*Apologies to Mark Haddon, Mark Wahlberg (should you for some reason stick around until the “Suggested Reading“, et. seq.) – and Readers Like You
Now with BOLD Itemized Subheads!
Bestriding the narrow world of Liberty this Murray Christmas season like a Santified Claussus, the Great Pale Whales here @ DSL. HQ stream to you in reel time the following bits of gill-filtered party-platform plankton, courtesy of Google News searches on leading libertarian lights:
Catoliers & Rockheads:
At TIME magazine’s “Curious Capitalist” economics blog, Justin Fox – who is not a Cajun chef stirring gumbo for Rupert Murdoch – asks, before multiple postscripts, “Must a journalist listen to the true believers in Austrian economics?
To which the Austrian-American thinker-thanker Llew RockTheCasRothbahrdwell.com replies at the TIMEless blog at which he LRCs: Your mother wears Red Army boots. And she dresses you funny. And that goes double for you Catovars, Koch-heads, and liberteenaged, hippie-hairy reasoners who won’t get with the CBS/Irish/Austro-/Cossack Paley O’Libertarian pogrom:
To which Fox replied Justin TIME yesterday, with a post titled “Tyler Cowen: Statist, anti-Rothbardian agent of the Kochtopus“:
As one such very white rabbit indeed – who thrilled as a bunny to the sword-dropping tales of The Three Pelleteers, and who feels as if he has spent aeons since 1978 reeling in both his floppy ears and even floppier disks from such holes – not to mention gathering up his 96 tearcups (Reader, have you had enough of mine? - after Steely Dan.) – I caution anyone bent on venturing unto the underwhirled therein without hell-met head protection…
The Individualist Herd Round the World, or, It Was So Much Newer Then, It’s Older Than That Now, or, So NIR and Yet So Far
Aging libertarian scholars who pass at least one old-grey-whisker test will recall The New Individualist Review (1961-1968), the greatest of all postwar free-market journals from within green campus quadrangles, edited by a succession of graduate students at the University of Chicago editorially and academically advised by Milton “Uncle Miltie” Friedman (who wrote the Introduction to the Liberty Fund full-run bound edition, whose 1024 pages I recommend you buy, used, for peanuts before you log off for the night – unless, of course, you’d rather peruse the free online version, in multiple formats, provided by the Liberty Fund), F.A. “Road to Serfin’ USA” Hayek, and the revered trad-con lit-prof Richard M. “Ideas Have Consequences” Weaver (who died in 1963, two years into the NIR’s seven-year run), the first two, of course, among the Nobelist economists the Swedish Academy has ever roped and black-tied. One of those student editors, professor Ronald “On Rye” Hamowy from Canada, has recently edited a mammoth work of reference cognate with his life’s work. John J. Miller of National Review has interviewed both Hamowy and another scholar of liberty who needs no introduction:
Today, we have two brand-new podcast interviews:
Fan-favorite Thomas Sowell, author of a revised and enlarged edition of Applied Economics. He says that we all need to get beyond “stage one” thinking. Listen to the interview to find out what he means.
Ronald Hamowy, editor of the massive and massively interesting new book, The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. We discuss everything from what defines a libertarian to why there are entries on Edmund Burke, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Ron Paul to what it was like to study under Hayek.
Brian Doherty, himself no stranger to market-clearing doorstops, links at reason’s popular “Hit and Run” blog to one review of Hamowy’s work:
In the December/January issue of the American Spectator, reason contributor Jeremy Lott reviews the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. He wonders why such an encyclopedia avoids giving an authoritative definition of the very term to which it is devoted, and accurately notes many of the tensions inherent in an intellectual movement that manages, with varying degrees of comfort, to encompass both Adam Smith-style classical liberals and Murray Rothbardian anarchist radicals.
For much, much more on the topic, consult my own narrative take on libertarianism’s history, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.
Classified Dad, or, He Who Lists First Lists Blessed
Speaking of reasonable Ms.agreements, a lady medic from that freedium-cool hospital’s Katherine Mangu-Ward profiles and interviews the founding father of one of the Internet’s signature web sites, with a teaser-lead indicating that this is not your maiden-auntie’s auntie-Statism:
If you’re an American urbanite under the age of 30, Craig Newmark has probably helped you or someone you know get a job, get a sofa, or get laid.
