Pessimism—A Property of Lack of Understanding?

Psychologically, what mechanism might help account for why and how some people hold pessimistic views about matters of political economy? Certainly there are social factors impinging on people's thinking but given social factors, why exactly are some people more pessimistic about matters of political economy that are others? For example, Matt Ridely is a "Rational Optimist" and certainly expresses a pro-freedom ideologic framework whereas by comparison, Naomi Klein or even Paul Krugman seem to be inclined to view society as having serious problems that need correcting. Certainly neither believes in more free activity as the solution.

For example, read Al Gore, Noam Chomsky, Al Franken, Naoimi Klein, Michael Moore, Barbara Ehrenreich, and perhaps the talk of many politicians, and the common sentiment seems to be one of pessimism. Society has big problems that require big governmnent. Take their pessimism as a given. Compare them to Russ Roberts, Don Boudreaux, Matt Ridely, Milton Friedman, Julian Simon, whomever of the free market types all who seem to be optimistic about human progress to the extent it is free. Take all that as given. The question is to explain how pessimism arises in human political economic thought.

Is pessimism a cause of pro-government thinking? Or does pro-government thinking look for and see problems and so result in pessimism? I think neither is the case. Could we investigate a variety of people's thinking to find out more about its forms and origins?

There may be a deeper reason that lies in a relatively undeveloped understanding of the fundamentally constructive aspect of human activity. Perhaps a view of human activity, particularly "unfettered" activity (pro-government thinking may prefer "unfettered" to "free" in typifying activity), that believes it to need constant oversight and guidance in order to result in proper development. Thus, the failure of society to provide good things necessarily is tied to lack of oversight and control over human activity. Human activity cannot be self-directed, self-regulating, or endogenously developmental in any constructive manner since its many forms can only come from some external source that imposes it on activity. There has to be some agent who is the source of order. How else to explain how order arises?

Such is my hypothesis. We might wonder then if pro-government types significantly differ in their level of pessimism compared to pro-freedom types. Is the world doom and gloom or are things getting better? And if pessimism is only an artifact tied to one's explanatory ideology for how the world works.

If pessimism correlates with pro-government thinking, then we will want to investigate the two views (perhaps the extrema of a pro-government/pro-freedom scale) to see whether the kind of theoretic understanding each uses in attempting to explain how societal development operates itself may moves toward explaining the source of pessimism/optimism.