Stockman-Bashing Is Seriously Getting Out of Hand
This is really amazing. I had coffee with a young finance guy (just graduating) today and I remarked, “I can’t believe the treatment David Stockman is getting, the proportion of ridicule to actual examination of his arguments. The only analogous thing I can remember is how people treated Ron Paul.”
Seriously, this is insane. Look at this example (HT2 Bob Roddis). Law professor (and apparent expert monetary theorist?) Robert Hockett devotes the majority of his Salon critique to analogizing Stockman to a guy you meet on the subway who casually mentions that he was abducted by aliens. Let me give you a taste, but keep in mind, I’m condensing it; in the original, it’s almost inconceivable how much time the guy spends, developing his goofy analogy.
We’ve all had the feeling: You fall into conversation with some stranger on the subway or bus. Or perhaps you are seated beside him at a concert or some other event. Whatever the venue or circumstance, the conversation goes pleasantly for a while. Your interlocutor makes various interesting observations about this subject or that. He shows himself to experience the world much as do you and most others you’ve known. He might even say something arrestingly perceptive or thoughtful at some juncture during your chat. Then, without warning, it happens: In the middle of a perfectly good sentence he throws in, as a sort of throwaway line or aside, some such observation as, ‘like that time the Venusians performed those experiments on me up on Telos Nine, before taking me back to the Bryant Park carousel and then flying home. (They still call me, you know.)’
Suddenly you feel a bit awkward. Vaguely swindled, even. Your whole conversation, you now realize, has been predicated on a dreadful mistake. And now you don’t know what to do…
Something much like this happened to many of us recently, I suspect, upon reading former Reagan Budget Director David Stockman’s lament in the New York Times. Stockman said much that’s worth saying, especially when said by Republicans. There were denunciations of crony capitalism, for example, and of how ‘too big to fail’s’ become ‘too big to jail.’…
‘Amen, brother,’ I am sure many of us thought, as we read lines like these.
But then it happened. Suddenly Stockman denounced ‘fiat money’ and cursed Nixon for ‘taking us off of the gold standard.’…He cursed Milton Friedman for having preached even disciplined monetary policy. He cursed Social Security and other staples of the good – or at any rate better than savage – society we’ve taken for granted for decades and decades. He cursed public debt like the tribe of austerians now busily dismantling Europe. Then, finally, he called for a complete ‘divorce’ of ‘the market’ and ‘government.’
And so, ‘uh-oh,’ we thought, ‘gotta go … don’t catch his eye.’
This is hard – I don’t want to ‘otherize’ Stockman altogether. But when you hear ‘austerity’ during a debt deflation you hear an idiot. And when you hear ‘gold standard’ you’ve heard as bad as ‘Ayn Rand.’ And when you hear ‘divorce of “the market” from “government”’ you’ve heard … Ayn Rand. You have heard nonsense – complete, utter nonsense.
What then to do?
Maybe you can write an article that focuses on your objections to his arguments? Instead of spending hundreds of words on a hypothetical alien abduction, maybe you can explain why I should listen to a law professor who writes the following as a “truth” that Stockman overlooks?
There is, and can be, no alternative to managed currency (‘fiat money’) – unless we can live with decades and decades of deflation to the point of subsistence-level production, with all of the decades of double-digit unemployment that will entail.
At first I was tempted to ask, if this guy realized that the US has only had a “managed currency” since 1971 (or 1933, depending on how you clock it), at which point we weren’t starting with a subsistence-level economy. But he has to know that, since he’s allegedly schooling Stockman, who of course pointed to these dates as being really bad.
Seriously, just re-read that gem. Not even Paul Krugman would say that switching back to the classical gold standard would lead to subsistence-level production, and I’m not sure he would even agree that it would yield “decades” of double-digit unemployment. And this guy is telling us that Stockman is the analog of a guy claiming to have been abducted by aliens?
For those mainstream-esque economists who never agreed with Ron Paul’s monetary views, and couldn’t understand his popularity with average Joes, this is part of it. Regular people get very suspicious when there is a humongous, apparently orchestrated campaign to remove certain ideas from polite discussion. Or, as this ridiculous Salon article announces to us in its very title: “Reagan aide disqualifies himself from the conversation.”
Thanks for the analysis, Prof. Hockett. I’m always saying that there isn’t a Keynesian in the galaxy that understands Austrian analysis. Thanks to Wenzel, I’ve decided I own that idea. So, every time you think it, send me $20. Every time you tell it to someone else, send me $50.
“. I’m always saying that there isn’t a Keynesian in the galaxy that understands Austrian analysis. “
As I have said, you mean like the Misesian notion of market coordination by flexible prices moving towards their market clearing levels?*
Every mainstream economist and New Keynesian etc. understands this concept, its part and parcel of Walrasian GE theory!
