Whitewashing Rosh

“Cato is an odd mix of genuinely smart and honest people (e.g. Sanchez, Brink Lindsey) and organized hackery. ”

CATO was a lying propaganda shop (leninist plan to destroy social security, anybody?) from its inception. As a by-product, it has some actual true-believing libertarians on staff who – I was going to say ‘who occasionally go off-reservation, but I can’t recall any instances where they didn’t support right-wing econowhackjobery. Can anybody?

One may also ask what the University of Chicago press is doing reissuing this book.

I agree. It is a bad move by CATO, and undermines some of the other interesting work that they do.

The Press is not actually a subsidiary of the economics department.

Libertarian and glibertarian are the same thing. The supposedly smart and honest ones just function to give the others cover.

One thing I learned from the Mediterranean aid-flotilla saga is the importance of relaxing gun controls. If the people on that ship had been armed they would have been able to incapacitate the deranged gunmen earlier, with less loss of life.

Libertarians love to use signaling as an explanation (probably because it preserves the homo economicus/hedonistic sociopath perspective: people are evil robots only pretending to be human). By promoting obvious bullshit Cato is signaling that they’re still willing to say anything for a price.

From what I recall Robert Frank and Geoffrey Miller, both unabashed liberals, are some of the biggest pushers of the signalling model. If a good has signalling value, then reducing consumption (through, say, taxation) does not produce the “deadweight loss” economists normally assume.

“Cato is signaling that they’re still willing to say anything for a price”
Including supporting single-payer, hiking the minimum wage, and banning firearms, gambling or the charging of interest? Is the hypotheses that they are simply deluded ideologues that much more implausible than that they are pundits-for-hire?

I think Henry had the more accurate take: “I may think that some of the bloggers whom I argue with and criticize are political hacks. I don’t usually believe that they’re bought-and-paid-for political hacks (and if I did, I’d probably criticize them in very different ways).”

“And when the department which is disproportionately responsible for the fame of the entire freakin’ university, and which probably brings in loads of right-wing moola, asks for something, ”

This would be the department that employs that well-known friend – one could say fan – of John Lott … Steven Levitt???

Let me start off by saying that I agree that Cato isn’t doing itself any favors by hosting an event about Lott’s new book.

That out of the way, there’re several things about your post that strike me as disingenuous.

(1) The implied moral equivalency between Lott and Bellesiles. Actually, Bellesiles is much more thoroughly discredited than Lott – and no, not because of the towering integrity of the Left, but just because of good ol’ fashioned dodginess. The survey under dispute in More Guns is, to quote Julian Sanchez, “tangential” to the main point of his book. This is not true of all those many fabrications in Bellesiles’ book. Bellesiles fabricated all of his important evidence; Lott (probably) fabricated some points here and there.

(2) Lott has admitted the Rosh affair as soon as it was exposed; Bellesiles claims to this day that the charges against him are false.

(3) Heated criticism of a book is not sufficient to prove that it is erroneous. There are many motivations for criticism, only some of which are scholarly integrity, as anyone working in academia is well aware. To the extent that Lott’s current book checks out, there is no reason not to read or cite it. The only thing that Lott’s tarnished reputation requires is that it be more thoroughly checked than similar books, I should think.

(4) Lott won one of his lawsuits against Levitt. Among the more interesting points of the case that would seem to be relevant here but remain unmentioned include that Levitt admitted having been one of the reviewers of an article of Lott’s in the Journal of Law and Economics that he claimed had not been peer reviewed. Half of Lott’s lawsuit was (rightly) thrown out, but publicly claiming that someone’s article had not been peer reviewed when one is well aware – having himself been one of the reviewers – that it had – that’s defamation.

(5) It is false on its face that the Left in general considers Bellesiles’ work “toxic.” Several leftist academics do – including the one you quote – true enough. Nevertheless, Bellesiles has a book in press now (due out in August) from a leftist publisher that advertises the book’s author as “He is a nationally known historian who has been vilified, many think unfairly. This book will reestablish his reputation.” Their publication release went so far as to call him the target of a swift-boating.

In short, I can see why you are concerned about Cato hosting Lott, but this post is overstated. If you have substantive problems with the book, I’d be interested in hearing them. If, however, there is nothing wrong with the book, then it is real scholarship, and there’s no reason not to read and cite it. Facts are facts, regardless of who peddles them. Yes, that goes for Bellesiles too. If his new book is on the up-and-up, it’s on the up-and-up, and, just as with Lott, his shady past only means we need to be more diligent in our source-checking than we otherwise would be.

Well, Cato has had several internal dustups over the years, including Milliken (over the issue of textile import restrictions) and the Gulf War I (isolationist libertarians vs. the god-and-country side). One-and-a-half out of two is how I score their libertarian vs. rightwing apologist debate, but each to their own.

