Are they diluting Rand, or is this really all that Rand said?

I started Atlas Shrugged and couldn't get past the first hundred pages. It was years ago (back when I considered myself more of a libertarian), but I remember it just being a very dull read.

A trailer for the Atlas Shrugged movie is out, though, and I find it interesting to watch, not knowing all the ins and outs of the plot myself: a railroad is facing trouble; it wants to buy better inputs from a supplier that makes a superior product; competitors don't like that supplier; government doesn't like and wants to hamstring that supplier; the supplier gets annoyed by obnoxious family members; the supplier and the railroad company owner are impressed by truly impressive inventions; individuals resist a government that tries to boss them around.



Is this all? I thought it was supposed to be more distinctly libertarian than that. This seems to be a plot that anyone that's not a Marxist can appreciate. Am I missing a fundamental plot element? A while ago I noted a tendency for people to commit what I called a "presumption of ideological orthogonality". The presumption of ideological orthogonality is when people say "I adhere to X-sim, and I believe X, so those people who do not adhere to X-ism and who I disagree with must believe not-X". In reality, belief systems are not orthogonal. They have considerable overlap. A great example I like to point to is The Communist Manifesto. The average mainstream person usually agrees with six or seven of the ten planks of The Communist Manifesto. Does that make them a Communist? Of course not. Belief systems are not orthogonal and just because I think it's probably reasonable to outlaw child labor and have a progressive income tax, I'm not a Communist because I still don't think the means of production should be own collectively.

What does this have to do with Atlas Shrugged? Well, given what I see in the trailer (and a little review on Wikipedia) of a plot I've never been that invested in learning about, I'm totally on board with Reardon, Galt, and the rest of them and I'm not a fan of the government in the book or Reardon's whiney family. Does that make me a Randian? I would imagine not. So why is this considered so revolutionary and libertarian? Is there an underlying plot line I'm missing? Is all the uniqueness and Objectivism crammed in that one speech that everybody quotes?

If the government acted like that, and if our whole society was so suspicious of individual achievement like that I (and a lot of other non-libertarians and non-Objectivists) would consider "going Galt" too!!!

And I have one lingering question... what would Stephan Kinsella have to say about the IP rights that Hank Rearden claims to Rearden Metal? Hmmmm...

Happy Birthday Darwin!!!

The man revolutionized how we view ourselves. We see ourselves as much more a part of the world we inhabit after Darwin than we did before him. It's a little presumptuous, but I think it's still fair to say that we are the pinnacle of evolution thus far, but we are still part of a process that produced all the life we see. We're all connected, and that is an important thing to know as we approach life. Darwin was not the first to suspect this, of course. But he also gave us a way of thinking about processes that produce order. Order emerges because order survives adversity. Evolutionary thinking has spread to almost every other field of inquiry because of the power of this idea.

One of my favorite posts from just over a year ago is on Evolution and the Pitfalls of Teleological Thinking, which may be of interest to people on Darwin's birthday.

*****

I also can't help pointing out a Keynes-Darwin connection. John Maynard Keynes's younger brother, Geoffrey, ended up marrying Charles Darwin's granddaughter. They had a son - Richard Darwin Keynes - who assisted in biological research that lead to a Nobel Prize for the primary investigator, Alan Hodgkin. Richard Darwin Keynes also spent a lot of his career studying and collecting information on his great-grandfather's voyages. In addition to this work on his great-grandfather, Richard helped to edit a volume on his uncle - John Maynard Keynes, and his relationship with Lydia Lopokova.

This is John Maynard Keynes on Darwin in The End of Laissez-Faire (1926):

"By the time that the influence of Paley and his like was waning, the innovations of Darwin were shaking the foundations of belief. Nothing could seem more opposed than the old doctrine and the new - the doctrine which looked on the world as the work of the divine watchmaker and the doctrine which seemed to draw all things out of Chance, Chaos, and Old Time. But at this one point the new ideas bolstered up the old. The economists were teaching that wealth, commerce, and machinery were the children of free competition - that free competition built London. But the Darwinians could go one better than that - free competition had built man. The human eye was no longer the demonstration of design, miraculously contriving all things for the best; it was the supreme achievement of chance, operating under conditions of free competition and laissez-faire. The principle of the survival of the fittest could be regarded as a vast generalisation of the Ricardian economics. Socialist interferences became, in the light of this grander synthesis, not merely inexpedient, but impious, as calculated to retard the onward movement of the mighty process by which we ourselves had risen like Aphrodite out of the primeval slime of ocean.

