That's just context. I found this sentence in his blog post about the article remarkable:
"If I were a “Progressive” I would not deny the facts that Mark and I report in our essay. I would, instead, trumpet and celebrate these facts, insisting that they are the happy and as-promised results of government programs and institutions such as Social Security, Medicare, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, rarely broken streams of deficit financing since the late 1960s, the ITC’s diligence in protecting Americans from dangerously low-priced (“dumped”) imports, and on and on."I do not make this stuff up about Don. This is how he actually thinks. He actually thinks that liberals think the market and entrepreneurs are chopped liver.
As I alluded to in my post on Sarah Skwire's take on how to advocate libertarianism, half the problem with arguing with these guys is disabusing them of the idea that we have a beef with the market! I swear, you breath one word of interesting market failures worth thinking about and they think you've abandoned the whole damn thing!
Posts
Daniel, some liberals DO have a beef with the market. Anyway that's not the implication of Boudreaux's comment. I think it's addressed at those who say "Sure the market produces wealth and income but not so much welfare, beacuse it only rewards a few, and that it is the interventions which spread the benefits."
ReplyDeleteOne of the tough things about the economics blogosphere is that its unclear who is being addressed (the fact that this is on a WSJ article makes it tougher). People interested in economics? People in general?
DeleteIf the audience is people interested in economics (which I usually assume it is), I think it's fair to say that barely anyone except some very eccentric Marxists have a problem with markets or don't recognize that voluntary exchange generates consumer surplus and welfare.
If the audience is broader than that you could get more people who make that assertion. My view is that that gets beyond what we usually call "liberal" and into "leftist" - the Bernie Sanders sort. But even Bernie Sanders recognizes that market exchange produces wonderful things! So I have a hard time accepting this criticism.
I don't read complaints about how fat cats benefit from the market as the same as claims that the market produces no good. Why don't I read it that way? Because if it was meant to be read that way I'd assume they'd say it that way. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
A good indication of where political liberals are is to look at their proposals. There doesn't seem to be any sign at all that they think the market is not producing value because the market is a major part of the social vision of American liberals.
Daniel,
DeleteCan you give a cite of Bernie Sanders saying "that market exchange produces wonderful things?"
Daniel,
DeleteCan you give a cite of Bernie Sanders saying "that market exchange produces wonderful things?"
I'm inferring based on the fact that he only ever talks about selected interventions (more extreme interventions to be sure, but selected) that he thinks the market is producing good results elsewhere.
DeleteIsn't that a decent inference?
The trouble with looking for quotes from politicians is that their job is to think about whether or not we should do certain policies. So the quotes you're going to find are going to concern policy areas. You are less likely to find them talking about the general value of markets because that's in someone else's bailiwick. So it's a lot easier to find you or me making quotable statements about how good markets are. I don't think you can infer from that that others don't agree.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence :)
And when it comes to non-economists who are not concerned about policy you're hard pressed to find a quote about either the market or politics, for obvious reasons!
He is addressing stagnationistas who are largely progressives. Of course, there are exceptions.
Delete"I really don't caricature Don Boudreaux. This is what he actually thinks." and Boudreaux would be right! Pethakoukis could hardly be considered a libertarians. Leave the liberarian bashing out of this post.
As ever I cannot respond in-line. Don refers to Progressives, capital P. I think that means the Mother Jones type, those who identify themselves (and derive their moral worth from) their identification with The Cause. It's more specific than a lower p progressive or the word-not-used "liberals". They might be a small group but I do think they are Don's target.
ReplyDeleteMaybe... Mother Jones never seemed particularly anti-market to me, but they've only been on my blogroll for maybe two months so I haven't been regularly following them that long.
DeleteAgain - there's a big difference between "there are some things about the market I don't like" and "I think human welfare is derived from government". I doubt there are any Mother Jones types that say the latter. The difference between me and the Mother Jones types is that their list of things about the market they don't like is longer than mine.
And you would be wrong!
DeleteI think you need to stop trying to engage the Libertarians. They are not worth the effort.
ReplyDeleteHe has been trying without showing any signs of improvement in engagement skills :-)
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"there's a big difference between "there are some things about the market I don't like" and "I think human welfare is derived from government"."
ReplyDeleteThis is a false dichotomy. Governments create markets through laws and regulate them with agencies. Governments choose winners and losers in a "free" market by setting the market rules. It often gets recursive, with market actors getting their fingers into legislation, but this is self destructive when it gets beyond an advisory basis.
Every functional government in the world makes decisions about what will and won't be allowed over its borders and tries to enforce these rules. It's an essential part of the definition of sovereignty.
Our systems of commerce are derived from government. What changes from government to government is the grammar of the commands and the nature of the consequences of disobeying them.
Daniel, a word:
ReplyDeleteI'd advise some caution when using the word "welfare", which I take it you are using to mean "well-being." Its use as a pejorative reference to social insurance and income support programs is probably more common, and will be the first association many readers have.
I dissent from the consensus here. "Welfare", as in, level of available consumption and leisure, is not what matters to any given person's sense of dignity and happiness. Relative welfare is what matters. We can see this in studies of happiness across different countries. People in Algeria or Cambodia or wherever -- even if they are objectively speaking worse off than middle class people in the US, view themselves in relation to their countrymen. If they are better off than average, they are content. Nobody compares their well-being to some "objective" baseline of subsistence or historical consumption levels or whatever, because only anthropologists and historians know anything about that. Hence, even were Boudreaux correct, which he's not, income inequality would still pose a problem.
As for "markets" being good or evil inherently... eh, this is just silly. They can be used for good or ill, often both at once, like any tool people have devised.
Daniel, One thing to keep in mind is a potential difference in audience. For example, if you spend most of your time in philosophy departments, the idea that those on "The Left" are hostile to markets is a very reasonable assumption. Think G.A. Cohen, Rawls (although not explicit in ATJ, his condemnation of markets is on display in his later works), strong egalitarians, deliberative democrats, global egalitarians, etc. Think also sociology and social theory. This is not a defense of Don Boudreaux, I do not know him nor read his blog. It is easy for mental slippage, to equate all "Liberals" with the dominant views in contemporary liberal-egalitarian-communitarian political philosophy (yes, liberal-egalitarians have internalized some of the communitarian critique).
ReplyDelete