As for Lott, just because you think he is beyond the pale of listening to, doesn’t mean everyone is. Cato has had “worse” depending on your views … Charles Murray is a much talling lightening rod than Lott every will be and has been a more frequent speaker on a broader range of issues AFAIK.

I’ve followed Cato a good bit, and I don’t recall any dustup over trade restrictions or Milliken. Nor do I find anything in a quick search. Are you perhaps misremembering something?

Since no one here has offered any evidence that any person at Cato has written things he didn’t actually believe, may I conclude that for many of these commenters, anyone who disagrees with you is automatically crooked or “on the take”?

Cato is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful thinktank I’ve ever known in my life.

I’m trying to decide whether to attend the investment webinar hosted by Bernie Madoff or the workplace safety workshop led by Tony Hayward.

You joke, but Tommy Franks is out there giving lectures on effective leadership and strategy. He’s even running the General Tommy Franks Leadership Institute. In his spare time, he runs a stud farm in Oklahoma. Two of the stud horses are called “Shock” and “Awe”.

I am not making this up. (Though I suppose maybe Nate Fick and/or Andrew Exum are.)

Anarcho: Proudhon also said that property is freedom, and Cato style libertarianism and Proudhon have a common connection in the form of Kevin Carson: http://mutualist.blogspot.com/

Tom G. Palmer has anarchist elements in his thought: http://oxlib.blogspot.com/2009/10/modest-case-for-sacking-state.html

We are not necessarily quite as different as you think:)

and Cato style libertarianism and Proudhon have a common connection in the form of Kevin Carson

This is clever right-libertarian humor, right? Cato’s idea of a left-libertarian is Will Wilkinson, because he doesn’t completely dismiss Rawls out of hand. Carson and his fellow mutualists’ free-market anti-capitalism would not seem to actually be a very good fit with the capitalism crowd that funds and runs Cato. But perhaps I’ve simply overlooked that pro-union contingent who are card-carrying members of the IWW like Carson.

We [mutualists] believe in private property, so long as it is based on personal occupancy and use. … Our ultimate vision is of a society in which the economy is organized around free market exchange between producers, and production is carried out mainly by self-employed artisans and farmers, small producers’ cooperatives, worker-controlled large enterprises, and consumers’ cooperatives.

I couldn’t find anything matching up with this mutualists.org manifesto at Cato (though admittedly, that doesn’t mean it isn’t there).

So, sorry, as someone with occasional outbreaks of libertarian socialist sympathies, I’m still seeing a lot of daylight between the two, since I’m not sure even Benjamin Tucker would be a likely Cato hire.

Libertarians have single people who carry on the entire libertarian supposed project in that area.

So what you’re saying is, Cato will be really unhappy when Chomsky dies, because they won’t be able to pretend they aren’t minarchists anymore?

There’s also an element of “useful idiot” in your formulation, which I don’t think actually applies to Kevin Carson and small-but-nonzero group of mutualist peers. It’s not as if Mr. Carson has been liberated from toil by means of a cushy Cato gig. And seriously, do you really think that most self-identified libertarians in the US have even heard of mutualists, let alone used them for cover?

they are approaches towards similar visions of a free society.

I guess I’m still not seeing the strong similarity between a marketplace supplied with goods from small freeholds and worker-owned factories, and Cato’s aggregate vision of a world where first we must get government and organized labor out of the way, and then some of us promise to deal similarly with corporate power. If the order were reversed a little more often, I might feel more reassured.

They just usually find the foreseeable alternatives to private property as worse than the current system.

Because … ? I’m not intrinsically anti-propertarian, though I think Georgists (and mutualists!) have a point about some of its manifestations. But I’m also not intrinsically propertarian, and certainly not strong propertarian like capitalists tend to be. So I’m not clear on what specific alternatives are considered both terrible and exhaustive.

Whoa, I guess this is somewhat off-topic, isn’t it? That’s certainly never happened before.

“Lott’s work was merely shoddy and tendentious, whereas Bellesiles’ was full-on fraudulent. But Lott scores a way higher “ew” factor for those creepy Rosh escapades. It may not be scholarly misconduct narrowly defined, but it’s sure embarrassing. ”

Don’t let the comical ‘ew’ factor of Mary Rosh overshadow misconduct and fraud. No matter how ‘tangential’ the point was, to all available evidence Lott simply fabricated the existence of a survey, and relied on the fictional survey’s fictional results both in his book and in subsequent arguments.