Therefore I trace the peculiar unity of the everyday political philosophy of the nineteenth century to the success with which it harmonised diversified and warring schools and united all good things to a single end. Hume and Paley, Burke and Rousseau, Godwin and Malthus, Cobbett and Huskisson, Bentham and Coleridge, Darwin and the Bishop of Oxford, were all, it was discovered, preaching practically the same thing - individualism and laissez-faire. This was the Church of England and those her apostles, whilst the company of the economists were there to prove that the least deviation into impiety involved financial ruin."

Keynes's critique of the way Darwin was used here should be familiar to anyone that knows about the debates over "Social Darwinism". It also shouldn't be surprising, given the tremendous influence that the moral philosophy of G.E. Moore had on Keynes. Social Darwinism is practically a textbook case of the "naturalistic fallacy", which Moore discussed at length in a Principia Ethica (1903), a guiding work for Keynes and the entire Bloomsbury Group. Darwin emphatically rejected what would become popularly known as Social Darwinism in his 1882 book The Descent of Man.

Keynes links and an idea

1. - This is really cool - NPR tests Keynes's "beauty contest" idea with cute animals, and the results illustrate Keynes's point perfectly:

2. - Brad DeLong points us to Jason Zweig, who challenges people to find confirmation of two attributed Keynes quotes (one of which graces the title panel of this blog): (1.) "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent", and (2.) "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?". I think the whole exercise is a little odd, although it's nice for Zweig to bring attention to these two quotes. Nobody ever claimed Keynes wrote either of these down anywhere, so why is Zweig asking for that sort of proof? They both came up in conversation - the latter is from Roy Harrod's biography of Keynes, so I suppose it's worth checking out how Harrod cites the personal interviews he did for the blog. But ultimately these are going to be recollections of conversations. That doesn't seem like a good reason to assume he never said it. Robert Skidelsky apparently thinks both quotes are "apocryphal". I'm curious why he's so confident about that. Does anyone know?

3. - Mark Thoma shares a quiz. An unnamed Republican compares the Democrats to (1.) Mussolini, (2.) Marx, and (3.) "Lord Keynes, with his perpetual government spending, deficits, and inflation". The quiz is to guess the Republican that said it. The first sentence gave it away for me. See how you do, with that hint.

*****

My thought: So I got the official acceptance letter from American University that I alluded to earlier. I'm not sure if I'll go there for my PhD, but the point is I'll definitely be going somewhere in the Fall. I'm pretty sure I'm going to stop the blog at that point because I can really get wrapped up in it, particularly with the unstructured time that school affords. I don't want to completely end my online presence, though. One idea I've been toying with is to start a website with a less frequent blog on it on Keynes and Keynesian thought in general.

If you do a google blog search on "John Maynard Keynes" (which I often do to find interesting material to post), 95% of it is highly critical stuff, most fairly unintelligent, and some of it downright offensive. This isn't the case with, say, a google blog search on "Hayek". You don't have a substantial anti-Hayek web presence (and I'm not saying I would want to see one!), and most of the internet activity around Hayek is very positive. It's the internet, of course, and you still get a wide range of quality. But Hayek fans can be fairly happy with what a curious googler would turn up. I'm very bothered by the fact that a curious googler would not get a fair picture of Keynes (the same is true of youtube - Keynes haters dominate youtube searches on Keynes).

Part of the reason for this is that a lot of good Keynesians out there aren't especially interested in history of thought - which is fine - but it means that they don't post on Keynes himself much or the evolution of Keynesian ideas. I'm reading Thomas Kuhn now and from a Kuhnian perspective this is the mark of good science. Scientists operate within and challenge and innovate on their paradigm. They don't spend time digging up the history of their paradigm, which is why the Keynesian bloggers that are out there don't spend a ton of time covering Keynes himself. I want to be an economic scientist like this, of course. I have purely scientific interests. But I also have an interest in the history of thought, and I think that's something I could really contribute to with an internet presence. There are lots of posts on here that I'd like to develop into fuller essays (Keynes's German foreword; Consumptionism and Keynesianism; the relationship between overproductionist ideas and Keynesianism, etc.) that might one day be appropriate for a journal. I could post those sorts of longer essays, provide lots and lots of links, etc. It would be slower paced than a blog, and more of a depository of information. Sort of like Greg Ransom's www.hayekcenter.org except probably even less like a blog than that, and without the editorializing he does, but with the same sort of topical narrowness and half-academic/half-popular postings. Do people think this would be useful?

Thomas Edison was a bastard...

...long live Nikola Tesla.

Argue me out of this disposition - I'm unashamed to say it's a relatively sophomoric one. But it is a disposition I have nonetheless.

