With Friends Like Me, Sumner Doesn’t Need Enemies
Noah Smith launched a completely unfair attack on Scott Sumner when he wrote:
…monetarists like Scott Sumner often spend a lot of time “punching hippies” on every issue other than monetary policy, trying to avoid being tarred as hippies themselves for their lack of fear of inflation. (Note to Sumner: This strategem has quite noticeably failed to convince most conservatives to support anything remotely resembling NGDP targeting.)
This quote epitomizes what I can’t stand about guys like Smith and DeLong. They are sarcastic and snarky and think they are in the “reality-based community” as opposed to us ideologues, and yet the quotation above is utterly divorced from reality.
Indeed, as Scott himself points out:
Yeah. That’s why I’ve advocated carbon taxes, universal health care, progressive taxes to redistribute income, drug legalization, more immigration, etc. I’m hoping to piss off all those hippies and win over the conservatives. (Memo to young bloggers–wait until you are at least 50 years old before trying to judge the motives of other bloggers.)
But the second statement is what really set me off. When I started blogging I had no expectation of having any impact at all. After all I’m at Bentley (which is a college, not a car.) I still don’t really know how much impact I’ve had, but no one can deny that NGDP targeting has become the hot idea in macro, with lots of supporters on both the left and the right. I’ve recently done not one but two NGDP targeting papers for the Koch-funded Mercatus Center (the 2nd on NGDP futures is coming out very soon), and you see lots of conservative journalists jumping on the NGDP targeting bandwagon. I’ve also done pieces for Cato, AEI, the Adam Smith Institute, etc. Yes, I’ve failed to convince Taylor, Feldstein, and Meltzer, but I’m seeing lots of interest from younger academics. Noah Smith should check out my email inbox.
It’s clear to me that old monetarism is dying. It might be replaced by Austrianism, but I believe that bright young conservative academics will find market monetarism to be more appealing.
Exactly right. In fact, I’ve been surprised at just how willing the supposedly conservative sites are to embrace Scott’s viewpoints, when the only “conservative” thing I see him doing is frequently quote Milton Friedman. I mean, the guy wants to help the people in Bangladesh, for crying out loud–does Larry Kudlow know that?!
So no, Noah, you are totally wrong. In my view, Scott is the #1 threat to hard money and the Austrian perspective (since the people who might go Austrian aren’t going to be seduced by standard Keynesians). And what makes that fact all the more surprising, is that he is such an interventionist on so many other topics, that I can’t believe he’s so big among people with a knee-jerk faith in free markets.
There ya go, Scott, who’s your buddy? I’ve got your back against these young punk Keynesian bloggers.
“They are sarcastic and snarky and think they are in the “reality-based community” as opposed to us ideologues, and yet the quotation above is utterly divorced from reality.”
Precisely my view of your Krugman Kontradictions!
90% of stuff like this is in the eye of the beholder (which isn’t to say it’s all relative – clearly MY perspective is the right one 😉 )
Bob always tries to find internal contradictions in Krugman’s thinking (whether it’s convincing or not is a different matter). His most common tactic to compare Krugman’s latest post with something Krugman said before.
But here Noah is just making **** up about Sumner. It’s lazy and untrue.
Scott is the #1 threat to hard money and the Austrian perspective
In my view, yes w.r.t. “hard money,” no to “Austrian perspective,” since most on the GMU Austrian side endorse some version of NGDP targeting as a 2nd best alternative (no. 1 being no central bank).
Bob Murphy isn’t anywhere close to Noah Smith’s or Brad DeLong’s level of sarcasm — Bob Murphy doesn’t seem to go out of his way to insult other people.
After this sort of post I feel a strong need to go out and smack some hippies around.
Scott, I don’t think any future smackdown can top this.
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/in-which-i-shoot-down-culture-fairy.html?showComment=1334167554159#c3318103306366794769
Scott now I remember why I originally liked you so much.
Speaking of Greeks and Chinese, check out Robert Wenzel’s site, today:
Taki on a Stupid Greek Woman
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/07/taki-on-stupid-greek-woman.html
Culture And Success: Why Jews, Chinese and Japanese are Overachievers
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/07/culture-and-success-why-jews-chinese.html
trololololol
Smith’s attempt at a self-reflective Shakespearean soliloquy.
