Tyler Cowen has picked his metaphor well just as Oakeshott did. If we look at it a bit, I think you will see that it is a brilliant metaphor.
We can leave a mess just like we can leave a park but we don't do so with the same attitude. A park is a place we visit and no one will condemn us for ignoring the park for a while. It's very different if we ignore a mess. And when we talk about leaving a mess we say things such as "running away from the mess".
Tyler Cowen is an economist and he is very interested in behaviourial economics. A mess is a good metaphor for him because our economic lives are not like history. We live here in the mess. There is a moral obligation to "face the mess". With the park, the moral of* the metaphor suggests we go to this place and act frivolously. With the mess, the moral of the metaphor suggests that we are trying to escape something if we can't face our mess.
* And yes, after praising Cowen for several posts, I just slipped the first critical jab in here like a picador quietly stirring the bull up for slaughter. The sharp implement was "the moral of".
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