The Paul Hearing

(HT David Henderson) Leaving for work now and only part way through it. It is a charade, as many on here expected. Rep. Clay was presented as takng cheap shots at DiLorenzo, but upon actually hearing him I think he did a great job. Not only did he criticize DiLorenzo's own work, but he also took on the methodological peculiarities of the Austrian school. The conclusion was beautiful: "I don't know why you were asked to testify but I do know I don't have any questions for you".

I know I'm going to sound like a knee-jerk liberal here, but I was actually pleasantly surprised by Josh Bivens. I haven't always been impressed by EPI economists, and this guy (like the other two) doesn't do much work in monetary economics. His testimony, though, demonstrated a good grasp of the issues. There are economists out there that would have been better than all three of these, but he did alright.

This is all quite disappointing - not an impressive start for Rep. Paul.

Gene Callahan and Stickman on Math in Economics

Gene Callahan takes on Murray Rothbard and stickman channels Paul Krugman, critiquing the math-haters and Luddites. It's extremely fashionable to be down on math today, particularly among bloggers (a medium that perhaps caters to math skeptics???). Unfortunately, fashionability isn't a good measure of utility and math will always be essential for clarifying the messiness and confusion of human language. They're partners, not enemies. Math clarifies language, language translates math into intuition, etc. It's an iterative, constructive process.

The funniest thing is that the deductive logic partisans don't even seem to realize that logicians utilize math all the time for just this reason. The philosophers of math out there aren't German idealists or post-structuralists, after all!

I shared this with stickman, which I think readers will appreciate:

"This past fall I was at a conference with Richard Freeman and I was talking to him after dinner. He told me something I think you'd like.

He said that whenever you see anything by him where the math is extremely dense, he's probably talking about something he's not very confident about or that he fully understands yet. He said that when he starts to think about a problem he writes it all down formally. As he continues to work through it the math becomes more elegant and readable and he is able to focus on the key elements of the model. When you come across a paper of his that is easily readable it's usually a more mature idea. He's fully digested the insights from the math so he can express the intuition in words, and he's also had the opportunity to clean up the model a little. But he only gets there by thinking the models through several times and trying to figure out the intuition behind the model."

This is really cool...

A project called California's Living New Deal, which acts as a sort of archive/resource/historic preservation society for New Deal projects in California. Does anyone know if any other states have this sort of program?

A gripe about Ron Paul, or "Why not invite Doris Kearns Goodwin? It would make as much sense and be less inflammatory"

...and this hearing on monetary policy. Am I wrong to find the way Congressional hearings are run completely obnoxious?

First, the title of the hearing sounds like the title of a middle school science project

I also hate the witnesses they bring to these things. People have complained about Thomas DiLorenzo of the Mises Institute because of his sympathies for the Confederacy. South of D.C., it isn't all that absurd to hear equivocating on this, but it's usually pretty muted and qualified. DiLorenzo cannot be described as "muted" or "qualified" and is probably an embarassment to many even in Alabama, where the Mises Institute is located. But let's put aside the Confederate sympathies for the moment - my biggest question is why is he testifying in a hearing on monetary policy? Let's say he wrote an entirely conventional book about Lincoln - how does this qualify him to testify? He's written a variety of other books on other subjects, but the man does not do monetary economics.

DiLorenzo is just the one that's been getting all the attention - but the other two, Vedder and Bivens, aren't particularly impressive either. Vedder is a labor economist and economic historian at Ohio University and AEI that is perhaps best known for a book he co-authored attributing essentially all unemployment to government and unions. The book was not well received, and a good example of the sorts of basic mistakes it makes is proviced by DeLong here. Josh Bivens is an economist at EPI, and he strikes me as no better. The only publications on his website that seem to even touch on monetary policy are (1.) the testimony from this hearing that he posted, and (2.) a piece on Chinese currency manipulation from 2006. He's best known for his work on how globalization hurts American workers.

This is absurd. These three men hail from three of the most ideological think tanks we have in this country. None of them work on monetary policy issues. I don't know the quality of Bivens' work, but I know DiLorenzo and Vedder's work raises eyebrows for a lot of people.

The point is, there are a ton of good monetary economists out there that will give you reasoned answers without the political and ideological spin that these guys are bound to provide (I haven't listened to the hearing yet). But this happens a lot. Congressional hearing representatives are often show-horses, not legitimate witness. I find that obnoxious.