But if you’re Bob roddis, then you don’t understand it: for roddis, apparently it’s NOT a part of Austrian economics. Only something preached by Walrasians!
Bob roddis — ignorant of basic Austrian concepts.
* Salerno, Joseph T. 1993. “Mises and Hayek Dehomogenized,” Review of Austrian Economics 6.2: 113–146, p. 124:
“Mises conceives the market process as coordinative, ‘the essence of coordination of all elements of supply and demand.’ This means that the structure of realized (disequilibrium) prices, which continually emerges in the course of the market process and whose elements are employed for monetary calculation, performs the indispensable function of clearing all markets and, in the process, coordinating the productive employments and combinations of all resources with one another and with the anticipated preferences of consumers.”
Misrepresenting things like always, LK. I’ve already explained myself on this topic at Bill Anderson’s blog.
http://krugman-in-wonderland.blogspot.com/2013/04/borrowing-and-spending-way-to-wealth.html?showComment=1365128087718#c6810180176939919191
No need to get into that here. Except I forgot to mention that you still don’t understand economic calculation.
I notice that whenever an inflationist is exposed as um, slightly uninformed on the topic in which they engage, and Murphy links to it, LK tries to derail the topic like a Keynesian soldier falling onto a live hand grenade to save his comrades.
>As I have said, you mean like the Misesian notion of market coordination by flexible prices moving towards their market clearing levels?
No. Misesian economics is grounded on individual action.
If you’re going to use aggregated concepts like market clearing, price levels, coordination, etc, you have to understand these as actually referring to individuals in cooperation, who seek out their own unique profitable exchange opportunities, and set their own unique individual prices they think are beneficial to their own interests, given their unique preferences, knowledge, and expectations.
As long as humans are free to use their bodies and property, the tendency is for profitable opportunities to be exploited, and for loser ventures to be avoided. Individual action aims at achieving desired individual ends.
Your problem is that you are trying to understand Austrian theory backwards, from the aggregate down to how the aggregate determines the individual. You can’t do that. You have to go from the individual up to the aggregate.
You’re dancing around the perimeter, flinging feces into the arena, getting glimpes of the individual participants, and you’re trying to make sense of the whole thing by way of agrgegated concepts that are not central, but rather subsidiary, to Austrian theory.
The reason you can’t penetrate Austrian insights is because you’re a philosophical collectivist. You have a mental barrier that disallows all truly individualistic concepts from making any sense to you.
It’s why you believe, despite reality to the contrary, that altruism is the primary driver of society, why you believe in the state theory of money, why you hate laissez-faire voluntary cooperation, why you desire violence against individuals who are “rugged”, why you reject individual action (contradiction, by the way), why you don’t understand Austrian theory, why you are fundamentally socialist, and why you are fundamentally anti-reason, and why you are only able to collect information without understanding it.
“You have to go from the individual up to the aggregate.”
So you’re saying social institutions and social structures can have no influence on individuals?
That those imaginary aggregates are just the sum of the individual parts, and every alleged macro phenomenon (if it exists) can be deduced from the action of the individual?
Funny how the Handbook on Contemporary Austrian Economics (2010) announces that Austrian economics now has a new clarified version of methodological individualism that “allows for the causal role of social customs” (Evans 2010: 9) and that recognises that “social phenomena are not strictly reducible to [sc. individuals]” (Evans 2010: 11).
Evans, A. J. 2010. “Only Individuals Choose,” in Peter R. Boettke (ed.), Handbook on Contemporary Austrian Economics. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham and Northampton, Mass. 3–13.
LK:
“So you’re saying social institutions and social structures can have no influence on individuals?”
I am saying that only individuals have effects on other individuals.
I am saying that social institutions are 100% explained by individual behavior.
Adding the word “social” doesn’t change the fact that you’re talking about individuals.
“That those imaginary aggregates are just the sum of the individual parts, and every alleged macro phenomenon (if it exists) can be deduced from the action of the individual?”
Individuals with an “s”.
“Funny how the Handbook on Contemporary Austrian Economics (2010) announces that Austrian economics now has a new clarified version of methodological individualism that “allows for the causal role of social customs””
That is not “new”. Austrian theorists have always rejected the straw man caricature of methodoligical individualism that purports to show it consists of atomistic and isolated individuals.
That isn’t what Mises held, or any of the early Austrians.
It’s funny because the passage you cite on social customs, is immediately followed by a quote from Mises:
“When he [man] is born, he does not enter the world in general as such, but a definite environment. . . Inheritance and environment direct a man’s actions … He lives not simply as a man in abstracto; he lives as a son of his family, his race, his people, and his age; as a citizen of his country; as a member of a definite social group .. . His ideology is what his environment enjoins upon him. (Mises,
1949, p. 46)
“(Evans 2010: 9) and that recognises that “social phenomena are not strictly reducible to [sc. individuals]” (Evans 2010: 11).”
