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Posts Tagged ‘Ludwig Von Mises Institute’

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Adiós, Richard Posner

In Arts & Letters, Austrian Economics, Book Reviews, Books, Economics, Humane Economy, Humanities, Law, Libertarianism on December 23, 2015 at 8:45 am

Allen 2

Translated by and available here at Mises Hispano. Publicado el 21 de diciembre de 2009,  Traducido del inglés por Mariano Bas Uribe. El artículo original se encuentra aquí.

Con su último libro, A Failure of Capitalism, Richard Posner ha estado a la altura de su habitual mala fama como provocador. Viniendo de un hombre que es el fundador del movimiento del análisis económico del derecho y miembro electo de la Sociedad Mont-Pelerin, la sensacional declaración de que el capitalismo ha fracasado sin duda generará arqueos de cejas. Pero las reflexiones de Posner, además de prematuras, a menudo apestan a salidas falsas y grandes mentiras.

Los libertarios deberíamos elogiar a Posner, uno de los pensadores más originales de nuestro tiempo, por su permanente rechazo al pensamiento en grupo y a adecuarse a las ideologías trilladas. Sin embargo también deberíamos despedirle. Este último libro, una media vuelta en su carrera, hará poco para ayudar a los afectados por la crisis. Incluso puede que les haga más daño.

Posner sugiere que, en lugar de andarnos con eufemismos, llamemos espada a una espada: la crisis financiera es una depresión. Insiste en el desagradable término “depresión” porque los problemas actuales exceden con mucho cualquier caída modesta de las recientes décadas y ha producido una intervención gubernamental sin parangón desde la Gran Depresión. Posner probablemente tenga razón en este punto.

También tiene en general tazón en su crítica a la burbuja inmobiliaria, incluso sin llegar a atribuir la culpa real al papel del gobierno en las hipotecas subprime: promocionando exageradamente la propiedad de la vivienda, rebajando drásticamente los tipos de interés, canalizando una demanda artificial hacia el sector de la vivienda, etc. La tesis de Posner (de que la depresión representa un fallo del mercado producido por la desregulación) pivota sobre el mito de que los reguladores realmente regulan en lugar de servir a los intereses de los beneficiarios del Leviatán (es decir, ellos y sus compinches).

En cuanto a este último punto, Posner sí reconoce, entre otras cosas, que la SEC estaba vinculada a agentes del sector de los valores privados a pesar de su obligación de hacer cumplir las leyes federales de valores. De todos modos, no se ocupa correctamente de este problema o siquiera de los problemas relacionados que afectan a empresas patrocinadas por el gobierno (como Fannie, Feddie y similares) que privilegian los intereses de una élite pequeña a costa de la mayoría. En plata, Posner ignora el corporativismo. No tengo tiempo ni especio para ocuparme de este asunto ahora. Para saber más, recomiendo leer Meltdown, de Thomas E. Woods, un libro corto y bien razonado que es accesible para cualquiera (como yo).

La propuesta de Posner de que “necesitamos un gobierno más activo e inteligente para evitar que nuestro modelo de economía capitalista no descarrile” parece como mínimo quijotesca. Porque un gobierno inteligente (si existe algo así) minimizaría en lugar de aumentar las imposiciones estatales en la economía y permitiría a los recursos fluir de los sectores en declive a los que estén en expansión de acuerdo con las fuerzas naturales del mercado.

Cargado de referencias y apoyos implícitos a la economía keynesiana (cuyo poder reside, afirma Posner, en su “lógica sencilla y de sentido común”), este libro es un tour de force estatista. Mario J. Rizzo ha escrito extensamente acerca de la conversión keynesiana de Posner. Basta con decir que Posner argumenta por un lado que el gobierno puede prevenir las depresiones y por el otro que el gobierno ha fracasado en frenar la reciente crisis económica. Esta desconexión genera la pregunta ¿Más burocracia y regulación del gobierno habría ocasionado una respuesta más oportuna y coherente? ¿No es arriesgado poner tanto poder en algo con un historial tan imprevisible?

