The Contentless Book Review
Well maybe I need to rethink my “Matt Yglesias just misunderstands economics” theme. He enthusiastically links to this review of Thomas Sowell by Alan Wolfe. Go ahead and skim Wolfe’s review; it’s a Star Chamber in prose.
In his big bad book review, Wolfe (by my quick count) lets us know of about maybe three things that Sowell believes. But the majority of the post is dedicated to the tone of Sowell’s writing, of how bad it is. For example:
The more interesting question is how Sowell managed the task of actually writing the thing. Even jeremiads should have their joys; there is something so wonderful about being a writer and a critic that delivering even bad news can be a source of unbearable pleasure. But Sowell takes no joy in anything he has to say: his tone is as dour and depressing as his conclusions. I understand that the man is a conservative, but can’t he crack a smile? Sowell is such a plodder that even sarcasm, conservatism’s reliable and sometimes amusing old ally, is beyond his reach.
Now you would think Wolfe might offer, say, a quotation from the book, but I think we are treated to a grand total of 31 words from Sowell’s 300+-page book under review.
Before you shake your head at Wolfe (and Yglesias’) intellectual dishonesty, keep in mind that I was upset when Tyler Cowen reviewed Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine and quoted from her 31 fewer words than Wolfe did of Sowell. But at least Tyler didn’t dwell on what an awful writer Klein was.
Am I a "Truther"?
The Glenn Beck ambush of Debra Medina raises an obvious question: Am I a “truther”? Since I have been and will continue to be really busy with “real work,” let me throw Free Advice readers some red meat with this post.
First, I absolutely love conspiracy theories, especially when they rely on incontrovertible evidence and when their results are outrageous. For example, you can read about how NASA “obviously” faked the Moon landing, which relies on a lot of things you have seen your whole life. (Not least of which, don’t most of you deep down think the government is too incompetent to send guys to the moon and bring them back–alive?) But then there are websites that go through and debunk all of the Moon-landing-a-hoax points, and it looks pretty good.
Second, I have indeed dabbled in the 9/11 conspiracy stuff. (As Stewie says when someone points out that his breath smells like kitty litter: “I was curious!”) If you’ve never checked it out yourself, let me report that there are plenty of presentations you can see in which the people aren’t obvious nutjobs, playing short of a full deck, out to lunch, etc. etc. (Try this if you want a good start. I haven’t watched that particular video, but the BYU professor is one of the leading “truthers.”)
Third, a few weeks (maybe months, I can’t remember) into my hobbyish investigations, I just gave up. The problem is that I’d hit a point where apparently reputable building engineers would look at the 9/11 footage and say, “See that right there? Only a controlled demolition would look like that.” But then other apparently reputable building engineers would look at the same thing and say, “That could definitely be the result of burning jet fuel.”
On the margin, there was no point in me pushing the analysis deeper. I am already a philosophical anarchist. I am a pacifist and do not believe in violence to achieve ends, so I try to educate people that our present form of government is illegitimate and that there is a better way to organize social relations. But I’m never going to take up arms or do anything else violent, because that would violate my whole philosophy.
My point is, it doesn’t really affect my behavior vis-a-vis the U.S. government whether it planted charges in the World Trade Center buildings, or whether it had advance knowledge of 19 hijackers and let it happen, or whether the official story is basically correct, and the government covered up the evidence to hide its incompetence. In any of those scenarios, my opposition to the activities of the U.S. government would remain the same. I would still write the same articles, give the same lectures, etc.
Here’s why: Even if I had ironclad proof that “9/11 was an inside job,” I wouldn’t go around trumpeting the fact. People who heard me wouldn’t trust me–an economist–with such a claim. And rightly or wrongly, there is a huge negative reaction, even among many other critics of the government, to the “Truthers.” So I would be inviting a lot of negative backlash for no purpose.
What I will do is personally refrain from mocking people who think the U.S. government had something to do with 9/11. If you look into the documentaries etc., I think you too can understand why people who hate the government in the first place, could be convinced. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence, like firemen reporting hearing loud explosions from the base of the buildings etc. well after the initial impact of the planes.
Guilt By Association: How Does One Draw the Line?
When I was in San Jose, at dinner the issue of giving talks to various types of crowds came up. The issue was, is it ever inappropriate (either morally or just strategically) for an antiwar libertarian to give a talk to a particular group?