Whoops! Sorry, I meant:
Trolololololololololol!
Gotta stay in iambic pentameter.
There is no denying that this is the most sophisticated trolling I ever saw..
So Noah, is your belief that culture matters but little shaken by the Japanese reaction to the quakes?
Try not to strain yourself in doing poetry by numbers.
Sometimes time is better spent exploring one’s chosen specialization. Wait, nevermind, that can be straining as well.
I think a little honesty is called for, the overwhelming majority of people who describe themselves as “conservative” don’t support hard money, nor have they done for many a year.
Anyhow, quite a lot of people on this site support things like Bitcoin, vendor credit arrangements, free banking, and other such soft money concepts, which just goes to show that a free people must necessarily be a diverse people… and that’s a good thing, right?
Ive never understood the IDIOTIC obsession many conservatives have with hard money. never
To the extent that we have an ideal theoretical standard, it would be multiple private currencies competing against each other for efficiency. This could be achieved by repealing the “private” part of legal tender laws (This note is legal tender for all debts public and…..)
The MMTers are wrong and so is Major Freedom. its not taxes themselves that crowd out other currencies, its legal tender for private debt laws.
The ideal system would be you pay your taxes in the governments currency . Convert whatever private notes you use, (JP morgan silver/gold electronic dollars, Barclays) and then use the governments currency to pay your taxes and thats it. Saving investment, and hoarding would be done in completely private currencies.
Whenever there would be a cash panic, people would switch to cheaper more abundant precious metals, and more plentiful currencies, and its not necessarily the case that prices in one currency would fall. This shows a lack of imagination on the part of hard money freaks. there’s still money illusion, Theres still price stickiness. The gold standard and free market money ARE NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL. people like Murray Rothbard, who argued in favor of 100 percent gold dollar, are either being hypocritical and self contradictory in arguing something that involves force, or if they are making a prediction as to what people will value on the free market, they are being foolish and unimaginative. i ask again to the goldbugs, what makes you so sure that the market will choose gold?
If I support free market money, then why do I support Scott Sumner’s NGDPL targeting? Because his specific proposal of NGDP futures is actually the closest to what the free market in money would actually accomplish. Given the SNAILS pace at the willingness of the VSP’s and the elites to accept new ideas, we’re still a couple of decades away from central banks accepting NGDp targeting. We’re centuries away from accepting free market money.
So it makes sense to support Scott as the closest thing to an ideal system.
Cash panics only happen when an artificially overvalued non-commodity currency has been treated as the money and then its value drops due to the fact that it was never money in the first place (people reject it for something that will better hold value).
Once you understand what money is, you don’t think in terms of government money vs. private money. Money is money.
The point of money is to facilitate indirect exchanges of goods and services. A money’s value derives from its ability to allow individuals to calculate profit and loss in terms of the goods and services it will buy.
While anything can theoretically be used to make the claim that it marks the ratio of the subjective values involved in a particular transaction, only commodities can actually do so. The reason is because subjective values can only be correctly expressed in terms of other goods and services on the market.
Therefore money must, itself, be a good.
Not necessarily gold, though. It has historically been gold, so it’s quite reasonable to assume that most people would more readily accept gold as the money.
These videos were very helpful to me in understanding this concept:
Smashing Myths and Restoring Sound Money | Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAzExlEsIKk
Answering the Same Old Arguments Against Sound Money | Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-PxMzSyujw
Both of these, and more information, can be found on this resource page:
An Introduction to Sound Money
http://www.libertyclassroom.com/soundmoney/
Ow, my tautology!
😀
Apologies for this.
What I mean to say is that since we’re ultimately trading goods and services, you need something that already has a trade value in order to communicate the ratio of subjective values between what is sold for, and what is ultimately bought with, the money.
Otherwise the assignment of value to the money will be arbitrary, not linked to utility.
All value is subjective, but not arbitrary.
Edward, posting these comments once on the blog is sufficient.
http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2013/07/atheist-libertarians-need-to-stop-citing-adam-smith-against-christians.html#comment-69805