Posner sostiene que los “conservadores”, un término asombrosamente vago que deja sin definir, argumentan que el gobierno trajo la crisis con “presiones legislativas a los bancos para facilitar la propiedad de la vivienda facilitando los requisitos y condiciones para las hipotecas”. Este verdad que muchos autodenominados conservadores adoptaron esta postura. Pero Posner, aparentemente para calificar a estos “conservadores” como hipócritas, acusa al ex Presidente Bush de promocionar la propiedad de viviendas como parte de la agenda del conservadurismo compasivo.

Que Posner designe al Presidente Bush como el rostro de la “economía conservadora” (una categoría curiosamente equívoca en sí misma) no es sólo revelador, sino también francamente ridículo. Pues Bush (que defendió rescates masivos por parte del gobierno mucho antes que Obama) difícilmente pudo ser conservador en cualquier sentido del pequeño gobierno. Aumento los déficits presupuestarios mucho más que sus predecesores, nos llevó a dos costosas guerras y dobló la deuda nacional. A la luz de estos fracasos del gran gobierno, parece escandaloso que Posner afirme que “el camino estaba abierto para una ideología doctrinaria del libre mercado, pro-empresas y antiregulatoria que dominara el pensamiento económico de la Administración Bush”.

Posner consigue su objetivo de un “examen analítico conciso, constructivo, libre de jerga y acrónimos, no técnico, no sensacionalista y enfocado a la anécdota”, pero su apresurado análisis es totalmente defectuoso. Sorprende poco que este libro haya recibido poca atención. Muy probablemente escrito aprisa y corriendo por tener plazos estrictos, se lee como varios artículos de blog ajustados chapuceramente (Posner admite en el prólogo que ha incorporado varios artículos de blog).

Aunque no podemos reprocharle por las restricciones temporales de su proyecto, podemos y deberíamos apuntar que el prisa se ha cobrado su peaje. Por ejemplo, en un momento Posner afirma que los demócratas se apuntaron un tanto ante el público estadounidense al rescatar la industria del automóvil; poco después afirma que el público estadounidense se opuso al rescate de la industria del automóvil. En momentos como estos, Posner, al guisárselo y comérselo, defrauda una y otra vez.

Flirteando aparentemente con partidarios de ambos partidos políticos mayoritarios, se equivoca ad nauseam explicando un argumento falsamente conservador, un argumento falsamente liberal y luego su propio argumento, una cómoda posición entre ambos. Como otro gesto ante las audiencias masivas, evita las notas a pie de página y critica a la profesión económica (que considera un grupo de élite de académicos y teóricos financieros) por su aparente laxitud e ineptitud. Sin embargo, el populismo recién descubierto de Posner no es convincente.

Incluso los lectores simpatizantes se aburrirán pronto del estilo gallito de Posner. Posner es (por lo que yo sé) una persona magnánima, con una verdadera preocupación por la vidas de millones de estadounidenses, pero su libro, si se le hace caso, sólo empeoraría las condiciones actuales.

La Sociedad Mont Pelerin declara que sus miembros “ven peligrosa la expansión del gobierno”. Si Posner sigue compartiendo esta opinión, tiene una forma divertida de demostrarlo.

 

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The Dirty Business of Government Trash Collection

In Austrian Economics, Economics, Essays, Humane Economy on November 25, 2015 at 8:45 am

Allen 2

This article originally appeared here at Mises Daily.

I moved to Auburn, Alabama, in January 2013. I love Auburn.

It’s been nearly ten years since The Wall Street Journal profiled the Mises Institute and claimed that Auburn was an ideal spot for studying libertarian ideas and the Austrian tradition. I don’t know how much has changed since then, but I arrived in Auburn expecting a free-market sanctuary, a veritable haven where the ideas of Menger and Mises and Hayek were in the air and imbibed by the majority of people who weren’t members of the Auburn faculty, and even by some who were.

