First link of three:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-7-2011/exclusive—rand-paul-extended-interview-pt–1
The crowd clapping for the FDA. Jon Stewart making it sound like the govt and regulations have brought out out of the stone age, protecting us from the heartless corporations.
Rand Paul doesn’t handle it well, seems to me. We need Peter Schiff or even Ron Paul out there interviewing.
So glad I don’t watch TV, really burned me up.
I know exactly what you’re talking about…but I think Rand serves a really good purpose. You have to remember very very few people have the knowledge and idea exposure you do. They’ve never even heard of Mises, Rothbard, or Hazlitt…let alone their ideas and economics. Can you remember what your reaction was when you first heard the notion of anarcho-capitalism? It’s not an easy concept to grasp right away…especially after spending decades in government schools and being exposed to a pro-statist media and populace.
I think Rand serves as the proper introduction to these ideas. I think his message is more easily digested by newcomers. It’s far too easy for people to dismiss someone like his father as a “isolationist kook” or some other bullshit. But you have to admit it’s hard for even those leftists to argue with what Rand says…and it’s not because he’s compromising on anything. He’s coming from an Austrian perspective, and he’s unrelenting in his position. It would be really easy for someone to concede the way Jon Stewart does when he admits things like “well you make a good point, maybe we do need to scale it back on the regulation a bit”. Rand could have easily said something like “yeah, companies do get out of control sometimes and we need government to reign them in…but that’s only sometimes.”
But Rand never lets up even as Stewart gives ground. Every time Stewart tries to gain some back and get him to blame the free market and say government is needed to regulate the market Rand comes right back and points out how it was government that either caused or at least encouraged whatever negative thing Stewart was talking about.
Sure Rand acquiesced that some environmental regulations may have had some positive effects, but he moved right on to point out the more important points of central banking and the effects of crony capitalism. You or I or some other Austrian might have gotten caught up on the Clean Air Act comments and tried to argue that there is a better way…we would have tried to argue every point…but we would have lost the majority of our audience. We want the largest amount of people to be persuaded to our understanding…and you can’t do that by shoving Man, Economy and State in everyone’s face right away. Most people need to get through some Economics in One Lesson first. I think that’s a role Rand plays incredibly well. He offers that opening act.
While I don’t think Peter Schiff would have been a better replacement, I do think Ron Paul (especially the 1980s version) would have been a much better defender of market alternatives. I mean, Rand Paul really did make many of Jon Stewart’s points, and he even acknowledged that our significant progress (material, safety, environmental) was due to regulatory achievements.
I was very excited to watch this interview, but I was completely disappointed by it.
To the OP, what were you expecting? Most mainstream shows lke Stewarts have hosts and audiences who assume the state holds up the sky and makes the rivers flow.
I noticed how Rand Paul was struggling, it’s really not something you can explain in that format. Libertarianism takes a long time to explain, and it is not a straightforward, linear argument. Jon Stewart threw like five socialist myths at him and he could only respond to one at the time, so he had to implicitly concede to the other four. For instance the notion that cutting taxes is good for the rich. Obviously the rich hate libertarianism and strongly lobby against it, the Bush tax rates raised the share of taxes paid by the richest 1%. But in leftie circles it’s still “oh, libertarianism is for the rich and makes the middle class suffer”.
I don’t understand why it is so hard to just respond with: “I completely disagree with that assertion but obviously have no time to respond in this format. Most of your assertions about government have already been answered by a fellow named Hazlitt in his short book Economics In One Lesson. However, I could address this…”.
One doesn’t have to agree to an assertion (or confer any validity to it) simply because he has no time to respond to it. The interview was a fail, IMO.
Z.
z1235, I guess because it has to be an interesting discussion and you can’t sound like a grumpy proselytizer. There’s the time constraint, and these shows have restrictions on what guests can say. Which is reasonable, since it’s TV.
