Here’s the second part of a long overdue response to Jacob Weisberg. Read Part I here.
Libertarianism holds no “heroic” view of the capitalist. We may respect certain entrepreneurs, but we think the consumer-entrepreneur relationship is more effective and more just than the voter-politician relationship. Sadly, a lot of what we see among capitalists are the Jeffrey Emmelts of the world, colluding with government to secure “rents”–which means gaming the system for unearned benefit (as with the bailouts). We call this corporatism.
A quick scan of the ‘public choice’ literature would have disabused Weisberg of any notion that libertarians see businesspeople as saints (any more than James Madison saw politicians as angles). In fact, I would put the left’s uncritical belief in the powers of the bureaucrat up against any zeal some libertarians may have about the benefits of entrepreneurship. While we may respect the tendency of markets to self-correct and believe in the creative powers of free people engaged in voluntary cooperation, we are under no illusions about markets being “perfect.” Heck, I wouldn’t even know what that means. Only Utopians have a single idea of the good. Libertarians are pluralists. The good remains subjective and flexible. We want to make it easier to exit failed systems and enter successful ones.
While some small subset of us may be idealistic, libertarianism is, generally speaking, a skeptical view of power. That skepticism includes doubts about the extent of elite knowledge and the efficacy of bureaucratic planning. I don’t want to paint “us” with such broad strokes, as Weisberg does in his cartoonish rendering. I would say that what is common among competing versions libertarianisms is both a moralistic concern about coercion and doubts about the effectiveness of state power. Given recent events, aren’t we justified?
Which brings me to the well-hackneyed, Sorosian term “market fundamentalist.” By now, anyone interested in economic matters should be familiar with the term. It’s a cheap elbow. The idea is to ridicule rather than to reflect. In case you didn’t catch it, market fundamentalism is intended to connect the dogmatism of a bible-beater with the belief that markets do a better than government at almost everything.
The implication is that respect for market processes is like faith in six-day creation. As popular as the barb has become among those like Weisberg, it misses.
It’s not that free-market types don’t believe in “market failure.” Far from being dogmatic about the power of markets to solve every problem under the sun, it is rather that we’re skeptical about the ability of a few elites to solve any such problem without severe unintended consequences.
But prior to that, we actually start by asking “fail at what?” If we can all agree on what – X – as well as criteria for the success or failure to achieve X, we want to then talk about different means of solving the problem. Solutions involving the Rube Goldberg apparatus of permanent state bureaucracy give libertarians serious pause.
Libertarians also know that because perverse incentives, power brokering and principal-agent problems are a given when it comes to state action, government failure at X is almost a foregone conclusion—particularly when it comes to matters of economics. We realize that faith in government is like faith in God, except the average government bureaucrat is neither all-knowing nor all-powerful. At least markets have the benefit of the wisdom of crowds, voting, as they do, with their dollars. What can we say about the wisdom of a cadre of elites whose political interests are almost never aligned with the “public interest” (whatever that is)?
I doubt Weisberg would have read The Calculus of Consent or The Fatal Conceit. Second-hand dealers in ideas are known for dabbling without much depth. Most swallow mangled table scraps from sanctimonious dilettantes like George Soros and regurgitate them with unearned authority.
So how should we close? We can’t overlook Weisberg’s dig at libertarians who pointed out government fingerprints on the ’08 financial fiasco:
Of course, I’m sticking to the libertarian conclusion that government meddling was at the source of the financial meltdown. And I’ve got some very intelligent libertarian thinkers at my back. (See also here and here.) But Mr. Pot, allow me introduce my friend Mr Kettle. What would Weisberg say about his team’s fetishization of stimulus policy since the meltdown? All evidence points to stimulus having failed utterly. The “multiplier” is zero. And job creation? I guess you could say ex nihilo. I call it Keynesian Creationism — the idea that the economy is the result of ‘intelligent design’ by elites. And yet leftists are sticking to their guns (and their religion) like Sarah Palin enthusiasts. The Keynesians descended on Washington like the promise-keepers on Dallas and now they’re prepared to double down on Keynesian Creationism. Today’s story is that ‘it could have been worse,’ and that we saved America from a great depression. As President Obama said on the one year anniversary of his failed stimulus plan: “One year later, it is largely thanks to the recovery act that a second depression is no longer a possibility.” Now if that ain’t dorm-room apologetics, I don’t know what is.
As it turns out, libertarianism was never really dead. Weisberg was drumming on the casket of a straw men made vaguely in the form of Ayn Rand and Fed pooh-bahs. He wove together a number of disparate narratives from prominent leftish intellectuals and passed it off as something epic. A little more than a year later, his favorite team has done their best to prove everything libertarians have ever said about the inherent problems of power.
And now, even ordinary people are getting wise to it.
