors can't change reality; they can only shed light on it. And when people use metaphors to take liberties with reality, their words can be misleading at best and mendacious at worst. We see this often in the socio-economic arena.
One of the most pervasive false metaphors in economics is the economy as machine. It can be subtle or overt. But "economy as machine" is arguably the most powerful metaphor at work in contemporary economic discourse.”

A couple of things come to mind:

(a) Maybe one of the reasons that people so readily accept Keyensian economic theory/policy these days is that it overtly relies on this appealing, yet simplistic idea that the economy is kind of like an engine; implicit in this idea is that policy makers can act like mechanics, tweaking and fixing parts that are broken. It also follows (again implicitly) that the economy, like an engine, is the product of human design or planning. Refer to the ridiculously awesome video by Russ Roberts and John Papola (Fight of the Century) Keynes compares an economy in recession to an engine that just needs a “quick spark”.

(b) It also strikes me that the prevalence of this type of simplistic economic language may be one reason that democracies often get economic policy so wrong. I’m thinking of Bryan Caplan’s book, the Myth of the Rational Voter, which argues that certain biases pervade the general public against a proper understanding of basic economic concepts. Might this type of misleading imagery also be a factor?