Once settled in Auburn, I realized I’d been quixotic and naïve. Even before national media picked up the story about the officer who spoke out against his department’s ticket and arrest quotas, even before the city of Auburn squeezed out Uber with severe licensing regulations, even before Mark Thornton highlighted the Skyscraper Curse in town, there was the matter of my trash bin.

I bought my house from a relocation company, the previous owner having been assigned a new position in another city. He was, this owner, in a hurry to move. Before he left town, he and his family rolled their trash bin to the side of the home, away from the street, where the garbage collector refused to retrieve it. They had stuffed the bin with garbage: food, paper, cardboard boxes, dirty diapers, and other junk. There was so much trash in the bin that the lid wouldn’t fully close. It looked like a yawning mouth. The house was on the market for approximately eight months before I purchased it, and I assume the bin had been sitting there, at the side of the house, the entire time. Naturally it had rained during the last eight months, so, with its half-open lid, the bin was flooded with soupy garbage and untold parasites. And it reeked.

The City enjoys a virtual monopoly on garbage collection; it tacks its fees onto the City’s water and sewage bill. The few private garbage-collection companies in town service mostly restaurants and businesses: entities that simply cannot wait a week for garbage pickup and need a service provider capable of emptying whole dumpsters full of trash. The City does allow residents to opt out of their collection services, but this only masks soft coercion with an illusion of consumer choice.

Government opt-out clauses are malicious precisely because of the impression that they’re harmless if not generous. Contract law is premised on the principles of mutual assent and voluntary agreement. Government opt-out clauses, however, deprive consumers of volition and bargaining power. They distort the natural contracting relationship by investing one party, the government, with power that the other party cannot enjoy. Not contracting for services is not an option, and government is the default service provider that sets the bargaining rules; the deck is stacked against the consumer before negotiating can begin.

The onus, moreover, is on the consumer to undo a contract that he’s been forced into, rather than on the government to provide high-quality services at competitive rates in order to keep the consumer’s business. Opt-out clauses make it difficult for the consumer to end his relationship with the government provider, and they force potential competitors to operate at a position of manifest disadvantage.

My wife and I took turns calling the City to ask about getting a new trash bin. No amount of cleaning and sterilization could rid the current bin of its stench. We couldn’t keep the bin inside our garage because of the oppressive odor. We left voicemails with different people in different departments at the City, begging for a new bin and explaining our situation, but our calls weren’t returned. There was no customer service of the kind a private company would have. After all, there was little danger of losing our business: the City was the service provider for nearly every neighborhood in town because of the difficulty private companies had breaking into a market controlled by government. We were, for now, stuck with the City’s inefficiencies and unresponsiveness. With much persistence my wife was eventually able to speak to an employee of the City. She was informed, however, that we could not get a new trash bin unless ours was broken or stolen. That stunk.

I learned in time about other drawbacks to our government-provided garbage service. During the holidays, collection schedules changed. When my wife and I lived in Atlanta and used a privately owned garbage company, our collection schedules never changed. Our collections were always on time. Our garbage collectors were kind and reliable because, if they weren’t, I could hire new collectors who would materialize in my driveway the next morning with shining smiles on their faces.

It’s simple enough to follow an altered holiday schedule, so that’s what we did in Auburn, only the collectors declined to follow that schedule themselves. After Thanksgiving, when trash tends to pile up, we placed our trash bin out on the street according to schedule. So did our neighbors. Yet nobody picked up our trash. Our entire street tried again the next week, on the appointed day, and once again nobody picked up the trash. A concerned neighbor called the City, and we were able to remedy the now-messy situation, but not without spending time and energy that could have been channeled toward better things.

When I was a child my brother and I were tasked each year with clearing trees, weeds, and shrubs that were growing along the pond in our backyard. We would pile sticks and sawed-up tree trunks and other debris on the curb of our driveway, along with bags of grass clippings, and our garbage collectors, who worked for a private company, would always pick up these items without question or complaint. We were so grateful that sometimes we’d leave them envelopes with extra cash to express our thanks.