You can’t “recognize” something unless it is true.
Continuing on in the “Handbook”…
“But acknowledging the role of social institutions upon individual choice does not lead to inevitability of action, a lack of free will, or social determinism. On the contrary, the ubiquity of social groups means that a conscious desire over which to subscribe to and when is inevitable. Rather than institutions acting purely as constraints on human choice, they are also its manifestation. Routines, habits and customs are our guideposts, but of our own making since we consent to adopting them. Collective phenomena might well act as an autopilot for some of us, but the ego remains behind the wheel. Perhaps tacitly, perhaps by implicit consent; we choose to let institutions think for us.”
I do not adhere to the atomistic, isolation interpretation of methodological individualism, but I do adhere to the notion that social phenomena are strictly reducible to individuals.
The difference is subtle.
Whatever someone’s behavior in a social setting, to the extent they can be regarded as influenced by such social institutions, nevertheless we must admit that individuals must first *adopt* the ideas, as their own, before they can behave in ways that make the outside observer conclude the social institution influenced the individual.
For every example of interpreting an individual’s behavior as caused in some sense by social institutions, there are nevertheless individuals who refuse or reject the ideas relating to the social institutions. This is explainable only if we use the methodoligical individualism approach.
If one individual blindly and mindlessly adopts the ideas of the surrounding social institutions, that doesn’t prove my actions are determined in this way.
To not think and not critique does not mean that determinism from social institutions is necessary and unavoidable.
I regard free will and determinism as a choice. If you choose not to influence, but to be influenced, then determinism for you is true. If you choose not to be influenced, but influence, then free will for you is true.
“I do not adhere to the atomistic, isolation interpretation of methodological individualism, but I do adhere to the notion that social phenomena are strictly reducible to individuals. “
The second cause introduced by “but” in fact commits you to the first proposition.
If “social phenomena are strictly reducible to individuals”, then you hold the “atomistic, isolation interpretation of methodological individualism” that you claim Austrians reject.
“The second cause introduced by “but” in fact commits you to the first proposition.”
No, it doesn’t at all. You just desire for that to be so, so that you can set up and knock down a straw man.
Mises explains your confusion:
“This methodological individualism has been vehemently attacked by various metaphysical schools and disparaged as a nominalistic fallacy. The notion of an individual, say the critics, is an empty abstraction. Real man is necessarily always a member of a social whole. It is even impossible to imagine the existence of a man separated from the rest of mankind and not connected with society. Man as man is the product of a social evolution. His most eminent feature, reason, could only emerge within the framework of social mutuality. There is no thinking which does not depend on the concepts and notions of language. But speech is manifestly a social phenomenon. Man is always the member of a collective. As the whole is both logically and temporally prior to its parts or members, the study of the individual is posterior to the study of society. The only adequate method for the scientific treatment of human problems is the method of universalism or collectivism.”
“Now the controversy whether the whole or its parts are logically prior is vain. Logically the notions of a whole and its parts are correlative. As logical concepts they are both apart from time. No less inappropriate with regard to our problem is the reference to the antagonism of realism and nominalism, both these terms being understood in the meaning which medieval scholasticism attached to them. It is uncontested that in the sphere of human action social entities have real existence. Nobody ventures to deny that nations, states, municipalities, parties, religious communities, are real factors determining the course of human events. Methodological individualism, far from contesting the significance of such collective wholes, considers it as one of its main tasks to describe and to analyze their becoming and their disappearing, their changing structures, and their operation. And it chooses the only method fitted to solve this problem satisfactorily.” – Mises.
And then Hayek:
“What, then, are the essential characteristics of true individualism? The first thing that should be said is that it is primarily a theory of society, an attempt to understand the forces which determine the social life of man, and only in the second instance a set of political maxims derived from this view of society. This fact should by itself be sufficient to refute the silliest of the common misunderstandings: the belief that individualism postulates (or bases its arguments on the assumption of) the existence of isolated or self-contained individuals, instead of starting from men whose whole nature and character is determined by their existence in society. If that were true, it would indeed have nothing to contribute to our understanding of society.”
“But its basic contention is quite a different one; it is that there is no other way toward an understanding of social phenomena but through our understanding of individual actions directed toward other people and guided by their expected behavior. This argument is directed primarily against the properly collectivist theories of society which pretend to be able directly to comprehend social wholes like society, etc., as entities sui generis which exist independently of the individuals which compose them.” – Hayek.
What Hayek is saying here is that while individuals are no doubt in part determined by their place in society, this knowledge is not sufficient in allowing us to understand social phenomena but from any other approach that methodological individualism.
