Time and Place do Matter, You Know
They’re always hacks, Brad. Always. Yes even Milton Friedman. The more independent-minded ones will occasionally come up with a liberalish or fair-minded idea or two, but this is purely for display, not for ever doing anything about if to do so would run the risk of a higher rate of capital gains tax. The ideological core of Chicago-style libertarianism has two planks.
1. Vote Republican.
2. That’s it. (D-squared on conservertarians)
No, that’s not it — he’s wrong. As Friedman told Reason in a 1995 interview, bold in quotes mine:
Reason: I see you occasionally use the word libertarian.
Friedman: Oh, I do.
Reason: As a concession to accepted usage?
Friedman: That’s right. Because now liberal is so misinterpreted. So I am a Republican with a capital “r” and a libertarian with a small “l.” I have a party membership as a Republican, not because they have any principles, but because that’s the way I am the most useful and have most influence. My philosophy is clearly libertarian. […]
Reason:You don’t link yourself openly to certain aspects of the libertarian political movement….
Friedman: Well, you have to be more specific. Being very specific, I have not wanted to join the Libertarian Party simply because I have accumulated good working relationships with people in the Republican Party, and I think I can be more effective by being a Republican. That’s the only reason. There are no other cases in which I have had any problem with the libertarian movement.
Comment by cfw —
November 27, 2007 @ 7:35 pm
Mona is right.
MF was certainly not a hack. We could use more like him - he was able to think well about getting economies up and running well (including Chile). He was able to show the flaws in state planning. He had interesting ideas re vouchers for schools. He was good at pointing out the road to serfdom, that we need to avoid. He earned his N Prize.
I did like the two planks meme, but not for MF.
Comment by md 20/400 —
November 27, 2007 @ 7:41 pm
Scott agrees with that quote but he didn’t write it. He was quoting (using block quotes and a link) Daniel Davies.
Comment by md 20/400 —
November 27, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
Augh. Helpful link builder confused me.
The corrected link:
Daniel Davies.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
November 27, 2007 @ 7:56 pm
You’re right, Mona. “We have to see this war through” is definitely “not vociferous” opposition.
Comment by Mona —
November 27, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
I do not know what he meant by that– he opposed the war going in. Once commenced, he could have been invoking the Pottery Barn rule. I simply don’t know.
And like the late Friedman, I have no idea what the moral course is now that we have utterly ruined and destabilized Iraq.
But whatever else is true, he was no GOP hack.
Comment by dan —
November 27, 2007 @ 8:14 pm
For the sake of accuracy, ’twasn’t Lemieux who wrote that.
Lemieux quoted some blog/ger called D-squared, with which/whom I was heretofore unfamiliar.
Comment by Mona —
November 27, 2007 @ 8:22 pm
Thanx Dan. Geez, this trying to blog right after getting off work is clearly NOT the best idea.
Comment by Leonard —
November 27, 2007 @ 8:45 pm
Here’s the context for that statement. You can read it here.
Not his best thinking, by far. But still, the context makes it clear that he is not a hack. He knew that the war was bad for liberty. And I suspect that if he were still alive, he’d have turned against the war on the grounds he describes above: that it is too expensive, and too unending. “The sooner we can get rid of it and out of it, the better.”
(The rest of the interview, he advocates vouchers, social security privatization, and other things that as an economist he should know more about that warfare.)
Comment by Russell L. Carter —
November 27, 2007 @ 9:26 pm
Oh Geez, I thought I was done here but if you:
1. Don’t know who D^2 is
and
2. Don’t address his arguments
then you, and I’m looking at you leonard, and mona, the latter of whom has journeyed quite a long way, come dangerously close to being hacks yourselves.
We do not worship people. We judge from the evidence of their words and deeds.
Maybe Uncle Milt was getting senile. Who knows? But you might remember the counsel of blog owner Jim here on wars. Just to set it down in case we really are being this dense: Seeing it through means what exactly, with a so far failed government program?
