Regulation vs deregulation is always going to depend on how competitive the market is -- holding constant considerations on the environment and workers' rights and the like, obviously. It, for example, makes no sense to have exclusive cable providers in this day and age, as we have in many parts of America, when services like Verizon's Fios and DirectTV have made competition in the open market perfectly feasible and, in my experience, excellent. It would, on the other hand, make no sense to fully deregulate as discussed above in Jerome's diary.
Eventually, innovation may make deregulation a good idea, but we're certainly not there yet. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Cato was established as a libertarian think tank:
The Institute was founded in San Francisco, California in 1977 by Edward H. Crane and initially funded by Charles G. Koch. The Institute is named after Cato's Letters, a series of British essays penned in the early 18th century expounding the political views of philosopher John Locke. The essays were named after Cato the Younger, the defender of republican institutions in Rome. Murray Rothbard was an important founding member. He was part of Cato's original three-member board and suggested its name. After he came into sharp disagreement with other members, he left in 1981.
Murray Rothbard was an important founding member. He was part of Cato's original three-member board and suggested its name. After he came into sharp disagreement with other members, he left in 1981.
Charles Koch has been behind many libertarian projects including given over $20 million to George Mason University to enable it to hire an economics department composed of libertarians. His brother ran for vice president once on the Libertarian Party ticket.
Given that libertarianism is an eccentric philosophical belief system and that it's economic understandings are flawed anyone who works at Cato must also be a "true believer". Anyone who thinks otherwise and continues to work there would have to be exceeding naive or craven.
When a school of thought is supported almost exclusively by an extremely small group of right wing, super wealthy ideologues it lacks credibility.
The Cato Institute has been supported by: * Castle Rock Foundation (formerly known as The Coors Foundation) * Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation * Earhart Foundation * JM Foundation * John M. Olin Foundation, Inc. * Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation * Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation * Scaife Foundations (Sarah Mellon Scaife, Carthage)
* Castle Rock Foundation (formerly known as The Coors Foundation) * Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation * Earhart Foundation * JM Foundation * John M. Olin Foundation, Inc. * Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation * Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation * Scaife Foundations (Sarah Mellon Scaife, Carthage)
[For those in Europe and not familiar with these names they recur frequently in conjunction with similar conservative think tanks and front groups.] Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
This is very basic, but in this case, they for instance acknowledge that the goal of liberalisation is not lower prices, as has been said by so many politicians trying to sell these reforms. (They don't go all the way to stating explicitly that full market prices for electricity means denying electricity to some based on purchasing capacity - i.e. the poor; but maybe that's obvious to them.)
Your wider point is noted and worth repeating. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
As I pointed out originally they ignored some important factors in their analysis and the fact that they reached a conclusion that you are in sympathy with doesn't alter the fact that their methodology was (deliberately?) flawed.
Usually when libertarians find a problem with the "free market" they blame it on excessive intervention by the state. That seems to be what their ultimate goal was in this case as well.
Wasn't it the state that forced the breakup of vertical integration? Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
George Mason University, however, enjoys one of the few largely-libertarian economics departments that I've actually found to be decent. I'm a big fan of Tyler Cowen, who, unlike most libertarian economists, is quite modest and fair-minded, in my experience -- taking issues like Keynesian/Monetarist intervention, for example. Alex Tabarrok, Cowen's partner-in-crime over at Marginal Revolution, isn't bad either. (I should note, in the interest of full disclosure, that my uncle wrote the foreword to Tabarrok's book. They're friends, so I'm biased on your-friends-are-my-friends grounds here, although I do genuinely enjoy Tabarrok's blogging.) I'd submit, though, that Mason is a fairly open-minded school. If I had kids, I wouldn't get my knickers in a twist over their attending it.
The big-dog professors at Mason don't tend publish on the big topics (business cycles and the related macroeconomic issues), though, so they tend to serve me more as entertainment than education.
The Auburn University crowd is the one to keep an eye on, even though the Mises Institute has technically been purged as an official arm of the school. They're simply insane (racist, xenophobic, incapable of divorcing themselves from the thoroughly-discredited theories of the 1910s), as I can say after dealing with some of their disciples at Florida State.