In Auburn, however, I was once unable to squeeze an additional garbage bag into our trash bin, which was full, so I rolled the bin to the street and placed the additional bag beside it. I then lumbered inside for my morning coffee, when all of a sudden the garbage collector drove up and parked beside my bin. I watched from the window as he descended from his truck, shook his head, climbed back into his truck, picked up a pad and paper, and began scribbling with his pen. The next thing I knew he was issuing a yellow citation for an alleged infraction. It turned out to be a mere warning, but it indicated, right there in bold letters, that the next time we did something so egregious as putting our trash out for collection without using the bin, some repercussion — I forget what — would visit us.

When I think about the things the garbage collectors would remove from our driveway in Atlanta — an old door, a broken toilet, a malfunctioning lawnmower — I marvel that the City requires you to purchase tags at the Revenue Office if you wish to place things like dryers, water heaters, refrigerators, or microwaves on the street for garbage collection. Yet I remain optimistic, and not only because Joseph Salerno is coming to town to hold the newly endowed John V. Denson II chair in the Department of Economics at Auburn University.

I’m optimistic because I see some positive change. We recently organized a garage sale and came to discover, two days before the big day, that the City required a permit for such events. This time when we called the City to ask about the mandatory permit for garage sales, we received good news: those permits were no longer required as long as we conducted the sale in our own driveway. However minor, that’s progress. Perhaps it’ll spill over into other sectors of our little local community. Until then, War Eagle!

[UPDATE:  Two weeks after the Mises Institute published this piece, the City showed up on my driveway, removed the old trash bin and replaced it with a new trash bin.  Causation has never been established, but coincidence seems unlikely.]

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Hayek, Statistics, and Trade-Cycle Theory

In Academia, Austrian Economics, Books, Economics, Essays, Humane Economy, Libertarianism, Philosophy, Western Philosophy on February 11, 2015 at 8:45 am

Allen 2

This essay first appeared here as a Mises Emerging Scholar article for the Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada.

Austrian economics is often caricatured and criticized because of its approach, or deliberate lack of an approach, to mathematical models, multivariable calculus, and econometrics. Attacks are leveled against Austrians such as Mises, Rothbard, and Kirzner for their failure or refusal to avail themselves of applied empirical research in their scholarship. The Austrian methodology most frequently targeted is praxeology.

It is not the purpose of this short article to refute these attacks or to explore their errors and merits. That has been done ably by others (see, for example, the series of debate-essays available here, here, here, and here). Nor does this article attempt to stand up for the deductive reasoning of praxeology or to defend its claims about a priori truths, a task better suited for a lengthy work of scholarship, not a short article. This piece instead asks one simple question: does Hayek’s early work on trade-cycle theory complicate stereotypes about the methods of Austrian economics or clarify the manner in which Austrians can and do approach economic theory? The answer, of course, is yes.

Hayek proposed that the purpose and function of trade cycle theory was strictly limited: it was “to explain how certain prices are determined” and “to state their influence on production and consumption.” Expanding trade cycle theory beyond that purpose and function was, he believed, fallacious. “Any attempt to forecast the trend of economic development,” he claimed, “or to influence it by measures based on an examination of existing conditions, must presuppose certain quite definite conceptions as to the necessary course of economic phenomena.” But economic development — and the trade cycle in particular — is too important and complex to be guided by mere suppositions regarding matters about which there is much disagreement.

That is precisely what was happening in the 1920s when statistical designs and methods were growing in popularity and replacing general equilibrium theory, away from which Hayek himself moved later in his career. Economists at this time were beginning to treat statistics as conditions or proxies for theory (and even as theories unto themselves) rather than as mechanisms for testing and verifying established theories such as basic deductive inference or feature-by-feature comparison of the natural rate of interest (i.e., “equilibrium”) with the existing market rate.