Comment by bob mcmanus —
November 27, 2007 @ 10:27 pm
dsquared is an occasional poster at Crooked Timber (where his name is at the left) and elsewhere. I think he is an economist in Wales, tho I wouldn’t swear. He is certainly left-of-center, and probably to the left of DeLong & Thoma & Krugman. He, in the post if you link thru LGM to his own, certainly gives Friedman his due as economist. Dsquared chose the most challenging and controversial target available to make his point.
I would have to review Friedman in his prime (60s & 70s) before I would judge him on excessive party loyalty or ideological short-sightedness. But I don’t really consider that a fatal flaw in a public intellectual who seeks to influence policy.
I certainly consider Friedman more intellectually honest than Greenspan.
Comment by Leonard —
November 27, 2007 @ 11:17 pm
Russell, don’t be silly. The quote I gave, and the interview itself if you care to read it, should make it perfectly clear even to the most ungenerous reader that Friedman is not a “hack”, at least not in the sense that DD’s quote suggests. Not to mention the course of his life overall.
You can look the word up yourself, you know. M-w.com: hack [3]: … 3 a: a person who works solely for mercenary reasons : hireling hacks> b: a writer who works on order; also : a writer who aims solely for commercial success.
Calling Friedman a “hack” is one of the following:
* a private definition of “hack”
* ignorance
* hyperboli
I prefer to give DD the benefit of the doubt here and adjudge him as speaking hyperbolically.
Comment by Russell L. Carter —
November 28, 2007 @ 12:12 am
I wrote a bunch of stuff in response to the esteemed leonard but decided that my efforts were nonsensical, even ridiculous in the face of quasi-religious hagiography.
Belief systems are a curious thing.
Comment by Walter —
November 28, 2007 @ 12:37 am
It seems only another variant of the ‘libertarians are republicans who smoke dope’ meme. It’s much easier than engaging
liberalism[oops!] libertarianism directly.Comment by Doug M. —
November 28, 2007 @ 3:10 am
Historically, libertarians have voted Republican. Hell, libertarians have /been/ Republicans. Just strange ones.
That’s changing — maybe — but damn, it took you guys long enough.
Doug M.
Comment by Azael —
November 28, 2007 @ 3:12 am
I certainly consider Friedman more intellectually honest than Greenspan.
Damning with faint praise indeed. In light of the subprime disaster, I’m sure that intellectual honesty won’t be high on anyone’s list when characterizing Greenspan.
Still, I don’t think that either Scott nor D^2 are calling MF a “fake” libertarian. I think D^2’s comment makes it quite clear that he believes libertarians are simply republicans who prefer another name for themselves - i.e. they’re all fakes. Clearly, the quote Mona provides gives ample evidence for this line of thought wrt Friedman. So it seems completely non-sensical to accuse Scott of calling MF a fake libertarian when he apparently means that there are no such things as libertarians - they’re all simply Republicans in drag. Quibble with that, surely, but not with the framing you’ve made.
WRT the hack characterization, clearly this was directed at things like this letter that MF signed. The word “hack” has a lot more meanings than the paltry few that Leonard pulls from M-W - heck, just in my profession alone, “hack” means quite a few things ranging from a quick stitch of code to a poorly executed implementation to an attack on a system. Certainly, in the context of politics the word has a lot more interesting connotations; namely a “political hack”, referring to someone who belongs to a small clique that controls a political party for private rather than public ends. A definition that would seem to accurately describe MF, given that his political philosophy is essentially based on entire premise of private vs. public ends.
Comment by bdr —
November 28, 2007 @ 7:39 am
MF wasn’t a “fake” libertarian if libertarian means playing all against the middle to expand the vast power of a few.
That he recognized that Republicans drool faster and more prodigiously at that vision is surely sign that MF knew how to play his marks. No hack him.
Comment by joe —
November 28, 2007 @ 9:31 am
I think that on the whole, this war is small enough relative to our economy that it is not going to be a serious impediment to our freedom.
My opinion of Milton Friedman’s understanding of freedom is now seriously diminished.
The ECONOMY?!? You’re asked about the effect of Cheney’s War on our freedom, and you say that it will be minor, because the war is a small part of our economy?