Not everyone at Cato is a true believer, so far as I can tell, and I've been reading Cato publications (along with Brookings, going back to my undergraduate public policy classes) for the better part of the last five years. Their Social Security scheme was a joke, but mainly because of the outright lies about the state of the current system. The actual policy was, in my opinion, mediocre, but it would've deserved to die even if it were spectacular because of the fact that they attempted to sell it with obvious falsehoods.
(That is, for the record, the main reason for why I'm not all about John Edwards's candidacy, like some here. I can take a certain amount of lying and arrogance from politicians, but Edwards's refusal to speak to how he plans to pay for all of his proposals is incredibly offensive to me, bordering on Bush-caliber horseshit. He could accomplish all of those things, and without a lot of pain, but he needs to tell people the truth.)
I disagree about funding sources automatically discrediting people. Policies should be examined for what they are. Funding sources should simply provide for a greater degree of skepticism, where appropriate. If that's the bar each of our interest groups have to clear, everything is going to be discredited, because we're going to find that dirty money influences just about everything in the policymaking sector. It's always been that way, and it will, unfortunately, always be that way.
All that said, I think Brookings and the NBER are the only two think-tanks worth reading, so long as one avoids those two clowns who work on Iraq at the former. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
The Philosophy department is chock-a-block with people who take Ayn Rand seriously!
I tend to think that the old adage "he who pays the piper picks the tunes" applies in this case as well.
I traced some of the money and connections of the Marginal Revolution bloggers and summarized it in this essay: Charles Koch and Libertarianism - How to "Buy" a University
Your outlook is sympathetic to people like Cowen so you don't see the intellectually shoddy arguments he supplies. The most damning thing about the libertarian movement as a valid philosophical development is that it has failed to get adopted anywhere else in the world. In the US it is kept alive by the infusion of money from the wealthy backers. If it had something useful to contribute to human thought it wouldn't be on artificial life support.
The fact that it turned out to be useful to the plutocrats who run the US as a way to provide some intellectual veneer to a worldview based upon greed has allowed it to ally with the GOP and sustained it longer than would have happened otherwise. In countries where the plutocracy is not as strong there is no such movement.
On the other hand a real breakthrough like Jefferson's needs no wealthy (and secret) backers to resonate everywhere. Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
I've learned from prior discussions that we will never agree on some things.
Yes, that's probably true.
I'd argue that the actual libertarian movement has failed to get much, if anything, accomplished even in the United States since the time of the Founders. Naomi Klein summarized themodern issue well last on Bill Maher's show -- this issue of libertarian rhetoric being used to promote corporatist policies. (I was impressed by her ability to recognize that we're dealing with corporatism and corporate welfare rather than pro-market policies. Many of her persuasion have a difficult time separating the two.) We hear libertarian rhetoric on economic issues -- but, of course, never social issues -- constantly, yet what we wind up with is nothing like what libertarians generally advocate.
Flat taxes are one basic premise, but we instead have a system of regressive taxation in many cases. Witness Warren Buffet discussing the fact that he pays 15% of his income to the government, while his $60k/year secretary pays about one-third of her income.
Deregulation is another, but, while regulations on energy prices and quality of service are often deregulated, to one degree or another, we often don't have deregulation of the government-provided monopoly rights. (This is a major issue with cable providers in Florida right now, as Comcast Cable obviously doesn't want to compete with superior services like Fios. It would, however, like to charge monopoly prices, of course.)
You're right about libertarian policymakers and talkingheads providing ammo (and cover) to the likes of the Bush administration, -- that's undeniably true -- but I hardly think that to be Tyler Cowen's fault. That would be a bit like blaming every socialist for Stalin -- although, granted, there was plenty of that at one time, too.
I'd also submit that Jefferson -- we're talking about Thomas Jefferson, I assume -- likely had quite a few wealthy and secret backers in his time. I'd also be curious to know of what political persuasion you'd think Jefferson to have been. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
