and I stumble across this gem.
http://libertarianleft.freeforums.org/conflation-conflict-continued-t327.html
I never read those forums unless someone links to them. The only libertarian bloggers I pay attention to anymore are David_Z and Corktageous. NitroAdict when he posts. These guys are complaining about Kinsella strawmanning them, when the entire left vs. vulgar paradigm is based on a strawman.
A threat? Puh-leeze.
That made me chuckle, there’s some other gems on that site too, I read it occasionally between econometrics and lagrange multipliers.
I don’t read many blogs, only the Mises institute blog, the LRC blog, marginal revolution EconLog, Stephan Kinsella, Organization and Markets, Independant Blog, and Murphy’s blog.
And occasionally some blog called No Treason or something along those lines.
I should update that more often.
The only “threat” I see is the inadvertent sabre-rattling vis-a-vis a desire for one collective (I suppose left-libertarianism, but you cannot generalize every individual involved) to somehow have more presence in a school of thought than the other supposed “collective” (in this case, the mises institute).
The exact same could be said of “:insert vocal left-libertarian name:” possibly seeing all of the mises institute dominance & is essentially conducting a smear campaign against anyone who isn’t radical enough or doesn’t tow to the LL party line.
I just don’t entirely understand where all this (supposed) social venom comes from, & that applies to both “sides”, & why people that are normally rather intelligent consider it worthwhile to continue on, when the entire “Forum Warz” does nothing to really advance arguments beyond our comfortable social circles.
The entire thing is a mockery of conquer & divide, since we seem to be conquering ourselves for petty reasons that are increasingly looking less & less like a healthy competition of ideas, & more & more like a competition of social power & influence at the expense of intelligent & rational discussion.
In a sense, punditry instead of debate.
(this should be on my blog instead, oh the irony…)
+1 for the two mentioned blogs
It’s tough to do something for free when one has such little free-time, although I am going out of town sunday for the week (semi-vacation), so I should have a good amount of free-time available.
I should probably stop posting any & all comments online & just use my blog instead, I’ve probably squandered a good amount of possible posts online already.
What about it?
Quite.
The rhetoric is a bit off-putting, but the conclusions seem mostly correct to me. Although I can only conjecture since I cannot access the blog in question.
That’s just quite amusing, that’s all. The idea that the LvMI fellows would regard a few angry young men as a threat, that is. Here’s the thing, I don’t deny that many LLs are reasonably intelligent, and have read a few books on the subject. The fact of the matter is though, you don’t have the knowledge to compete with many of people over at the LvMI, because of intelligence reasons and simply because most scholars associated with the institute have put more time into studying all of the relevant material than is possible on behalf of the left libertarians. It really showed in the debate in the JLS, Carson is a smart guy, but he can’t compete with Murphy, Block and Reisman, even if Long was determined to give the game to Carson. Like it or not, there’s a huge difference between a serious economist and a intelligent blogger.
Or even the conflation conflict, Carson and Long were having rings run around them by Klein and Kinsella.
This isn’t to say, by the way, that Carson has nothing to offer, I think his criticisms of big business quite often hit the mark, if he does attempt to take it too far. I’m just saying that he can’t be confused for a serious economist like Salerno, Block, Huerta de Soto, Hoppe, Reisman, Thornton, Huelsmann, Rothbard, Mises, Garrison, Kirzner, Murphy, Higgs, Hayek, Klein or Herbener (amongst others) can.
Lew Rockwell, Jeffrey Tucker and Ron Paul and others are all very intelligent people, who are obviously quite well read in Austrian economics, but it would be a mistake to confuse them for professional economists, they’re not. This is nothing against them, they’re performing a very important task in the work they do, but they wouldn’t be able to hold their ground in a debate against any of the big Austrians. Just like nobody on these forums can compare to the likes of Mankiw, Krugman or any other of the big mainstream economists, they’re not in the same league and need to understand that.
Fortunately Rockwell etc. don’t have any pretensions that they could hold their ground in such a debate, whereas I don’t see the same humility in regards to the LL camp. It’s one thing to be well versed in economics, it’s another to be a serious economist, and I don’t even mean that they have to be teaching at a university to be considered such, Frank Shostak is, in my opinion, a very serious economist, for example.
