A conversation between an Austrian businessman and a Keynesian? academic
This is more data to play into what I was talking about here. If you notice, he starts off talking basically about central planning, and a need for the government to play a role in a “broken” and “failed” market of capitalism. But when it gets down to specifics, he actually ends up agreeing with a lot of what Peter talks about all the time. All Schiff had to do was ask him a few questions and the guy actually starts admitting that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and the like on his own.
This points to the notion that he is actually smart enough to understand at least some of the free market arguments. But his insistence that there is free market blame to go around, and that the government needs to play a role in coordinating the economy is still quite obvious and prevalent. Initially one might chalk this up to what Hayek was talking about at the link above, at least in a way…that there is a predisposition to prefer something that is visibly directed to a good purpose. I actually am led to believe that that is where a lot of leftist mentality stems from. But that is usually born out of economic ignorance. Of course simply having academic credentials doesn’t automatically mean one isn’t economically ignorant, but one would hope it would at least mean one is somewhat intelligent and can understand basic concepts.
For this guy it seems there is a bit of a need to blame “the free market” not out of any real evidence, but more just because “of course it can’t be all government’s fault”. That, plus a little leftist indoctrination of a negative opinion of free markets that one could easily obtain from a childhood around “modern liberal” parents, or spending enough time in academia.
But even more so than that, if you notice, this guy spends a decent amount of time reminding everyone that he’s not affiliated with any party. In fact that’s literally how he begins the interview. He even has a hard time admitting the party he’s looking to be nominated for is actually a “Party”. He makes a pretty decent effort to keep reiterating that he’s “not far right, not far left…right in the middle”. Kind of like a sort of Goldie Locks “juuust right” thing that people do to try to avoid being attacked from partisans. “I’m a moderate” is supposed to mean “I’m not extreme” which means “I’m rational and not blindly agreeing with some political party or ideology” which is finally supposed to translate to “I’m right because I’m taking the best ideas from ‘both’ sides.”
I think a need to come off as Goldie Locks is the main motivator for this guy. It’s like he has an internal, emotional predisposition to be on the typical pro-government leftist side of things, but he’s smart enough to realize he can’t deny the points Peter makes, so he has to use his smarts to sit around and come up with reasons why the “free market” doesn’t work and why government intervention is needed…Like the notion is there before, and he needs to come up with the “evidence” to support it…as opposed to evidence leading to a conclusion.