An closely related analogy might help:
While one can postulate that our brain activity is purely physical and determines our activity, we nevertheless cannot understand why people do what they do but through a telelogical framework that uses as a datum what can be referred to as action. You are responding to my posts, LK, and it is almost certain that you intend for me to understand your behavior as intending to do something, namely, tell me something you think is right, and to convince me that what I think is wrong. You did not intend for me to interpret your behavior as nothing but automatic processes in a strictly materialist framework, this is merely responding to external stimuli in uncontrollable ways.
No, you are understanding your own behavior as goal oriented.
If you had a God’s eye view, then maybe you could see the every workings of every single particle in the body and in the surroundings, such that you can see a purely causal process taking place. But you are your own body, you do not have such a view, and so you can only meaingfully regard yourself and others, as teleologically motivated in the course of argumentation.
It’s the same thing with methodological individualism. While one could postulate the existence of deterministic forces acting on the individual, in order to understand society, it is nevertheless necessary that we consider the individual’s ideas, motivations, preferences, goals, intentions, desires, and so on. You will not be able to understand me by starting from a holistic approach. It’s guaranteed any theory you advance will be falsified. How do I know that? Because if you could know it, you’d be a billionaire.
“If “social phenomena are strictly reducible to individuals”, then you hold the “atomistic, isolation interpretation of methodological individualism” that you claim Austrians reject.”
As you can see, this assertion is demonstrably false. Textbook Austrianism does NOT hold any atomistic, isolated individual interpretation of methodological individualism.
There is a tremendous amount of nuance and subtlety here that requires you to put more thought into it than you have up to this point.
It is pointless citing Hayek, because his views recognise emergent social properties (like spontaneous order) and
Hayek admitted that social whole is “more than the mere sum of its parts” not just in a “trivial” way, but also as relations with the external world and individual parts are fundamentally important.
Hayek’s method is perfectly compatible with Old Institutionalism and Heterodox Keynesianism.
“It is pointless citing Hayek, because his views recognise emergent social properties (like spontaneous order)”
Yay ad hominem tu quoque!
It’s not pointless to cite Hayek for an explanation of methodological individualism, LK. That would be like rejecting Keynes’ arguments on inflation in his book “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” because he later changed his views on inflation.
“Hayek admitted that social whole is “more than the mere sum of its parts” not just in a “trivial” way, but also as relations with the external world and individual parts are fundamentally important.”
“Hayek’s method is perfectly compatible with Old Institutionalism and Heterodox Keynesianism.”
Whatever, his writings on Methodological Individualism explain that it is not the atomism or isolationism caricature it is often viewed as.
Your argument has no bearing on the content of methodological individualism. Both Hayek and Mises are saying the same thing concerning the rejection of atomism. Who cares if one or the other later altered their view? It’s irrelevant to the concept of M.I. itself.
You can’t refute the argument by pointing to what Hayek did elsewhere. Ad hominem tu quoque man, look it up.
Oh come on, MF. Methodological individualism is invalid. Groups are supreme and always act in mysterious macroeconomic ways only understood by post-Keynesains!
The properties of the social world require analysis of human relations (and possibly emergent properties), not just analysis of individuals, even though one must not reify social structures. One need not reify social structures as “something more than an interacting pattern of individuals” when stressing the importance of social relations in economic life (as discussed in Hodgson 2012: 41).
From 15.00, Hodgson discusses the problematic “methodological individualism” approach in economics (see also Hodgson 2007): once “methodological individualists” recognise the importance of social relations, social structures and downwards causation, then the very label “methodological individualism” becomes inaccurate, misleading and invalid.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2013/04/geoffrey-hodgson-on-mirage-of.html
Austrian economics and Ancap are about nothing other than human interaction and social cooperation. Mises pointed out that an anti-social solitary man will be an impoverished criminal but men who recognize the importance of social cooperation and engage in the social function of voluntary exchange pursuant to the division of labor would enjoy peace and affluence. Austrian economics is the study of how peaceful voluntary social cooperation by human beings is superior to a) being bossed around by vicious thugs like LK or b) a solitary life of poverty. In fact, the first order of business of the new Soviet Union in 1917 was to criminalize such peaceful voluntary relationships. In response, Lord Keynes calls Mises an idiot.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2013/04/mises-flunks-evolution-101.html
Socialists and “progressives” completely ignore the empirical evidence of actual REAL WORLD social cooperation which consists of exchange and economic calculation. In fact, they are so convinced of the impossibility and non-existence of social cooperation that they are COMPELLED to inject themselves and their SWAT teams into every conceivable situation to inflict their expertise upon everyone else. They reach for the SWAT team statist gun at the drop of a hat, or the drop of a piece of steak fat on the floor with a dog nearby. Think of their instantaneous response to recessions, school shootings or shortages in our cartelized health care industry.