I understand what you’re getting at but the fact someon is a “professional” I think is irrelevant. People either have correct or incorrect opinions which isn’t necessarily correlated with there obvious intelligence. For example my New Classical and Margerat Thatcher advising Patrick Minford. He’s good on some things but I reckon any well read layman Austrian would be able to take him out on the nature of economics and certainly the business cycle. Many professionals are proficient in irrevelancy. Don’t even start me on Krugman. If he’s an economist so’s Gordon Brown.
I agree that most professional economists are essentially failed mathematicians with very little understanding of the way the world works, in which regard you’re probably correct and I take back that point as far as it concerns (most of) the mainstream. My main point was that Carson has two self published books, they may be good, but at the end of the day he’s just not going to compete with the LvMI scholars who are head and shoulders above him. That’s not to say that he shouldn’t be listened to or that he shouldn’t be taken seriously, it’s just not going to work comparing him to the likes of Huelsmann, Huerta de Soto or Hoppe for example.
Perhaps instead of professional it would be more appropriate to use the word serious, by that I don’t mean working for a university, I mean that they’ve exposed their ideas to a wider audience than a few people on forums, which Block pointed out he doesn’t think Carson has done. Most left libertarians simply haven’t read enough, or the appropriate literature to be able to comment on these matters to the extent that they do. Which is why they’re being outcompeted. Not to mention that Carson believes in an outdated LTV.
However, I’m all for giving the LLs their chance. If what they believe to be is in fact so, then presumably their beliefs will progress, especially in these days when the internet makes the spread of ideas even easier. If they are correct then they will have to show that in debate with the “vulgar” libertarians, that means meeting Kinsella’s and other’s criticisms and finding weaknesses in the right libertarian theory, not complaining about them on message boards, but by reading on the subject, formulating their own beliefs and attacking the “right libertarians” where they see necessary.
I understand what you are trying to say, and am sympathetic to it, but ultimately it comes off as (and perhaps correctly so) arrogance and conceit.
There is a massive professional economics institution that follows neo-classical economics, which I know to be a failed model. When it comes to markets, I, the most casual of laymen, run circles around Paul Krugman.
I’m not anti-authority (in the expert, respect for knowledge sense) but I also don’t assign it so broadly or casually. I would advise you reconsider. There are many greater arguments you can make about Carson’s ideas, without having to resort to judging him based on means or credentials, which is petty and fraught with the potential to be misleading.
Being dismissive didn’t work out so good for Hayek with regard to Keynes.
You seem to be making a similar point to Physiocrat, and I think that you’re both correct. Perhaps I went too far with my points concerning the mainstream, a lot of them a smart guys though, they’ve simply invested too much human capital in a bankrupt system to be able to quit, so even if Austrianism makes sense to them the sunk costs are too high to switch to the Austrian paradigm. An interest question is how long the neoclassical, Keynesian paradigm can last with all the evidence mounting against it.
Now, as regards to Carson, perhaps your correct, my point wasn’t that the LvMI scholars are better because they work at universities or have PhDs, they’re simply more competant economists, they’re more widely read in the area of economics and other related areas. They’ve been studying it and/ or teaching it for longer than Carson and they’re more nuanced than Carson. To repeat I don’t wish to make it seem like I believe you need to be a professor of economics to make a contribution, look at Hazlitt, he’s made the best criticism of Keynes so far and he was a journalist. My point was merely that whilst Carson and his follows may be reasonably intelligent and well read they’re not on the same level as Block, Kinsella, Hoppe, Rothbard, Mises and Klein. That doesn’t mean that it’s not worthwhile to engage Carson, granted, the LLs should be grateful they’re getting the attention they are and far more appreciative that the JLS had an entire issue devoted to Carson and his ideas, even if he didn’t fare too well in his ideas. I don’t agree with the LLs and I think they’re often not too great as individuals but I also think that it’s important for Austrians to be engage in their ideas and their criticisms as Kinsella has done, it’s through this sort of criticism that science progresses. If the LLs are wrong their ideas won’t get very far in the Austrian community, if they’re correct on some points they’ll inevitably be listened to by Austrians who tend to be fairly receptive. On their behalf though that requires them not to be defensive when it comes to Kinsella’s criticisms.