The UK Adam Smith Institute has started its own blog. It’s quite a good, snappy read, and the first few days cover many of the hoary old chestnuts you might expect; how vouchers are the panacea for under-performing public services, how Naomi Klein attacks branding, but actually is a brand herself (fair enough), and how, erm, left-wingers are too angry and put upon to be funny.
It’s worth keeping a look at to see how this blog develops. Though, as with other more ‘corporate’ blogs, the house style is a bit uniform. There seems to be a word limit on entries which has the effect of making the pieces sound a bit samey, and also rather superficial.
Funnily enough, on my way back from lunch today I was giving out (extremely superficially) that all the rich seem to do is distort markets by defending their privileges and/or monopoly rents. While the ASIs of this world seem to spend their time defending these guys (you know, ‘the rich’, i.e. suitably vague) – e.g. saying embezzlement and fraud should be dealt with by companies, not law enforcement – it seems to me that the really rich have no interest at all in truly competitive markets. Just ask Bill Gates, Halliburton, et al. And then the conversation turned to whether George Bush was a kleptocrat, plutocrat or just a plain old vanilla flavoured oligarch…
Maybe there’s a joke in there, but I was too down-trodden to see it.
{ 14 comments }
C.J.Colucci 09.17.03 at 4:01 pm
Didn’t Adam Smith himself say much the same thing?
William Sjostrom 09.17.03 at 4:08 pm
“hoary old chestnut”? What would a hoary young chestnut be? (Just trying to make my splenetic quota for the day.)
Doug 09.17.03 at 4:44 pm
“Maybe there?s a joke in there, but I was too down-trodden to see it.”
There is, but unfortunately the joke is on us.
GWB unites all three wings of the Republican party (and if you think it’s an unnatural beast that has three wings, by George, you’re onto something):
* The Bolshevik wing (Tom DeLay) that mostly believes in power for its own sake, secondarily believes in one-party Republican government, and uses any means it can to bring along the first two;
* The monarchist wing (GHW Bush) that believes that the people who have always had power should always have power because they have always have power – they can also be counted to defend inherited wealth and other elements of privelige;
* The Taliban wing (Rick Santorum) that believes that God has directly sanctioned their party’s agenda, and that it is vitally important that government be present in the bedroom to protect the people’s morals.
The base is so hot for GWB it doesn’t know whether to kneel, salute or just fall prostrate at the mere mention of his name. The American republic will survive GWB, but it is a pity that it has to.
PG 09.17.03 at 4:45 pm
Smith did indeed say something of the sort.
Jonathan Ichikawa 09.17.03 at 7:25 pm
Your link is wrong.
metafizum 09.17.03 at 7:30 pm
I wonder which ASI is “saying embezzlement and fraud should be dealt with by companies, not law enforcement”…
metafizum 09.17.03 at 7:54 pm
oh, i see now which. it is not an ASI that is saying that, it is the ASI.
Nicholas Weininger 09.17.03 at 9:24 pm
It’s certainly true that many rich people have no personal interest in the free market. Supporting the interests of rich people is very different from supporting the system which makes people rich; it’s the difference between being in favor of capitalism and being in favor of capitalists.
metafizum 09.17.03 at 10:04 pm
the economist made a point a couple of months ago of differentiating between pro-business and pro-market views. i guess the ASIs usually tend to be pro-market and not pro-business. that is why the “bedazzlement” statement is not really representative. i guess. (is it even an ASI statement?…)
Arnold Kling 09.17.03 at 10:28 pm
I have a modest request. Try actually debating free-market advocates on substance, rather than engaging in reductionism–treating them as puppets whose strings are pulled by some conspiracy of the evil rich.
If you’re right, and nobody really advocates the free market for valid intellectual reasons, then defeating them on substance should be easy. You should not have to resort to delegitimizing someone with whom you disagree.
Kieran Healy 09.18.03 at 4:45 am
Hey Bill –
“hoary old chestnut� What would a hoary young chestnut be? (Just trying to make my splenetic quota for the day.)
Probably your own good self as a grad student. :-)
Sorry, but you set yourself up for that one.
If you’re right, and nobody really advocates the free market for valid intellectual reasons,
Whoops, didn’t notice Maria arguing for that at all. I took her as implying that while there are all kinds of good reasons for genuinely free markets, such markets are not in the interests of the likes of Halliburton or Microsoft and those companies are well aware of that. It’s a bit like how, say, 19th century capitalists like John D. Rockefeller had essentially the same analysis of the destablising and self-undermining nature of capitalist markets as Marx, and saw monopolies and cartels as the natural solution.
Maria 09.18.03 at 7:30 am
Jonathan – thanks and apologies, link is now fixed.
As Kieran has it, I’m not arguing against ‘free markets’, not arguing at all really – which is a bit of a cop out, I’ll happily admit. Just observing that there is a difference between ‘free’ markets and competitive ones.
dsquared 09.18.03 at 8:31 am
A hoary young chestnut would presumably be the result of an early frost in a chestnut grove.
Meanwhile:
If you’re right, and nobody really advocates the free market for valid intellectual reasons, then defeating them on substance should be easy.
This is a complete non sequitur. It is my own, frequently stated position, that there are powerful and compelling arguments for free markets, but that most of the people who actually argue for them do so from a position of hypocrisy. The second, sociological fact, has little or nothing to do with the first.
Keith M Ellis 09.18.03 at 5:39 pm
Amen, Daniel. And you can tell who those people are by how quick they go running to the government for favorable intervention when their own interests are threatened.
I’m noticing this right now among my friends in the tech sector.
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