Obviously we are assuming the speaker agrees wholeheartedly with what he or she will say at the event. But the issue is, should a speaker ever decline an invitation due to the forum?
For example, I wouldn’t give a talk at a Klan rally.
However, Mark Brady pushed us a bit, and said it would be fine for us to give a talk at a Marxist rally, and we agreed. The difference was, there would be no danger of any outsider misinterpreting our talk as a personal endorsement of the group’s activities.
Also, it might be OK to be even at a Klan rally, if it were a debate and you were saying why racial codes or whatever were bad, and your opponent was defending them. In other words, it might be OK (though still iffy) if you were not welcomed by the people at the Klan rally.
Finally, does it affect your answer whether the speaker is being paid, or is promoting a book or something?
Discuss.
Glenn Beck Ambushes Debra Medina
This is very interesting. I was driving to work today and heard the opening of Glenn Beck’s interview with Texas gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina. Right off the bat something seemed a little odd to me. I’m paraphrasing, but he introduced her along these lines:
GLENN BECK paraphrase: “Now just a few weeks ago this person had a scant 4% of the vote. Kay Bailey Hutchison now has y%, and folks you know I’m no friend of Kay Bailey Hutichson–she’s a fine enough woman in her personal life I’m sure–but she’s not what Texas needs to bring America back to the principles of the Founders. So now we have on the line Debra Medina. Debra, thanks for being with us. I wanted you to have the opportunity to introduce yourself to America, since many of us don’t know who the heck you are.”
To repeat, those weren’t the exact words, but I think I captured the spirit of how he introduced her. In particular, I am almost positive that he mentioned her single digit polling from the past, and did not mention what her polling is right now (24% the last I checked, compared to 39% for the front runner). And I know he said she had to be on his show because a lot of people didn’t know the first thing about her.
So he asks her right out of the chute, “Who are you?” Medina gives her stock answer, ripping Perry and Hutchison etc. etc. Then Beck says, “OK, but the question I asked was, who are you?”
So right out of the gate, Beck is getting all hardcore interrogator on Medina. That would be fine, except that Beck wouldn’t have done anything like that with Sarah Palin or somebody else that he liked.
At this point I turned off the radio, because I don’t like conflict and it was making me uncomfortable. Even by Beck’s second question, it was clear to me it was going to be a hostile interview, and Beck was subtly letting his listeners know that this woman was not the Real Deal.
Apparently things just went downhill from there. Beck ambushed Medina with 9/11 Truth questioning. Here’s Lew Rockwell’s take: “Rick “Gardasil” Perry is scared. Ninety minutes after Glenn Beck lied Debra Medina onto his show, through a neocon producer, Perry robocalls went out using the Beck clip. Surely the whole business was coordinated by the Rovians running the Perry campaign.”
To be clear, I don’t know the first thing about Medina, except that Tom Woods wrote a characteristically pugnacious plug for her. I’m not saying she’s awesome or even that I hope she wins. All I’m saying is that when you wonder, “Gee, how come all the politicians–from both parties–seem to be the same?” this is part of the answer.
The thing that disappoints me even more than Glenn Beck (almost certainly) going along with a hit job is that his sidekicks play such a “aww shucks, I’m just here readin’ my Constitution tryin’ to figure all this stuff out” act, when they have to know full well how this all works.
P.S. If anyone from the Glenn Beck show is reading and wants to have me on the show to talk about my books, my email is open. You can even ask me about the time I got cut from the freshman basketball team, I don’t care. Call me!
"Mozart Was a Red": A One Act Play by Murray Rothbard
This is awesome. I can’t figure out how to embed the video but some Friends of the Mises Institute put on Rothbard’s satire of Ayn Rand’s inner circle a long time ago. Check out Jeff Tucker as Nathaniel Branden!!
Fed’s Interventions as Well-Planned as Iraq Invasion
I realize CNBC articles are just about useless in terms of understanding the Fed’s actual actions, but nonetheless why wouldn’t a statement like this concern regular Joes?
The Federal Reserve could begin pulling back its unprecedented stimulus for the U.S. economy by first removing some cash from the financial system and then raising interest rates, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday.
The U.S. central bank has pumped more than $1 trillion into the economy after it slashed benchmark rates to near zero to combat the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
While the economy has grown for the past two quarters, unemployment is at a lofty 9.7 percent. Bernanke made clear the time for tightening monetary policy was still some ways away, even though the Fed’s thinking on its exit strategy had advanced.
