Libertarian Wars! Tyler Cowen Blasts Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell for being Unreasonable Libertarians

Miscellaneous General
1

http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2009/12/tyler-cowen-predicts-lew-rockwell.html

Tyler Cowen: “This is a construction of a vision of reasonable libertarianism… this is a world that is growing very partisan and very rabid - and a lot of things that are called libertarian in the libertarian party and Ron Paul/Lew Rockwell camp aren’t where libertarianism should be… and I think Tom [Palmer] has been an advocate of a very reasonable libertarianism” (paraphrasing, at 27:00 in video)

Tyler Cowen: “So I think the libertarian movement is about to split into a right wing libertarian movement [referring to the Ron Paul/Lew Rockwell/Mises folk] that has decided to cast its lot with hard right republicans and a movement more liberal, more secular, more historically minded, more socially tolerant, less keyed into the political right.” (@ 46 min or so)

"“When I hear what some libertarians say about immigration, I get very uncomfortable.”

Apparently, Tyler Cowen thinks that libertarians should support the Wall Street Bailouts (like he did), but the second that someone says that immigration should be restricted until the welfare state ends - throw them out!

Tyler Cowen followed that up by ripping Austrians in comments to Robert Wenzel (http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2009/12/tyler-cowen-rips-ron-paul-lew-rockwell.html)

“I asked him if he agreed with Tom Palmer’s view that ABCT was a religion. He said yes. I asked him how so, and he reverted back to saying that there wasn’t any new thinking in the field, that there weren’t any masters in the subject.”

“I asked him how he thought ABCT needed updating. He said people had changed and that they now understood to be aware of inflation. [Did he not just see the financial crisis? ]That they wouldn’t just buy up things in the face of inflation. I asked him if the housing bubble didn’t contradict his point. He said that the housing bubble could only be one-third attributed to inflation.”

Wenzel: “As for Cowen, he’s a bright guy, but I don’t get how people fawn over his intelligence. At best, he is a sloppy phraser of his terms. Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell merging with the extreme Republican right? This would be the pro-government, pro-war right?”

Now, Tyler Cowen is the guy who wrote this marvel back in 2005: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/01/if_i_believed_i.html

He predicted everything that would happen - using Austrian Business Cycle Theory - and then says he doesn’t believe it. And then all of it happened. And he said it was just incidental. Great job, genius.

Also, he characterizes Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell as “nationalistic”, but refers to illegal immigrants as “illegal aliens” (http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/11/holding-the-line-on-the-public-option.html) Plus, how can somebody so anti-absolutist libertarian criticize the absolutist libertarians for being… non-absolutist on immigration, and advocating immigration restrictions in the absence of welfare removal?

The guy is a walking contradiction.

For an encore, Gene Callahan and Stephan Kinsella go at it in the comments on Murphy’s blog:

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5776375569387669394&postID=8688022287482473218

2

Tom Palmer is an anarchist. Ron Paul is a minarchist (at least on the surface).

Only Hoppe as far as I know supports closed borders, and that’s only as a second-best option anyway. Most of the others support open borders as the second-best policy.

3

^ Nice sig

4

I went to Cato University 2009, and there were more right-wing guests that I have ever seen in any other libertarian event. This event was headed by Tom Palmer. If there is one group that is using the slight ideological similarities between the libertarians and the right (even if this amounts only to opposition to Obama) it’s Cato.

5

Exactly. Meanwhile Tom Woods co-edited a book with leftist Murray Polner, Lew Rockwell posts tons of stuff by Glenn Greenwald on LRC, and Lew has even thanked Barney Frank for his initial support for the Audit the Fed bill. Plus I remember very nice things being said about Dennis Kucinich on LRC.

And LRC and Mises.org have been MUCH more critical of Bush and Republicans in Congress than Cato has.

Cowen is going off of ill-founded vague impressions. Not cool.

6

Why should we care?

7

Who is Tyler Cowen and why should I care?

Libertarianism has long had a ‘left’ and ‘right’ wing. Hell, I’ve been aware of that since the time I got into the movement in the early 80s. This is nothing new.

Because libertarianism is kind of a ‘big tent’ sort of thing, and not everyone necessarily agrees with everything, you are going to have different ‘wings’. You have the minarchist, the constitutionists, and the anarcho-capitalists within the movement. And various other factions, etc.

8

Because he is very influential, regardless of whether you know who he is or not.

9

He obviously suffers from some inferiority complex syndrome or something like that. The man is a liar and a fraud!

10

If I don’t know who he is, how much influence can he have???

11

It was interesting reading some of the comments at Bob Murphy’s blog, linked at the begining.

I thought that Cowen was the person who wrote the 5 group ‘breakdown’ of the libertarian movement that appeared in reason. I thought it was cr*p, and made me wonder if this guy has any understanding of the movement.

From reading the comments at Bob Murphy’s blog, I think I am right. He’s just another self-proclaimed ‘expert’ who doesn’t know what they are talking about.

12

It seems to me someone is upset because they can not measure up. Has to do with consistency. Nothing to do with left-right. Lew Rockwell is not right-wing. He is just way more libertarian than Cowen is ever going to be.

Funny how Paul is said to be in the same camp as Rockwell. What camp would that be? The camp of those who actually mean what they say?

13

Because even if you do not know who he is, other people do and can be influence by him.

14

Yeah, everyone’s a libertarian these days, even Marxists.

15

I dont know who Tyler Cowen is, but Tom Palmer is a fool. Palmer has always struck me as jealous of Rockwell’s crowd - hes so stuck on the whole left-right thing that he cannot stand social conservatives like Rockwell and Paul having really helped the growth and popularity of libertarianism. I can personally say that Lew Rockwell’s brand of libertarianism was very appealing to me when I first discovered him in 1999 (being previously familiar with Rothbard). Whats wrong with the libertarian big tent?

16

And how can Cowen say he’s a good libertarian when he is for bailouts and big government, attacks “ideology”, and now is taking shots at the most popular libertarian politician (Paul) and the most popular libertarian website (lewrockwell) ?

And the dirt that gets thrown on LVMI is like “they are associated with somebody who said something naughty and unlibertarian!”. Well, I mean, hell, usually these remarks come from people who hold non-libertarian views themselves!

I can only conclude that people like Palmer and Cowen want the libertarian movement to die. In their view, it’s gotta be their libertarianism (which is no libertarianism at all) or else it would be better if the libertarians just fiddle and burn.

If they really promote tolerance, why attack the big tent? Hell, they are attacking the small tent - the principled libertarian base.

17

Are you talking about Obama? [:P]

18

You’ve got your finger on the pulse there.

19

Rarely are people who personally attack others without provocation, people to be taken seriously.

This appears to be no exception.

20

Well there are some disturbing elements in the ‘Lew Rockwell camp’. (the AIDS crowd, the anti-immigration guys, and the 9/11 truthers for example)

I think Lew tries to move those people towards a more serious worldview but to do so, he has to get them on his side (site) first - that is he has to link to their stuff sometimes. But who knows, right? I can understand that people from the libertarian left (or the ‘moderates’) tend to be disturbed by that.