Ancap is a proposition explaining how peaceful and honest social cooperation is possible. But according to LK and the Keynesians, we never never ever think about social cooperation, just atomized rugged individualism.
“Mises pointed out that an anti-social solitary man will be an impoverished criminal but men who recognize the importance of social cooperation and engage in the social function of voluntary exchange pursuant to the division of labor would enjoy peace and affluence.”
Hey, I got an idea. I should write a book that denounces affluence, and then collect millions of dollars in speaking engagements, book signings, and books sales.
Wait, didn’t someone already do that?
“In fact, they are so convinced of the impossibility and non-existence of social cooperation that they are COMPELLED to inject themselves and their SWAT teams into every conceivable situation to inflict their expertise upon everyone else. They reach for the SWAT team statist gun at the drop of a hat, or the drop of a piece of steak fat on the floor with a dog nearby. Think of their instantaneous response to recessions, school shootings or shortages in our cartelized health care industry.”
Silly Roddis. That isn’t supposed to be spoken about. That’s supposed to be kept on the down low.
What you’re supposed to say is that this desire for violent control is not an priori conviction, grounded in flawed and contradictory premises acquired during one’s upbringing, intellectual development (or degradation, whatever the case may be), and social influences, but rather, it is a value free, unbiased scientific judgment a posteriori, where the evidence confirms that theory and hence allows one to wash one’s hands of such a personal, offensive charge.
How can you possibly perceive order and harmony in the free market when you have thirst for theft and coercion on your mind all the time, communicated via a “save the children and the poor!” banner?
The only way out of it is to spawn a ridiculously anti-real world standard of “pure and perfect competition”, “non-administered pricing”, “non-collusion”, “instantaneous price changes”, “perfect information”, and “perfect foresight.”
Anything less than this Garden of Eden utopia, is grounds for giving humanity the penetance it deserves, and it just so happens that we’re lucky enough that thugs, goons, and other morally unscrupulous criminals are more than willing to wear various badges called the state, Keynesian policy makers, and other bird feather wearing tribal warlord simian behavior, to use destruction to save humanity from itself.
Weaken them, give them a pile of broken windows, reduce their affluence, take by force, that way, they’ll be more likely to buzz around like busy bees, working to repair things, and be distracted so that they don’t find out just who is exploiting them, and if they do find out, brainwash them with fantastical notions that the destruction is benefiting them.
Lather rinse repeat, the parasites get what they want, then they die. The circle of Keynesian life.
He is a lawyer for a reason. He couldn’t make it through a real grad program. Regurgitating things other VIPs said in the loudest possible way, though? Yep, he’s a natural!
…or how Ron Paul treated pretty much everyone that disagrees with him.
No, I agree. When I made fun of him on that facebook comment you commented on the other day, I just marveled at what a grumpy scold he sounded like, completely disproportionate to what I thought was the quality of his argument. However, there are people acting like he’s some kind of lunatic which obviously he’s not – he’s a smart guy.
The way I explained what I think the issue is is that Stockman is ultimately a budget guy. He’s a politician and a businessman and he’s got the mind of an accountant. The problem with that in this context is that you can’t just approach the budget with the mind of an accountant – you have to consider the macroeconomic consequences of the federal budget as well, and accountants don’t always make good macroeconomists. Monetary policy is even farther afield. And that, I think, is where Stockman bit off more than he could chew.
But some of these criticisms have gone beyond “he’s making a bad argument” and into “he’s a lunatic” territory, and he’s definitely not that.
He’s also great in that he stood up to others in the Reagan administration on budget issues he disagreed with. He’s referred to as a “Reagan administration official” through all this, but he wasn’t some kind of hack or yes-man.
For those that don’t have the pleasure of being my friend on facebook, I had said that Stockman is like that crazy old uncle everyone has only he has the connections to get published in the NY Times. In the comments, though, I laid out pretty much the case that I made above.
The same can be said about most of his recent critics.
But nevermind. He is attacked by so many for one overwhelming reason and that is his opposition to endless spending. This puts him at odds with the GOP establishment and Chamber types, Neocons, the Democrat establishment and most major media pundits, and all the various stripes of Keynesian economists.
Is it really surprising that he would be vigorously attacked? He is akin to a terrorist to most of the “thought leaders” intellectual world.
The “mind of an accountant” analysis is pathetic. Like me, Stockman has known for over 30 years that Keynesianism is a hoax and a massive fraud which is the reason why most average people do not understand it. The elite, which has inflicted Keynesianism upon our civilization, have no answer to the Austrian critique. Their only response is to suppress even the existence of the Austrian analysis the best they can and hope to keep the public thinking that economics is as unintelligible and boring as quantum physics best left to “experts” like them.
re: “Their only response is to suppress even the existence of the Austrian analysis”
Seems to me it does a pretty good job suppressing its own existence.