Ahem. Full disclosure: as one who has himself gotten quite lucky indeed via craigslist, recently – and has the comedy-loving landlord down the hall anything but miserly with his beer and his refrigerated leftovers to show for it – I must flash my dogtags as a newborn infantryman in Craig’s Newmarket Army (Band). Those of you in search therein of jobs and/or sofas and/or fellow c-listers both hot and tech-savvy enough to share one or more of the latter with you after you text each other silly, are on your own. The Mangu-Ward sans frontières applies further triage to the pixelaiden geeks baring GIFs:
Newmark, 55, is the founder of Craigslist, the massively popular classified ads website. He’s also a member of a loosely affiliated fraternity of power geeks, along with figures such as Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, PayPal’s Peter Thiel, and Google’s Larry Page.
What do these guys have in common? Newmark calls it “nerd values,” the drive to earn a comfortable living doing something geeky and then use the money to do some good. Newmark’s extracurricular activities include pushing for greater government transparency via the Sunlight Foundation and helping Barack Obama formulate tech policy.
But the power nerds have something else in common too: Many of them use the word libertarian when describing their politics, though usually hesitantly and always with multiple caveats. They see themselves as part of an entrepreneurial class; they like openness and voluntary cooperation; they tend to be skeptical of top-down power structures. But they also see themselves as something new, a little different from the categories that came before…
Counter-Cynical Stimulus Wreckage, or, Pump-Priming Irony
“Finally tonight” – after the cue of your local blow-dried anchor @ 11:27 pm (10:27 Central) – Louis “If You Should Ask” Uchitelle, finance columnist at The New York Times, provides up-to-the-timestamp evidence that, like their ancient cousin Hope, in all her Audacity, grid-ironic Keynesian Charlie Browns fall eternal, wind-knocked flat on their backs thanks to the Lucy-goosies of the Washington T-Bills propping before them the Big Green Political Footballs whose snatched withdrawals just before the economy is about to kick off toward the M-zone portend years of grueling fiscal therapy:
Economics as the dismal science? Not in some quarters.
In the midst of the deepest recession in the experience of most Americans, many professional forecasters are optimistically heading into the new year declaring that the worst may soon be over.
For this rosy picture to play out, they are counting on the Obama administration and Congress to come through with a substantial stimulus package, at least $675 billion over two years.
They say that will get the economy moving again in the face of persistently weak spending by consumers and businesses, not to mention banks that are reluctant to extend credit.
If the dominoes fall the right way, the economy should bottom out and start growing again in small steps by July, according to the December survey of 50 professional forecasters by Blue Chip Economic Indicators. Investors seemed to be in a similarly optimistic mood on Friday, bidding up stocks by about 3 percent.
But in the absence of that government stimulus, the grim economic headlines of 2008 will probably continue for some time, these forecasters acknowledge.
“Without this federal largess, the consensus forecast for 2009 is for the recession to continue through most of the year,” said Randell E. Moore, executive editor of Blue Chip Economic Indicators, which conducts the monthly survey of forecasters.
Many economists are more pessimistic, of course. Nouriel Roubini at New York University, who called the 2008 market disaster correctly, wrote in a recent commentary on Bloomberg News that he foresees “a deep and protracted contraction lasting at least through the end of 2009.”
Even in 2010, he added, the recovery may be so weak “that it will feel terrible even if the recession is technically over.”
But Mr. Roubini is not among the economists surveyed by Blue Chip Economic Indicators. These professional forecasters are typically employed by investment banks, trade associations and big corporations.
They base their forecasts on computer models that tend to see the American economy as basically sound, even in the worst of times. That makes these forecasters generally a more optimistic lot than the likes of Mr. Roubini.
Their credibility suffered for it last year…
Note to self: when the words “economic” and “forecaster” appear within the same paragraph, stash your strap-on (wallet) beneath your (concealed) holster (check local listings, aka state firearms laws, and 2009 IRS schedules).
Notes:
Since I believe, like the agnostic Mencken on his prepared mea gulp!a to the Recording Angel(s) in the event of an afterlife, after all (”Gentlemen, I was wrong”), in diversification in matters prophetic no less than in those profitic, I have appended my own “stimulus package”, should that Old-Time Keynesian Religion prove less dead in the Long Run than the barbarofSevillous relic for which my fellow Austrian-Americans had taken it – in the form of the phone book of topical tags, at bottom.