“Although at present the U.S. economy continues to require the support of highly accommodative monetary policies, at some point the Federal Reserve will need to tighten financial conditions,” Bernanke said in remarks prepared for a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee.
You get the sense that now the Fed is starting to think about how it will unwind the $1 trillion+ in its interventions. But shouldn’t the Fed already know how it will get out–indeed, shouldn’t the exit strategy (and its ramifications) have been a big consideration before going in?
Mike Munger and Art Carden Need to Study Incentives
Wow! I can’t believe it! In the Washington Post a writer got away with this hard-hitting analysis:
We’re very familiar with a model of Congress in which legislators disagree over policy and that causes them to vote against one another. We’re much more concerned by the idea that they don’t disagree at all, but are simply trying to win the next election.
But the latter does a much better job explaining how congresspeople actually vote. It’s impossible to offer a principled explanation for Republicans who voted for the deficit-financed Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit but attacked the deficit-cutting health-care reform bill as too profligate. Similarly, Republicans routinely raised the debt limit when they controlled the Senate, but they hammered Democrats when they did the same thing last month. But the debt, of course, is the product of many presidents and many Congresses (what’s up, Bush tax cuts of ’01 and ’03?), and Republicans don’t think we should stop paying it.
The problem with believing that Congress runs on ideology rather than electoral interests is that it perpetuates the harmful misconception that legislators of good faith can get together and agree on policy, and that when that doesn’t happen, something has gone wrong, or the policy in question is terribly extreme. We tell the public to expect agreement and then tell them to be disgusted when that agreement never manifests. It’s a recipe for cynicism, and it’s not accurate.
This is how Congress works: The majority party wants to govern. The minority party wants to make the majority a failure at governing. If you want to predict congressional outcomes, you’d do a lot better sticking to those two principles than following the optimistic statements of the media and the bipartisan hopes of the commentariat.
Amen, brother! What do you kids think? Was it Walter Williams? Perhaps a letter to the editor from the indefatigable Don Boudreaux?
Nope, it was Ezra Klein. (Maybe the focus on Republican hypocrisy gave it away.) So how does “our side” respond? Well, we could pat him on the back and give him a Scooby snack, knowing full well we’ll have to spank him tomorrow. Or, we could comb through his archives when he’s been quite naive regarding some obvious lie from Obama or Harry Reid, and bust him on his hypocrisy.
Or, we could be upset that he didn’t explicitly mention the term “Public Choice,” accuse him of getting his silk prancing pony boxers in a slip knot (when in fact it was the person Klein was criticizing who had been upset), and then accuse Klein of being ignorant of economics when I could have written just about every word of Klein’s actual article.
To drop the cute stuff, here’s what happened: Ezra Klein wrote a perfectly fine analysis of what motivates (Republican) Congresspeople. Klein was using a Public Choice analysis but didn’t explicitly use the term. So Mike Munger and Art Carden bit his head off, thinking that Klein believed he was inventing the approach.
I don’t read Klein much, but it wouldn’t shock me if he has heard of Public Choice theory. I certainly didn’t get the impression that Klein thought he was the first person in history to assume politicians are self-interested actors and don’t care about the things they publicly claim to care about.
The reason I’m trying to play fair with Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias is that they are still young and impressionable. If we can just get some solid economic theory into their hands before they get drivers’ licenses, we just might convert them. Talk of overly tight panties and ignorance (when the post was the exact opposite of these things–Klein wasn’t the one who was shocked by McConnell’s vote, and Klein’s post wasn’t ignorant) will only push the young bloggers into the clutches of the compliment-bestowing Keynesians.
Touring San Jose
After being taped for a documentary on the Fed, I went over to San Jose State University to have dinner with David R. Henderson and Mark Brady. (Jeff Hummel was teaching money & banking so couldn’t make it.) On the way to Mark’s office I passed a lecture and thought I recognized the professor and yep, it was Emily Schaeffer talking about the median voter theorem or something along those lines. (I didn’t linger too long, because I thought it might be distracting to Emily to see a guy out in the hall eavesdropping and wonder, “Why is Jason Alexander on campus, and why is he wearing a suit?”) It really struck me just what a libertarian and Austrian-friendly outpost SJSU is.
I don’t have any gossip I can report, except I will say that Jeff Hummel agrees with me that Gene Callahan’s criticism of our Fed-as-counterfeiter argument was silly. So there.
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