I’m not impressed.
Comment by Barry —
November 28, 2007 @ 10:17 am
joe, especially as the administration was clear on a few things: (a) they didn’t plan on stopping with Iraq; they wanted to rearrange the entire Middle East, (b) they explicitly felt that this war/series of wars would help them politicially, and (c) this war against terrorism ‘would not end in our lifetimes’ (quoting Cheney).
It’s pretty much a crystal-clear example of war being extremely helpful to those in power, and to those who hope to profit.
Azael: “I think D^2’s comment makes it quite clear that he believes libertarians are simply republicans who prefer another name for themselves - i.e. they’re all fakes. ”
I took the sense of D-Squared’s statement as being that right-wingers are right-wingers, no matter what they wrap themselves in. They might actually differ on relatively minor things, but they’ll agree on the core values. In this case. For example, somebody speaking against the war on drugs is good, but it doesn’t mean that they’ll oppose the GOP on matters of the GOP leadership/base/elite supporters getting power and profit.
cfw —
“… he was able to think well about getting economies up and running well (including Chile). ”
bullsh*t.
Comment by Frank —
November 28, 2007 @ 11:25 am
D-squared was widely quoted in the early days of the blogosphere. He is still pretty frequently quoted at Brad DeLong’s site. I’m not going to google them but one of the more famous was in response to something I said. Roughly ‘Has anyone heard of an initiative by the Bush administration which was not completely f-up in execution?’ The other point he made about the war was that ‘good ideas don’t need to be sold with lies’ something he’d purportedly learned in getting his MBA.
Comment by Thoreau —
November 28, 2007 @ 11:52 am
Yeah, not one of Friedman’s finer comments. Still, let me play Devil’s Advocate for a minute:
The Military-Industrial Complex is a sprawling and EXPENSIVE entity with tentacles that reach into all sorts of places in our economy, even places that one might not expect. Indeed, some would argue that the feds use the carrot of federal contracts to inject all sorts of things into the private sector (drug testing of employees being just one example that gets a lot of discussion).
Then there’s the K-Street Project, where DeLay and his buddies tried to get more Party Men into lobbying firms, the goal being to make Party Loyalists the intermdiaries between American business and American government. That has all sorts of bad potential written all over it.
The tentacles of Leviathan reach deep into the economy, and are used to exert influence in all sorts of ways.
Still, having played Devil’s Advocate, I’ll admit that you can’t just analyze the economic component of a threat to freedom by asking for a price tag. You have to look at the way that the money is leveraged into cozy relationships between business and government, and what ends are pursued through those cozy relationships.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
November 28, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
Dsquared is a stockbroker rather than an actual economist; he still posts to Crooked Timber occasionally as well as to the Guardian comment-is-free thing and to his own blog. He’s probably the second-smartest Crooked Timber poster, after Belle Waring.
Comment by Mona —
November 28, 2007 @ 7:58 pm
Milton Friedman is on record (as a link to one of me earlier post shows) to opposing the invasion of Iraq as a “war of aggression,” in rare disagreement with his wife of some 60 years.
But he was in his dotage by then, and few folk in their 90s can break with past loyalties. Should he have been Greenwald-esque in his denunciations of that war?
Sure. But if I live to my mid-90s — and most women on both sides of my family do — I may not be capable of radical criticism of those I’ve been aligned with. Once commenced, he hoped for a short “get in, get out” war. Folly, yes. But given his entire life’s record, not a sign of hackdom.
Comment by Glaivester —
November 28, 2007 @ 11:45 pm
Now, in this millennium, it is far less justifiable for a libertarian to join the GOP.
Well, it is justifiable if you are doing it just to vote in the primaries. If you are part of the rEVOLution, that is.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 29, 2007 @ 1:24 am
Some libertarians associated with the Reds because the Reds found crazy drug-legalization/civil liberties nuts tolerable and liked to use their rhetoric (and didn’t want to waste some tiny smidgen of votes). Many libertarians thought Team Red could be moved in less theocratic and statist direction. (Hah.)