Austrianism doesn’t have the luxury of being spread through theft financed governmental brainwashing institutions called public schools and state universities.
Even with that disadvantage, it is one of the hottest and fastest growing schools on the internet, and interestingly, the internet is the freest industry in the world.
Google trends shows that Austrianism is doing pretty well.
You need to review the principle institutions promoting Austrian economics, MF.
*principal
Reviews are in:
Winning.
I’m with Roddis on this one. That “mind of an accountant” comment, although certainly nothing like the vitriol contained in much of the other commentary in response to Stockman, reeks of mockery and condescension (well, at least he’s not a lunatic!) and baseless intelligence bashing (“Stockman bit off more than he could chew” as if you have some intimate knowledge of Stockman’s intellectual limitations). It’s like saying a meteorologist couldn’t possibly fully understand climatology as they’re immersed in short-term weather patterns and couldn’t possibly grasp the further implications or consequences on the broader climate over periods of time. This just reinforces Bob’s original point, can we please just stick to the merits of one’s argument(s)?
You shouldn’t go through life thinking that every notation of a difference of perspective condescension.
Macroeconomists generally make bad accountants too. They’re different domains of knowledge, that’s all.
Most people have been discussing his argument – Bob just doesn’t quote those parts.
“You shouldn’t go through life thinking that every notation of a difference of perspective condescension.”
>> Is that a general bit of advice or directed at me personally? I don’t “go through life thinking that every notation of a difference of perspective condescension.” I’m not sure where you derived that from. I merely call it out when I see it and I saw it in your post. You shouldn’t confuse a direct criticism about a specific comment with how someone treats other differences in perspective. You did this yesterday when you were trying to defend Krugman’s defenseless contradictory assessments on Reagan policy. Furthermore, in each case… I didn’t even explicitly state I had a different perspective. I pointed out a clear contradiction (or at the very least, muddled thinking) in one case and a condescending remark in this case. Are you that sensitive when you receive any criticism?
“Macroeconomists generally make bad accountants too. They’re different domains of knowledge, that’s all.”
>> No, you were dismissing or trivializing his contribution to the debate because he’s “got the mind of an accountant.”
“Most people have been discussing his argument”
>> Perhaps, but not those journalists or pundits who are working for major publications that are most widely read. Most of what was coming out from them was dismissive ad hominem without discussing his argument in any substantive way. Do you agree that was the majority reaction after the Times published his post?
“…or how Ron Paul treated pretty much everyone that disagrees with him.”
You have got to be joking.
I challenge you to cite just one article that he’s writen that is anything like this obnoxious Hockett’s article.
When Ron Paul doesn’t like them he calls them jack-booted thugs and socialists. I’m sure he’s had lots of other colorful name-calling, but those are the ones that comes to mind. He’s not a very friendly guy, from what I can tell. He strikes me as kind of an asshole. You can be someone that likes his politics, but when you go around talking about people like that you’re an asshole. Sorry.
I repeat my question. Show me just 1 article that shows Paul being as obnoxious as Hockett.
I don’t see the justification for Paul not being a friendly guy, considering how he is always cordial and professional from my experience.
Kind of an asshole I think has more to do with what you believe he thinks of you, than how he actually behaves.
The only time I remember seeing him being obnoxious was back in the 80s when he called a kid overweight on national television.
Seriously, just one article of proof. It’s all I ask. It’s not much, is it?
1. I’m not your gopher, and you wouldn’t be convinced if I played gopher for you.
2. Well of course he’s nice to you. You’re rather missing the point. Hockett’s probably very sweet to his children and friends.
1. How can anyone distinguish between you talking smack, and you having knowledge but refuse to divulge? You really can’t expect people to take you on faith.
2. Who has Paul been mean to? You don’t even have to play gopher. Just a name.
“1. How can anyone distinguish between you talking smack, and you having knowledge but refuse to divulge? You really can’t expect people to take you on faith.”
Yep, just like here:
http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2013/01/potpourri-128.html#comment-56041
Oh, Kyle, Warren, TSA workers, blacks, Sacha Baron Cohen (and by extension, gays), everyone in Congress, Obama.
These things just come to mind automatically. I’m glad you’re interested in my just listing who. I can’t imagine you’re not aware of these cases which is why I’m not going to go around searching for links for you that won’t make a dent.
When people disagree with him he calls them fascists or dictators or socialist. When nobody is paying attention he exploits racism to get votes, and then when people start to look he denies it. I have no idea why this many is so popular. He’s a demagogue. If you can’t disagree with someone without calling them a fascist something’s very wrong.