According to Hayek, empirical research either affirms or discredits given methodologies but does not introduce new theories to explain fluctuating trade cycles. Amassing statistics, he maintained, is not the same as adducing or formulating economic laws. Statistics are nevertheless useful because, he explains, “there can be no doubt that trade cycle theory can only gain full practical importance through exact measurement of the actual course of the phenomena it describes.” Statistics, however, will not cultivate theoretical excellence of a kind that should direct trade-cycle theory or the policies that flow from it.

Statistics are useful in the negative sense: they disprove and discredit theories rather than affirm or prove them. They are corroborative but not ultimate guides; they are useful only to the extent that they enable us to make accurate predictions about future conditions, e.g., “to infer from the comparative movements of certain prices and quantities an imminent change in the direction of those movements.” Once statistics are gathered, a theory must be extracted from them–-they create inferences to be studied and aggregated, not comprehensive theories to be canonized. That is why Hayek declares that the “value of statistical research depends primarily upon the soundness of the theoretical conceptions on which it is based.” Statistics can be made to prove different points, but only a theoretically sound approach to classifying and elucidating statistics will bring about reliable forecasts.

Correct business forecasting depends on correct theorizing; therefore, Hayek propounds, we must labor to attain correct theories, never settling with what we perceive to be complete knowledge. Traditional equilibrium theory is not enough for him because it does not adequately account for money, a commodity or medium of exchange whose very status as such depends on its wide use and general acceptance on the market, not to mention its ability to reflect the subjective values of producers and consumers. The production of money and the often arbitrary increase in its supply by banks distort the natural interest rate and call into question the usefulness of equilibrium theory in a money economy.

Hayek demonstrates in his early work on the trade cycle that statistics and theories can be interactive and participatory so long as the former isn’t treated as a substitute for the latter. Statistics alone aren’t pure math, of course, and the creation of economic simulacra in the form of models and diagrams can lead to the type of scientism — the privileging of data over theory — that Hayek decries. Math is a term for what is done with data already gathered; it refers to many topics of study but in this context to the deductive and systematic study of facts and figures and their observable patterns to arrive at true concepts and accurate measurements regarding the concrete conditions of our phenomenal world. So understood, math is not the ultima ratio but an indispensable tool, not an end but a means to an end. Only from this premise does Hayek’s trade-cycle theory become fully comprehensible, and although his paradigms of trade-cycle theory and equilibrium evolved over time, his foundational approach to the role of statistics and theories remained crucial to his thinking.

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Note: Quotations come from F.A. Hayek, Prices and Production and Other Works: F.A. Hayek on Money, the Business Cycle, and the Gold Standard. Edited with an Introduction by Joseph T. Salerno. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008.

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The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture

In Academia, Arts & Letters, Austrian Economics, Book Reviews, Books, Economics, Fiction, Film, Humane Economy, Humanities, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Literary Theory & Criticism, Philosophy, Rhetoric & Communication, Screenwriting, Television, Television Writing on January 22, 2014 at 8:45 am

Allen 2

This review originally appeared here in The Independent Review.

“Television rots your brain.” That’s a refrain many of us grew up hearing, but it isn’t true. So suggests Paul Cantor in The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture, his second book about American film and television.

Cantor has become a celebrity within libertarian circles. He is Clifton Waller  Barrett Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Virginia and recently became a visiting professor at his alma mater, Harvard University.  What’s remarkable about his appointment at Harvard is that it is in the Department of Government, not the Department of English. That doesn’t surprise those of us familiar with his breadth of knowledge and range of interests.

Recognized as an interdisciplinary scholar, Cantor attended Ludwig von Mises’s seminars in New York City before establishing himself as an expert on Shakespeare.  Besides publishing extensively on literature of various genres and periods, he has been a tireless advocate for Austrian economics, even though Marxist theories and their materialist offshoots dominate his field. In 1992, the Mises Institute awarded Cantor the Ludwig von Mises Prize for Scholarship in Austrian Economics, and his work at the intersection of economics and literature resulted in Literature and the Economics of Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010), which he edited with Stephen Cox (while contributing nearly half of the book’s contents).