Very few libertarians have associated with the Blues because the Blues can’t tolerate free market/government downsizing nuts. (It’s actually unclear whether they’re that happy with the civil liberties thing either, but suggesting that any Blue or fanboy isn’t a peerless defender of those often pisses him/her off, so I’ll skip that point.) Some are happy to spend weird amounts of time begging/bullying libertarians for votes, but they’d never want them on their Team.
So, why the big surprise that some libertarians associated with Reds?
Comment by dsquared —
November 29, 2007 @ 3:35 am
I actually think Friedman was an excellent economist (specifically, the permanent income hypothesis, and a lot of his methodological work), and fair enough if anyone was inspired by his theoretical writings on libertarianism. But his contributions to public policy debate were not good, and they were not good for the specific reason that when shite came to bust, he always shelved his principles in order to be a team player for the Republican Party. He didn’t have to sign that 2004 letter endorsing George W Bush’s fiscal policy, for example, which I am more inclined to concentrate on because it’s something he must have known was wrong, while he was doing it (I also don’t agree that he had a “dotage” - like JKG, all his obituaries suggest he was as sharp as a tack right up until the end).
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
November 29, 2007 @ 9:32 am
Libertarian economists associated with conservative polticians because they are focused on economic issues. Most conservative politicians play lip service to the market system, and so, treat libertarian economists as allies on economic issues. Conservative policians will occassionally support free market reforms advocated by libertarian economists. This is the basis of the “alliance.”
Conservative politicians support all sorts of special interest legislation. Libertarian economists criticize this practice in both general terms and also criticize the specific polcies. But then, moderate and liberal democrat politicans support these same sorts of policies.
Libertarian economists (more or less by definition) oppose government action to promote traditional moral values. They just have no sympathy for “marching to gomorrah,” rhetoric. Many advocate ending the war on drugs, etc.
But they are economists. Their area of expertise is economic policy. They propose market reforms. When the conservative politicians support them, and the liberal politicians oppose them, there is a lot of press. Perhaps even the average left-liberal intellectual becomes aware of the issues.
Libertarians (and libertarians economists) are divided on foreign policy issues. This division existed during the cold war. All agreed that communism was really bad. Some thought that the threat was greater, others that it was smaller. Some were more supportive of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War, others more critical.
But libertarian economists are economists, not foreign policy academics. Even those who were critical of the foreign policy views of conservative politicians liked their lip service to the market system and their occassional support for free market reforms.
The Cold War ended, but now that foreign policy division has reappeared because of 9-11 and “islamo-fascism.” I think it is fair to say that all libertarian economists believe that both islamism and arab nationalist socialism are bad things. Some think the threat to the U.S. is greater, others think it is smaller. Some are supportive of neo-conservative foreign policy, some are critical.
Apparently, two libertarian economists from the same houseold (Rose and Milton) came down on opposite sides!
Even if you follow the media closely, you are not going to see very much about the views of libertarian economists on foreign policy or personal liberties issues. That is because they are only experts on the economy. And so, they will be asked to give expert opinion on economic issues. The economic issues that will be emphasized in the media are those where there is a conflict between conservative and liberal politicians. So, the libertarian economist gets quoted in support of conservative politicians or opposition to liberal ones.
If the liberal politicians got united in opposition to corporate welfare, then I am sure that there would be libertarian economists who would be glad to give expert opinion about how great that is. But they don’t.
The truth is that most libertarian economists support tax cuts. They also support reductions in goverment spending and a reduced size and scope of government. The notion that libertarian economists should oppose tax cuts because conservative politicians fail to make spending cuts (and raise spending quite a lot,) is a plausible notion, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with the domimant approach.
One of the benefits to reading comments on this blog is that I have little hope that the left-liberal readers will be able to comprehend any of this. And, further, any notion that there can be anything other than an issue by issue alliance is futile.
Comment by ajay —
November 29, 2007 @ 12:34 pm
One of the benefits to reading comments on this blog is that I have little hope that the left-liberal readers will be able to comprehend any of this.