The people he derides disagree with him just as much as he disagrees with them. They seem to get along OK without calling him these things (don’t cite anonymous commenters – OF COURSE there are people out there who do the same thing to him – I’m not saying there’s nobody).
Awww, skylien. Poor guy. I hate to break it to you but I don’t keep revisiting your comments repeatedly to see if you had anything else to say.
He doesn’t want me to go looking for a link to get him information. He knows these incidents. They’re well known. If he doesn’t he can google. I’m not playing this game. No negotiating with terrorists. If I come up with links do you think it’ll make a damn bit of difference? Nope. He’s made up his mind.
“Oh, Kyle, Warren, TSA workers, blacks, Sacha Baron Cohen (and by extension, gays), everyone in Congress, Obama.”
Huh?
You do know the difference between being obnoxious and inflammatory, and being critical, don’t you?
Kyle: You mean the empire employed Navy Seal? F^&k him. He deserves no respect.
Warren: Calling her a socialist is not obnoxious or inflammatory. It is what she actually is. It is an inflammatory as calling Paul laissez-faire.
TSA workers? You mean the professional sexual molesters? The occasional theives? F^&k them too. Paul is going easy on those welfare program thugs.
And blacks? What the hell has Paul said of blacks? Please don’t tell me you actually believe Paul wrote the newsletters. I was talking about actual verified instances, not heresay.
Sacha Baron Cohen? He called him a queer after Cohen hit on him by surprise. That’s a weak example.
Congress: Pretty much everyone insults Congress. What a weak example.
Obama: He has gone far too easy on that murderous lying p&!ce of s#!t.
Come on DK, you’ll have to do a LOT better than that.
“These things just come to mind automatically. I’m glad you’re interested in my just listing who. I can’t imagine you’re not aware of these cases which is why I’m not going to go around searching for links for you that won’t make a dent.”
Telling me upfront that you don’t think they’ll make a dent, doesn’t in any way degrade or reduce the extent of the validity of my responses. It’s just a tactic of rhetoric more than anything. Set up a prediction, and then when it’s confirmed, pretend that this means you’re right about the *content*.
“When people disagree with him he calls them fascists or dictators or socialist.”
Paul disagrees with me about the usage of drugs, but he didn’t call me a fascist or dictator or socialist. What are you talking about?
You think he says what he says to people solely because he disagrees with those people? It has nothing to do with their ideas and advocacies?
What’s wrong with calling fascists, dictators, and socialists…”fascists, dictators and socialists”?
“When nobody is paying attention he exploits racism to get votes, and then when people start to look he denies it.”
If nobody is paying attention, how do you know about it? If he exploits racism, wouldn’t his ideological enemies be all over it, post videos, transcripts, etc, of him saying racist things? He has a lot of enemies, and the absence of such evidence suggests you’re full of BS on that one.
“I have no idea why this many is so popular.”
He exposes demogogues?
“He’s a demagogue.”
Paul is literally the exact opposite of a demagogue. He does not say what is popular, he does not appeal to popular prejudices, he says what he thinks is right, votes and political power be damned. His views are in the minority. Demagogues do the exact opposite.
He said things that made the other candidates laugh at him on national television. He could have been a demogogue and toe the party line.
“If you can’t disagree with someone without calling them a fascist something’s very wrong.”
Paul has disagreed with many people without calling them fascist. What are you talking about? Do you really believe that if Paul disagrees with someone, he can’t help but call them fascist?
I think you’re conflating fascists he disagrees with, with people he disagrees with.
I have never seen Paul call anyone a fascist, and trust me, I used to follow what he said quite closely. I’ve seen him say socialist.
Actually, what is likely happening is that you are having these voices in your head of what people call you, and you project that onto what Paul says to others, since all Austrians are the borg and think the same things.
“The people he derides disagree with him just as much as he disagrees with them.”
Neat.
“They seem to get along OK without calling him these things”
I have evidence that his opponents call him far worse names, but I won’t cite it because I’m not your gopher.
Daniel,
That explains why it is so frustrating (at least for me) to discuss with you, when you just decide to walk away at some point…
I’d rather prefer it if you either make clear in any discussion that you are not interested in any answer from me at this point any more, or just leave it entirely to write anything to me at all.
Listen, if you think that my understanding is too poor and my arguments are generally beside the point, and I am therefor not worth of a serious discussion, so be it. However if you engage me in a discussion I’d like to have proper answers. That’s all.
re: “That explains why it is so frustrating (at least for me) to discuss with you, when you just decide to walk away at some point…”
You are frustrated at me because I don’t live in Bob’s blog???? That there’s some point when I stop checking in on comments???
wtf?