Like that work, The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture owes much to the theories of Friedrich Hayek, in particular the concept of spontaneous order. It is a reflection of spontaneous order that the most beloved films and television shows did not spring perfectly from the mind of some genius working in complete isolation.  Rather, they emerged out of the complex interactions between producers and consumers and the collaborative efforts of scores of diligent workers. Viewer feedback facilitated modifications and improvements to films and television, which  advanced in meliorative stages.

Hayek discusses spontaneous order to refute the belief that government intervention and central planning ought to force order onto the marketplace. Cantor discusses it to refute the belief that artistic creation stands outside of commercial exchange. Examining depictions of freedom and coercion in a wide variety of films and television shows, he highlights the disparity between elitist and populist understandings of American culture, which he links to “top-down” and “bottom-up” models of order, respectively. His position is that the popularity and artistic appeal of film and television appear to be proliferating despite the objections and insults levied by the cultural elite, who, it should be added with not a little irony, nonetheless probably watch a great deal of television.

Against the cultural elite and their promotion of patrician—and mostly  European—standards for the arts, Cantor maintains that the marketplace enables  creative and experimental forms of expression that aren’t so different from earlier aesthetic media such as the serialized novel or popular plays. He reminds us that “nineteenth century critics tended to look down on the novel as a popular form, thinking it hardly a form of literature at all,” and adds that it “was not viewed as authentic art, but rather as an impure form, filled with aesthetically extraneous elements  whose only function is to please the public and sell copies” (p. 7). This once “vulgar” medium has lately been celebrated as one of the highest and most impressive categories of art. The form and content of great American novels—whether by Twain or Cooper or Salinger or Pynchon—should remind us that popular novels have been elevated as canonical even though they have rejected the standards and conventions that highbrow critics insisted were necessary for a work to constitute “literature.” Twain and Cooper recognized that highbrow presuppositions and expectations for novels derived from influential Europeans, so they set out to forge a uniquely  American literature free from Old World constraints.

Because film and television are commercial, they allow ordinary Americans  (as opposed to academics and the cultural elite, including and especially the neo-Marxists) to determine aesthetic standards and trends by indicating what does and does not interest them. Authors and television producers, in turn, become responsive and attuned to the demands of their consumers; they become, in short, entrepreneurs who must struggle against the status quo, defy the odds, and push the limits of artistic acceptability.

The elite disparage this process and advocate for aesthetic criteria divorced from the tastes and pleasures of the general public. As Cantor explains, “Elitists who profess to believe in democracy nevertheless have no faith in common people to make sound decisions on their own, even in a matter as simple as choosing the films and television shows they watch” (p. xiv). The elite would have film and television removed from the marketplace, but without the marketplace there would be no film or television.

Films and television shows might just become the masterpieces of the future; they might have already provided us with canonical “texts.” It is too early to say whether they have contributed substance to what Matthew Arnold called “the best that has been thought and said.” Greatness, after all, takes time to ascertain.

Orwell, Dr. Johnson, and Hume adhered to the “test of time” measure of  greatness by which a work of art or literature is evaluated according to its ability to compete and survive in the literary marketplace over the course of generations.  This measure requires the sustained consensus of consumers as opposed to the esoteric judgments of elite critics. A work’s ability to attract vast and diverse audiences and to do so long after its production is what makes the work great.

It might seem odd to think of Cantor’s subjects—South Park and The X-Files, for  instance—alongside important literary works of the Western canon. And yet the groundlings who paid a penny to enter into the pit of the Globe Theatre, where they would stand and watch performances of Shakespeare’s plays, probably didn’t think they were witnessing greatness, either. Harold Bloom once said, “Cultural  prophecy is always a mug’s game,” and Cantor is wise not to prophesy about the enduring merit of any films or television shows. Cantor’s point is not that the products of film and television will be considered masterpieces one day, only that they might be.