Lovecraft, Me, and Jefferson on Property

"Private control of large resources only exists by accident - as a result of certain past conditions and of public inertia - and is upheld solely by the physical force of the majority. Were this physical force to be withdrawn, the natural resources would again - as in feudal times - be in a state of constant transfer, through force of arms, among groups of the physically strong and shrewdly organised. Capone and his racketeers gave us an idea of the general trend of an unpoliced modern world. Well - the majority have hitherto lent their physical support to existing capitalism because they believed it gave them a better deal than feudalism did. Probably they were right up to about 70 years ago - for the worst pressure of capitalism is its recent pressure, whilst the techniques of industry and economics did not make practical socialism possible till the last two generations. Today, however, the masses do not get as much from the capitalistic order as they would get from feudalism... Sooner or later, the beneficiaries of capitalism are going to lose the physical support of those who have hitherto kept the system in existence. - the physical support of the masses they have neglected, ignored, and evicted from the hope of a livelihood."

- H.P. Lovecraft, October, 1936

*****

Let's forget the concerns about capitalism or claims about socialism for the time being. What I'm intrigued by is this idea of private property as an institution that is maintained by force. It's traditional to think that anybody who tries to take my property is initiating force against me. But the only reason why I can assert this privelege to my property is because I have a gang of hundreds of millions of people putting others on notice that they'll get the crap beat out of them if they try anything. What is the difference between private property and a gang claiming urban territory other than strength of numbers? They assert a monopoly on territory and back it up with force. I assert a monopoly on the goods that I "own" and I back it up with force. There is no difference, really. Maybe that's efficient, but that's not the point. From an ethical stand-point, it's something to grapple with for anyone that sees the violation of property rights as an initiation of force.

The picture becomes more complicated when, like Jefferson and Paine, you introduce the dimension of time. Inheritance allows the appropriation and accumulation of property with no legitimate claim at all. The inheritor didn't work for the property. It's solely his by virtue of the pact of violence between him and society to bash the skulls of anyone else who would claim it. What is the difference between the heir and the non-heir that warrants the award of property to the heir? Sheer luck of birth, and nothing more. Add on top of that the fact that over time, property rights offers a perfect money laundering scheme. At least one branch of my family owned slaves - they owned human beings like livestock - and they derived advantages from that, and I enjoy advantages from that. If I held slaves today against the law and derived benefits from that, the state could take those benefits back from me (and then some). But because of the property pact, no one will ever challenge my right to the benefits won for me by my slave-driving forefathers. It is mine.

I'm not advocating the overthrow of capitalism, but when you really think about it, it all gets awfully hazy. It would be like asserting the overthrow of Mubarak is unethical because they challenged his right to rule, when the right itself was only ever enjoyed because he had powerful friends willing to be violent on his behalf. The very nature of society is to coerce. What we know as social institutions are the frameworks that other human beings that I've never met would use violence, shunning, ostracism, and the withholding of favor to enforce. When I say "I own this", what I mean is "I would normally have to defend this with force if I wanted to use it but I have three hundred million people who will defend it for me, so I can just assert my possession without putting anything on the line". All social life is about power and coercion. The exercise of the fruits of that coercion - the exercise of rights - can't be thought of as the opposite of coercion. Liberty is not the opposite of coercion, so what is it? Liberty is the arrangement of these coercions in a way that is consistent with human dignity and human potentiality.

The myth of natural rights is a convenient myth, and a nice mental device, but it introduces the very problematic idea that rights are things-in-themselves which human conduct is measured against. If you believe in natural rights, a violation of liberty is twisted into that which alters or departs from rights. Liberty is conceived of as the state of life which follows from adherence to rights. The reality is just the opposite. Rights must be arranged to promote, approximate, or approach liberty, and not the other way around.

And an arrangement that is quite successful - the best we have so far - is a system of private property, with adequate social organization to support those who suffer in that arrangement through no fault of their own. That is a system that maximizes dignity and our potentiality (socialism would not do this for the obvious reaons). This was the Jeffersonian vision of liberty:

"That the earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. If the society has formed no rules for the appropriation of its lands in severalty, it will be taken by the first occupants. These will generally be the wife and children of the decedent... But the child, the legatee or creditor takes it, not by any natural right, but by a law of the society of which they are members, and to which they are subject. Then no man can by natural right oblige the lands he occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the paiment of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might during his own life, eat up the usufruct of the lands for several generations to come, and then the lands would belong to the dead, and not to the living, which would be reverse of our principle."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1789

"Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right"

-Thomas Jefferson (proto-Keynesian), 1785

Letters to the editor...

I want you tall to know it took an incredible amount of self control to link to this here, and not in one of Don Boudreaux's own blog posts.

It might be too much of an inside joke. Nevertheless, it is one I enjoyed.