Well I’m giving you fair warning on this one – I have a busy day and since I’ve got some things to do first thing in the morning tomorrow I will not be checking in on this thread again. A day and a half off means I’ll probably not come back to it, particularly if Bob has posted other stuff by then.
Sorry, can’t guarantee a check-back just so skylien doesn’t get frustrated with me. My experience is he gets frustrated with me regardless so there’s even less reason to.
All right Daniel. Surely you are the only one with a busy schedule. Others are just lucky that they have the time to follow up on those discussions they actually engage in…
It’s understood now.
“When Ron Paul doesn’t like them he calls them jack-booted thugs and socialists.”
You mean if a libertarian asshole pissed him off, he would call them a jack booted thug and socialist?
Or did you mean he calls jack booted thugs and socialists, jack booted thugs and socialists?
Daniel –
“I’m sure he’s had lots of other colorful name-calling”
“He strikes me as kind of an asshole.”
Pot meet kettle.
I’m intrigued you find the abduction story to be ridiculous in the same way that the author does.
I never know what to think of abduction or encounter stories. I find these questions of epistemology around aliens very interesting. Obviously some are just crazy but I don’t feel comfortable dismissing all of them – I feel the need to remain agnostic.
Anyway, I find it interesting in your case because there are so many more encounters with aliens reported, and much more recently, than encounters with God which you seem to take as truth without much concern. I’m agnostic on God too, as I’ve said (I think I’ve put it in the mid-single digits here in the past), but I think it’d be much more likely that aliens were mistaken as gods in the past. Van Daniken was kind of crazy in his extrapolations, but the structure of his argument and the common threads in different religions is still a solid conjecture.
It’s another area where the interesting alien epistemology comes in. How do we take ancient records? Literally? Figuratively? Why shouldn’t we take them literally?
People who firmly believe in alien visitation are usually open to the idea of God and comfortable with religious people. It’s interesting that the opposite isn’t often the case. I put the probability that aliens have visited during human history higher than the probability of God being real, but I’m not sure exactly where to put it.
I think statistical and Bayesian reasoning makes the existence of aliens a veritable certainty, but as regards to abductions, visitations, etc, I don’t know. Sometimes I suspect it’s happened, but most of the time I think space is just too large for it to occur.
How would a full fledged alien encounter with a species much older than us, more intelligent than us, and from planets much older than ours, square with those who are religious?
“God, why did you make them before us?”
“God, why did you make them more intelligent than us?”
“God, why did you make them more prosperous than us?”
“God, why did you make us their slaves?”
“God, if you made us in your image, then why are beings that aren’t made in your image ruling over us? Or are they made in your image but we’re not?”
I think a serious alien encounter would be devastating to the psychology of religious folks.
MF, should I bother writing up a list of questions that the atheist would ask, when confronted with the return of Jesus? I think such an encounter would be devastating to the psychology of atheist folks.
Well the point he makes in his opening sentence makes his list a little more pressing, I think.
Well, to make it consistent, assuming Jesus appeared, wouldn’t a list of questions the atheist would ask the aliens be more apropos?
“Zorton, why does Jesus look like me and not you?”
“Zorton, why hasn’t your messiah appeared? Or has he/she? Who would win in a grudge match? Your messiah or Jesus?”
“Zorton, given that Jesus has appeared, we are promised that he’ll put an end to all human suffering. How does that make you feel being left out?”
“Zorton, how does it feel to be destined for hell, given that you had no idea Jesus was real and thus you could not be saved?”
re: “I think statistical and Bayesian reasoning makes the existence of aliens a veritable certainty, but as regards to abductions, visitations, etc, I don’t know.”
Ya, just to be clear I have no doubt at all about alien life – more doubts about whether they’ve visited in human history. I don’t discount that… I don’t take all UFO sightings that tie it to aliens as crazy. But it’s hard to know exactly what to think given what else they could be. Some of the most convincing cases are precisely the ancient astronaut explanations of human mythology, and also Roswell I think. Cases like the Phoenix lights are compelling – there was obviously something there – but much harder to tie to aliens. Same with Belgium. What Roswell, Phoenix, and Belgium have are lots of independent confirmation – and Roswell has lots of independent confirmation that it was something other than a big ship (which is all Phoenix and Belgium have) – whether it was aliens or not something bizarre happened there. Jacobsen’s book is a good example of how you’d need to come up with something really strange going on even if you don’t want to go with the alien explanation. A lot of other sightings are interesting (and the trends and the data are nice to see) but not independently confirmed to the same extent.
If I had the ability to become invisible, the first place I would go is Area 51.
I think I’m living in Bizarro world:
Stockman is criticizing Reagan.
Krugman is (sometimes) praising Reagan.
Next thing you know, cats will be marrying dogs.
Or I will be giving you a +1
+1