Suggested Reading (and Listening)
1. The Free Marketeers by Alexandre Dumass (père)
2. Insider Football for Libertarian Economists, or, You’re a Good Sport, Harry Browne by Lucy Van Pelt Mises
3. Pen-Name Confidential, or, You’re a (George Jerome) Goodman, “Adam Smith” by Miles Coverblown
4. “Guerrillas in the Economist” (single) by Jon Stewart Mills and The Insurgent Generals
5. Dicks Say the Damnedest Things (hypertext edition) by Art Linkladen
6. Syber-Syllabus for Sweathogs by Gabe Linkin’
7. I Am Bike Curious (Chrome Yellow), or, High Pedality, by Lancelot Legstrong
8. Make Jokes Not Terror, by al-Qindah-Gentlah, Forewarned by Osayim pun Laden
9. MAD Magazine presents Broke Barack Montaigne of Debt, or What Worry-Me (Que souci-je?) About the Deficit? by al-Jaffee
10. Surely You’re Choking, Miss Cass!, by Sam Handwich; soup, appetizer, sides of chips and pickles, and Forewarned by John, Michelle and Mackenzie Phillips
11. Shirley, You’re Miscast (And Don’t Call Me, Shirley)!, by Christopher Atkins, Dr. Robert C. Atkins, Halle Berry (accepting royalties for charity is her distant male cousin from an intergalactic gender-equitable essay in cereal monogamy, Alf Ranken-Berry), Linda Blair (on behalf of her council-housing work-release sub-shop chain, The Blairwich Projects) Sofia Coppola, Kevin Costner, Bo Derek (alternate: Derek Bok, former president of Harvard), Cameron Diaz (charity executor for Miss Diaz, cousin Buenos), Leonardo DiCaprio, James Franco, Lindsay Lohan, Madonna, Demi Moore (accepting for Ms. Moore is cousin Stewart “Stew” “Dinty” Moore, past winner, Most Mis-Canned, Scratch-and-Dint-Sale Awards), Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Brooke Shields, Pauly Shore, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, Mark Wahlberg (accepting royalties for Mr. Wahlberg: a pair of boxer shorts, and a DVD compilation of the same, Light-Headyweight Division), Pia Zadora (who, admittedly, was Zadorable as a child, in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians), and George Walker Bush (favored, insiders say, for the Lifetime Misunderachievement Award from the National Film Preservation Board at the Library of Congress…)
I hit the Hit and Run blog daily ad read the Austrian economists, Horwitz is my fav, at least weekly.I find they have much to offer, with a few serious caveats.
First, the religious zeal is a bit annoying. Some of these guys really are nuts. There is no gray in their analysis, everything is so black and white. I think that is seldom true in life or any kind of social science.
Secondly, if I were starting my own country from scratch, I would lean heavily on libertarian principles. That is not where we are now. There are too many groups that would start off with an unequal stock of capital, social and financial.
Thirdly, I have never seen the Austrians, IMO, adequately address the issue of market dishonesty and manipulation (probably my fault and I just missed it). The invisible hand does not work so well if it is being guided by a select few.
History. We were on a gold standard in the past. We had ups and downs and crashes, same as we do now. Yes, I know, the response will be that there was too much government involvement then also. That government interference was often largely at the behest of business. Businesses are political entities also. How do we stop that influence or is that just part of the competition?
Lastly, the world is larger and more complex, with changes faster than Hayek foresaw. There is danger in the pooled resources of government, but there is also strength. In particular, using government for necessary infrastructure, I would include energy and information flow in that category, has potential.
Steve
Of the many short popular introductions to Austrian economics, two of the most venerable and widely distributed are Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, and What Has Government Done to Our Money? by Murray N. Rothbard. I had the good fortune of meeting both authors: Hazlitt (1894-1993), while I was on spring break from college in 1982 (he lived in Wilton, Connecticut, where I graduated high school in 1980), and Rothbard (1926-1995), in 1979 at a Cato Institute seminar at Dartmouth, and again while an economics major at NYU, 1982-1984. You may read or download them for free as linked. The final 1979 edition of the Hazlitt book is just over 200 pages, and contains a helpful “Note on Books” for those wishing further study. The Rothbard pamphlet is around 100 pages, and is one of the best short treatments of the Mises-Austrian theory of money, credit and the business cycle. The five hours or so you will spend reading these two works will pay a lifetime of dividends.
I attempted to thumbnail some key legacies of the Austrian economists back in April 2008, in a comment on an economics thread at another blog, which I here append:
If asked to thumbnail the signature contributions of the “Austrian School” economists – Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Mises, Rothbard – on whom I cut my teeth in the late 1970s, I would include:
1. Methodological individualism: Humans choose from alternative means to fulfill chosen ends, and their relative individual valuations of present consumption over increased future rewards – “time preference” – from the Crusoe level to the complex global economy, determine the structure and stages of production from higher-order capital goods to consumer goods. Human action is not subject to mathematical constants after the fashion of the physical sciences, a grasp of which distinction reveals the error in the sort of “aggregate thinking” characteristic of the modern engineering approach of mainstream macroeconomics.