Yep, we’re all dumb as posts, us left liberals. We were right about Iraq, though, and you were wrong.
Comment by joe —
November 29, 2007 @ 1:33 pm
If only we were smart enough to agree with the libertarians and conservatives in 1993, when they told us that the Democrats’ tax-and-budget bills were going to destroy the economy and bring back the soup lines.
But we’re just dummies, who don’t understand how many tax cut fairies can dance on the head of a pin.
Comment by Barry —
November 29, 2007 @ 1:38 pm
Bill: “Comment by Bill Woolsey —
“Libertarian economists associated with conservative polticians because they are focused on economic issues.”
Gee, there seems to be a lot of social stuff in the world that *I* live in. To be fair, the social stuff usually loses when it goes against ‘economic issues’ (when those economic issues are crony capitalism).
“Most conservative politicians play lip service to the market system, and so, treat libertarian economists as allies on economic issues.”
Ummm, this sentence has logical problems.
“Conservative policians will occassionally support free market reforms advocated by libertarian economists. This is the basis of the “alliance.””
And, of course, liberal politicians never do.
“Conservative politicians support all sorts of special interest legislation. Libertarian economists criticize this practice in both general terms and also criticize the specific polcies. But then, moderate and liberal democrat politicans support these same sorts of policies. ”
Before Bush II, this sort of thinking could be excused. After Bush II, it’s clear that moderate and liberal Democrat*IC* politicians generally don’t support these same sort of policies.
“One of the benefits to reading comments on this blog is that I have little hope that the left-liberal readers will be able to comprehend any of this. And, further, any notion that there can be anything other than an issue by issue alliance is futile. ”
And interesting dichotomy - libertarians can only ally with liberals on an issue by issue basis, but can have a general alliance with right-wingers.
Comment by Mona —
November 29, 2007 @ 2:22 pm
Just note *I* never said that. I never joined the GOP, and in fact have always found a number of extremely important areas where I sided with liberals, for example their more latitudinarian understanding of the BoR, including being “soft on crime” by regarding the 4th Am as more than a mere suggestion.
Hell, even yesteryear’s domestic Stalinists were right on a subject where almost the entire conservative movement was wrong — Jim Crow and state-enforced segregation.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 29, 2007 @ 2:41 pm
Except, of course, most libertarians were entirely right on Iraq.
Comment by joe —
November 30, 2007 @ 9:43 am
Sadly, the “libertarians” who get the most attention outside of libertarians circles are people like Glenn Reynolds, Jonah Goldberg, and other Republican Iraq hawks.
So I can see where ajay could get that idea.
Comment by LittlePig —
November 30, 2007 @ 11:53 am
One of the benefits to reading comments on this blog is that I have little hope that the left-liberal readers will be able to comprehend any of this. And, further, any notion that there can be anything other than an issue by issue alliance is futile.
Ah, but therein lies the rub. In our current political system, such nuance of choice is not possible to any real degree. It’s a binary choice, and choosing Team Red currently means supporting more theocracy and corporate cronyism.
I comprehend your point just fine, thank you, and understand your decision making process. I perform that same process and come down on the side of Team Blue, thus making me a left-liberal nutjob. ‘Tis the nature of the beast.
Comment by LittlePig —
November 30, 2007 @ 11:57 am
Except, of course, most libertarians were entirely right on Iraq.
Eric, the One True Scotsman.
Comment by Aaron Haspel —
November 30, 2007 @ 12:40 pm
Friedman was largely responsible for Nixon ending the draft (four years after he promised, but better late than never). “Marginally successful on a few policy points” considerably understates that achievement.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 30, 2007 @ 5:18 pm
*shrug* So does Bill Maher. Someone who takes the trouble to lurk around actual libertarians’ web sites can take the trouble to read the archives. Or whip out Google.
So, libertarians are defined by every idiot who calls him/herself a libertarian, no matter what s/he actually believes?
Cool! I now call myself a “liberal”. “Liberals” now oppose welfare programs and social spending. Please address all criticism about this change to 202-863-8000, though they might be all one-true-Scotsman about it…