For the record, I consider it extremely unlikely that South Park or The X-Files will achieve classic status, but I would not extend that speculation to such films as Casablanca or the Star Wars trilogy. Cantor himself takes pains to distinguish first-rate works from run-of-the-mill entertainment by invoking “traditional criteria for artistic excellence” (p. xxii). We should not take him to mean that film and television are media superior to that which came before them; instead, he considers them as substantially similar to their artistic antecedents, except that their  features signal an evolution in artistic preferences. The allure of art comes not from its alienation from popular culture, but from its ability to incorporate popular culture in ways that do not impede its power to speak beyond its moment.

To be sure, American film and television have produced an overwhelming amount of trash, but so did novel serialization. Not all novelists who published their work in contiguous installments in magazines and periodicals held the stature of Charles Dickens or Henry James or Herman Melville. Cantor points out that we forget about the thousands of bad novels from the Victorian era and extol only around one hundred novels from that period, which supposedly represents a  zenith in culture. Among the thousands if not millions of films and television shows that have been produced over the past century, perhaps a few will rival the works of Dickens, James, and Melville.

If Cantor weren’t such a generous and careful scholar, he might have become the bête noire of sophisticates and lambasted in the pages of The New Criterion for his embrace of the purportedly lowbrow. His command of economics and literary history, however, has spared him from such condemnation and even gained him a devoted following. To do justice to his latest book would require a more comprehensive treatment of his arguments about the figure of the “maverick” in film and television or about the value of collaborative work and coauthorship in  generating exceptional products. Yet these arguments demand more attention than a review can give.

The incomparable Cantor has blessed the libertarian movement with a literary  voice. He has expanded the study of Austrian economics into the fields that need it most. He himself is a maverick, reading and writing industriously to break up the habits of thought and monopolies on ideology that mark literary scholarship.  Would that we had more Cantors to show us how literature flowers when freedom flourishes. There is hope in the idea that artists can turn to the market to cultivate their talents and supply us with the arts we demand. No English department or cultural guardian can rob us of the entertainment that we enjoy.

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Allen Mendenhall Interviews Jeffrey Tucker

In Arts & Letters, Austrian Economics, Creativity, Economics, Humane Economy, Humanities, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Literary Theory & Criticism, Literature, Philosophy, Writing on March 26, 2012 at 1:00 am

Jeffrey Tucker is the publisher and executive editor of Laissez Faire Books. He is the author, most recently, of Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo (2010) and It’s a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes (2011). The former editorial vice president of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, he is an adjunct scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research fellow with the Acton Institute, and a faculty member of Acton University.

Q: Jeff, this interview is exciting for me. It’s something of a reversal of the interview that we did together in January 2011. This time, I’m interviewing you. I’d like to start off by asking about your two recent books, Bourbon for Breakfast and It’s a Jetsons World. Tell the readers of this site a little about both books.

A: Both books cover the unconventional side of private life as governed by the market and human volition. I guess you could say that this is my beat. I’m interested in the myriad ways in which the government’s central plan — and there is such a thing — has distorted and changed our lives, and also interested in the ways we can get around this plan and still live fulfilling lives. I take it as a given that everything that government does is either useless or destructive or both. The government does a tremendous number of things, so this is a huge area. Bourbon is more focused on the rottenness of the state and its harm, while Jetsons is more the marvelous things that markets do for us. Neither subject gets the attention they deserve.

Q: These books are available in PDF format online. Explain why you’ve chosen to make your work freely and widely available.