2. The monetary theory of the business cycle: Money emerges historically through voluntary exchange, as traders seek a universal medium of exchange enabling an escape from the limitations of pure barter: the value-density and utility embodied in gold and silver saw their historic rise to fill this role. Credit developed as those with low time-preference were willing to save for the future rewards promised tomorrow via financing others’ lengthened processes of production. As the politically-driven expansion of the supply of money and credit led by the fractional-reserve policies of central banks expanded the production of capital goods beyond the real demand for the final consumer goods which is their destination in the structure of production, the resulting “malinvestment” reveals itself in the contraction, or liquidation phase, whose delayed reckoning by the authorities prolongs the pain of necessary correction.
3. The failure of central planning: socialism, in centralising all capital goods in the hands of a single agency, the state, lacks the rational means for allocating productive resources provided by the decentralised, equilibrating dynamic of the price system, and the profit-and-loss test, which alone indicate where true demand lies. No central authority can possibly assimilate the constantly shifting bits of local knowledge dispersed among the millions of economic actors on the ground, as socialist planning reveals itself as a literal groping in the dark, requiring pervasive coercion to sustain itself with any efficiency. Thus the state’s monopoly of the means of production must logically extend to labor, i.e., virtual slavery, as dreams of total liberation bear fruit in total coercion. In an inversion of Marxian prophecies of capitalist doom, the contradictions revealed over the course of socialist development prove irresistible, and every glimmer of light through the cracks dangles one more thread which, when pulled, unravels the entire garment sooner or later.
Recommended reading:
Harry Browne: How You Can Profit From The Coming Devaluation. 1970. Still the best brief bestseller depiction of the monetary cycle.
Henry Hazlitt: Economics In One Lesson. 1946, 1962, 1979. America’s most learned, urbane and verbally gifted economic journalist (1894-1993), “One of the few economists in human history who could really write” (H.L. Mencken, who chose him as successor at his American Mercury), ornament over six decades of The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The New York Times, and Newsweek, summarises for the intelligent layman the long-term effects of short-term thinking in the “dismal science.” Hazlitt’s other works, on inflation, Keynesian economics, the welfare state, ethics, thinking, will-power, and literary criticism all repay careful absorption.
Ludwig von Mises: Human Action. 1949, 1963, 1966. The logical implications of the fact that human act to fulfill their purposes in time, economics set in the broadest and deepest historic and philosophic sweep. Socialism. 1922, 1936. A work even his socialist adversaries came to acknowledge, some after seventy years, when he could no longer be ignored. Theory and History. 1957. How Marx, and galaxies of his philosophic cousins afflicted with divers forms of nineteenth-century materialist “scientism”, mistook dreams for reality, in plotting man along courses aping those of atoms and algorithms. The Theory of Money and Credit. 1912, 1935. What goes up, must come down, as state-inflated credit blows balloons destined to shatter eardrums when bursting cannot be avoided forever.
Murray N. Rothbard. What Has Government Done To Our Money? 1963. The finest and most readable short exposition of Austrian-school doctrines on money, inflation and the business cycle, by the most influential disciple of von Mises. America’s Great Depression. 1963. The 1920s: pinnacle of laissez-faire – or embodiment of elbow-deep banking manipulation spawning the debacle of the 1930s? Man, Economy and State. 1962. von Mises’ great Human Action advanced and intensified, with a typology of state intervention and its divers effects. Power and Market. 1970. State interventions from Alpha to Omega, annihilated.
Finally, a word in defense of Robert Heilbroner and The Worldly Philosophers. His social-democrat slant on analytic issues should not blind us to the fact that he was an extraordinarily urbane and gifted writer, impeccably civil toward those with whom he disagreed, and humble enough in a 1990 essay in The New Yorker to admit that Mises was right about socialism. We read his classic work on the lives and ideas of the great economists much as we read Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, Edmund Wilson’s To The Finland Station, or the obituaries in Britain’s Daily Telegraph: for a series of vivid, expertly-stitched, often dreamlike cameos evoking with a storyteller’s gifts the private lives and public times of thinkers whose towers were anything but pure ivory. I recommend it as highly as anything on this list, though for humanist, not doctrinal, reasons. Those inclined to dismiss him out of hand from within the right-wing ghetto do so at risks not just their own – but of those they presume to educate, in any sense worthy of the term deeper than tribalist tub-thumping.
You have convinced me. I have pieced together bits of Austrian theory here and there. I struggled through some Hayek whose writing style, as I remember, was not my favorite. Maybe Rothbard?
Steve