The negative has never been proven, and so his apparent misconduct can’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt the way Bellesiles’ was– but Lott’s story relies on an awful lot of dogs eating an awful lot of homework. Were I on a disciplinary committee I’d probably say that there’s not enough evidence to convict him of fabricating the survey– but if an omniscient deity asked me to bet before revealing the true answer, I’d bet a good sum of money that he fabricated the survey. And that’s serious scholarly misconduct.

“They just usually find the foreseeable alternatives to private property as worse than the current system.

Because … ? I’m not intrinsically anti-propertarian, though I think Georgists (and mutualists!) have a point about some of its manifestations. But I’m also not intrinsically propertarian, and certainly not strong propertarian like capitalists tend to be. So I’m not clear on what specific alternatives are considered both terrible and exhaustive.”

Ok, lets just assume the absence of a right of use and possession based property system as a policy option for now, even though it might be a great thing if it could be instituted. You are left with a sort of continuum of property policies, running from strong individual ownership rights through increased public and corporate control of property, all the way to widespread or total state ownership.

Libertarians favour the first few points on that spectrum, the argument being that increased political control over property usually causes more problems than it solves, leading to mismanagement and inefficiency. As a kind of ‘least bad’ existing scenario, this seems perfectly reasonable (without being able to justify it on natural rights grounds). All successful societies have fairly robust property rights.

I didn’t follow the aftermath of the Lott thing super-closely, but I think it came down to “super suspicious but not provably falsified”. And then the whole sock puppet thing made it seem as if Lott was willing to falsify things. So while it isn’t *as bad* as republishing Bellesiles’ book it still damages CATO’s reputation to deal with it.

Do Lott’s fabrications mean that I have to get rid of all my guns? Can I at least keep the FN/FAL and one of the AKs for the apocalypse?

BTW, I don’t think Bellesiles ever conceded fraud, and nothing was ever proved in a court of law. The big difference was that the institutions that had to pass judgement on Bellesiles, like Emery and Columbia, have some standards, whereas those that had to pass judgement on Lott, like AEI and Cato, do not.

As regards Cato, my take is that they have lexicographic preferences. If they can get a high-quality scholar to do honest work that gets the *right* answer, that’s what they’ll do. But if the only person willing to give the right answer is a dishonest hack, that’s what they’ll settle for. By contrast, I think Heartland, CEI, and (largely) AEI prefer to deal with dishonest hacks.

On John Q’s final point at 47, I believe dsquared’s piece from the ancient past is the point of reference here, and deserves a cite just for this:

As a social pastime, obviously, endlessly re-estimating permutations of regression models has all the disadvantages of masturbating into a sock with few of the advantages, but is it really all that harmful? Well yes. I’m not just being a luddite here.

(Also, this.)

You are left with a sort of continuum of property policies, running from strong individual ownership rights through increased public and corporate control of property, all the way to widespread or total state ownership.

ISTM that the lesson of history is that both ends are bad. All successful societies have some private ownership, but they also have fairly extensive public regulation (e.g. utilities), often a considerably important chunk of outright public ownership (e.g. roads), and some form of eminent domain.

But of course saying that you can have too little public regulation of property use isn’t a very libertarian position. The emotional appeal of libertarianism is that you don’t have to engage with details — less government good, more government bad, end of discussion. Once you accept that that formula is oversimplified you’re going to drift into a more nuanced position and that is why there are so many disillusioned ex-libertarians.

The Chicago Press isn’t entirely controlled by the lunatic right in economics. It is the publisher for example of Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot, Social Security: the Phony Crisis, and James Galbraith’s Created Unequal: the Crisis in American Pay, though such titles are a minority in its econ list. But there is no excuse for publishing Lott’s garbage – in second and third editions, no less!

“But of course saying that you can have too little public regulation of property use isn’t a very libertarian position. The emotional appeal of libertarianism is that you don’t have to engage with details—less government good, more government bad, end of discussion. Once you accept that that formula is oversimplified you’re going to drift into a more nuanced position and that is why there are so many disillusioned ex-libertarians.”

Well I am happy to take a pragmatic approach to this myself. Once government expenditure is around 10% of GDP, we will see to what extent other services can be provided voluntarily. In the meantime, I am happy to keep roads, water, sewage, a suitably judicially limited police force, and subsidies for health and education as subject to regulation or public provision.

There might well be a stage at which more government is better than less government (to use rather ambiguous ideas in any case), but we are so far away from that point right now, that radical opposition to government regulation is the best chance of making progress.

I haven’t read the book, but I’d like to note the obvious problem with the title, “More Guns, Less Crime.” The libertarian position about guns is not about absolute numbers, but about unequal distribution: we don’t like it that only the political authorities may have them.

Rmangum,

Amen. Furthermore, its stupid for “libertarians” to defend gun rights on utilitarian grounds. It’s an argument we are not going to win.