A: Every writer wants to be read, so it only makes sense for all writers to post their material. Of course publishers tend to intervene here with promises of royalties in exchange for which you become their slave for the rest of your life plus 70 years (that’s when they dance on your grave). This is the essence of copyright. It is a bad deal for writers. Those who go along with it these days nearly always regret it later. If they actually earn royalties — and very few actually do — it is likely they would have earned more had the material not been withheld pending payment. The bestselling books of 2012 — the Hunger Games series — are posted by pirates everywhere, even against publisher wishes. But, you know, this is starting to change. Publishers are gradually seeing the point to posting material online. Sadly, they aren’t budging on the copyright issue, which is really pathetic. No libertarian should ever publish anything with any institution that is not willing to embrace a very liberal policy on reprints, and one that is likely enforceable such as Creative Commons – Attribution. Meanwhile, the government is using copyright, a phony form of property rights, to step up its despotic control over the digital age. The situation is extremely dangerous. One hundred years from now, they will be laughing at our times and poking fun at how the anachronistic state tried its best to thwart progress.

Q: You strike me as an optimist. Is that true?

A: Not as a matter of principle but there are certain rational reasons to be very hopeful about the future. The future is always uncertain except in this one sense: it will be different from today. The state is very bad at managing change. Freedom is very good at managing change. Freedom is a form of play, a relentless process of adaptation, trial and error, of testing and pushing out the boundaries. Freedom is really marvelous at implementing an infinite world of ideas, whereas the state pretty much has only one idea: push people around. This is why freedom always ends up outrunning the ability of the state to manage it. Freedom is smarter, and connects more closely with human ambitions and dreams, and this is especially true in a digital age. For this reason, I think we have reason to be full of confidence and hope.  

Q: After a long tenure at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, you recently became publisher and executive editor of Laissez Faire Books. A lot of people are anxious to see what you’re going to do with that enterprise. What can you tell them at this point?

A: Well, I’m glad to report that we are selling books and that’s fantastic. We also have some two dozen books in the process toward publication. I’m being pretty fussy with the books overall, commissioning excellent introductions and writing all sort of editorial prefaces and things. As we approach summer, you will see many more wonderful things happen, things that have never been done before, but I think I’ll let the details be a surprise.

Q: What is Laissez Faire Books? Many readers of this site are probably unfamiliar with it.

A: The company has this brilliant history that traces to 1972. Murray Rothbard was in many ways at the center of its founding but there were also many Randians involved. Between that point and the digital age, it was the main way that people received libertarian literature. Oddly, one thing I’ve noticed since coming to work here is that the “curator” role is still something that Laissez Faire can play. If we can guarantee a certain number of sales on a particular book, we can make the difference as to whether it is published or not. Much to my surprise, this seems to be happening already.

I’m extremely pleased that Agora Financial took over LFB in 2011. Agora is a for-profit company with offices all over the world, and the firm has a dynamic ethos that embraces commerce, change, and progress. The past is just data in a company like this, while all the energy action is in the future. As you might imagine, I like this environment. It is a natural home for me.

Thank you so much for taking the time, Jeff. Is there anything else you’d like to say before we conclude?

A: I have a strong sense these days that libertarianism, broadly considered, is undergoing huge changes in strategic outlook, and I’m happy about that. We are moving away from the “movement” mentality of the analog age and into a broader sense of the global universe of ideas. This means taking more risks, exploring more areas, and generally having more fun than ever. It’s a good time to love liberty.

Thank you so much.  This was really great, and I hope we can do it again.

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Literature and the Economics of Liberty

In Arts & Letters, Austrian Economics, Book Reviews, Communication, E.M. Forster, Law-and-Literature, Libertarianism, Literary Theory & Criticism on February 5, 2011 at 10:53 pm

Allen Mendenhall

Recently Jeffrey Tucker, editorial vice president of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, interviewed me about capitalism, the free market, and literature.  We discussed, among other things, Marxism in literature and humanities departments.  Just days later, a review titled “Marx’s Return” appeared in the London Review of Books.  That shows how relevant my interview was and is.  The interview is below:

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MisesWiki

In Austrian Economics, Libertarianism on November 14, 2010 at 5:55 pm

Check out MisesWiki, a new project dedicated to advancing Austrian economics.

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