That being said, I think it does a lot of damage to let these false statements go unanswered. Since libertarianism is counterintuitive, the other side always gets to preempt a lot of questions through the way the issues are phrased. Such as “tax cuts for the rich” (actually make the rich pay more) and “tax the rich to balance the budget” (revenues go down as taxes go up). Each of these ‘paradoxes’ has to be addressed. I think in such a situation it is a mistake to try to explain one of them, and let the other ones go. Instead a libertarian has to memorize the myths that the other side proclaims in a statement, and then address them each in a short rebuttal that simply states the opposite of what they claimed. For example: “Well, actually tax cuts are not for the rich, they make the rich pay a higher share of taxes. And you can’t balance the budget by raising taxes because revenues go down as taxes go up.” That’s short and pithy and people won’t tune out because you start explaining business cycle theory with analogies. The fun thing is that libertarians can make these wildly counterintuitive claims, because they are backed up by the facts. “Look it up.” I think it is important to get these facts out there, without bothering to explain them at first. Many people probably never heard them, so it’s no surprise they dislike libertarianism.
I try not to believe that stupidity is intuitive.
I found this interview really disappointing. I was optimistic about Rand Paul, but now it seems like he doesn’t know much. How can you be Ron Paul’s son and concede to some of the regulations that Jon Stewart brought up?
Rand Paul didn’t do well, but Peter Schiff and Ron Paul wouldn’t have been much better.
Well, it is. And libertarians have to deal with that. But that’s not the problem. Plenty of science is counterintuitive, but people still believe it. The problem with economics is that there is no humility among the ignorant. For some reason being economically ignorant is considered a position, unlike being ignorant of any other science. People don’t go around proclaiming to know the solutions to questions of astrophysics without having learned the science, but there is no such constraint in the realm of economics. The mistaken, intuitive explanations are taken seriously. And since they are so much simpler and easier to understand they outperform the counterintuitive facts in the marketplace of ideas.
anybody know a site were I could watch this from the UK?
Is he even a libertarian? He’s certainly not an Austrian. He seems like a fiscal conservative and wants to play “I can run this farm better than you can” games.
Nielsio,
If he can cut the budget by 500 mill, I say he can be wahtever he wants.
Well in the “extended interview” he blamed the Fed and artificially low interest rates for creating the bubble and its subsequent burst. But he did so in an almost monetarist/Keynesian way. I don’t think we can blame him for that though, since there wasn’t enough time to provide a good explanation. Even so, he conceded to many of Jon’s points about regulation, which is a shame. He’s just another second hand dealer in ideas who has a general idea of the right path, but no real knowledge of it.
Still, he is better than 99.999% of people in government.
Tom Woods would own Jon Stewart, and yet do it in a friendly, even jocular way.
Let’s put things in perspective:
Tom Woods would own Jon Stewart, but Woods is a historian/philosopher with a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a M.Phil & Ph.D from Columbia. The guy is a serious intellectual. Rand Paul is a doctor who would be more content being a doctor rather than becoming a politician. Circumstances have forced Paul in this situation and we should at least be appreciative that he’s in Senate and not some run-of-the-mill Republican tool like the guy who ran against him in the primaries.
BTW, his insulin/interest rates comparison rocked, I think. I would still rather see Woods debate Jon though. 
“People don’t go around proclaiming to know the solutions to questions of astrophysics without having learned the science” - EmperorNeor
Actually they do; they’re called nutjobs.
Only being slightly sarcastic. Stupidity and idiocy pervade all subjects, economics is different because there’s a sizable population - state parasites - that have a vested interest in making sure people believe the nutjobs. If the same were true of physics people would be jumping off cliffs and dying regularly because they relied on anti gravity devices that never worked, and there would be an aparatus in place to convince those who didn’t jump that those who did didn’t die but floated away to be with God or something.
And people would believe it.
Oh, I totally agree Kaju. I wasn’t trying to diss Rand for not “measuring up” to someone of Tom’s calibre. I like Rand, and I (unlike others here) really appreciate what he’s trying to do. I was just fantasizing out loud about how awesome Tom Woods would be on the Daily Show.
I didn’t contest that.
He cannot cut the budget. The only way in which a society changes its structure is through ideological change. That’s the main focus. Once could argue that the political route gets exposure to Austrian ideas. But he didn’t further that path of ideological change with wishy-washy “let’s make the farm more efficient”.
Jon Stewart completely defused Rand Paul. Why? Because he didn’t have any arguments that strike at the root of the problem. He even admitted that government regulations are good.