How to Reach the Left

[9thdoctor]

I like his idea of using the terms “freed market” instead of “free market”. This could get a little gimmicky, but I think it would help get attention and communicate the distinction between Austrian economics and the likes of Bush.

Here’s a link to the transcript if you’d rather read than listen.

http://mises.org/daily/5226/How-to-Reach-the-Left

[Brant Gaede]

If you make three 90 degree left turns that's the same as making one 90 degree right turn. This way you can approach the conservatives from behind and catch them with their pants down. Now, why you'd want to do this I haven't a clue. Sorry I don't have time to watch a 25 min video.

--Brant

make three 90 degree turns right and catch the lefters from their behinders--why?--I dunno

[9thdoctor]

If you make three 90 degree left turns that's the same as making one 90 degree right turn. This way you can approach the conservatives from behind and catch them with their pants down. Now, why you'd want to do this I haven't a clue. Sorry I don't have time to watch a 25 min video.

--Brant

make three 90 degree turns right and catch the lefters from their behinders--why?--I dunno

What's all this about sneaking up behind people while their pants are down?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmeDlfk2aYc

I think this talk is up MSK's alley, since it's about persuasion and has a little neuro-linguistic bit in there ("freed" vs. "free").

[Brant Gaede]

I like it where he states something like, "I bet you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose!" as part of his diatribe. I wonder how long and when it took the Marines to tone this crap down. I remember in army light weapons training in January 1965, while we were learning to dis-assemble and re-assemble the .45 automatic (1911), the instructor bemoaned the fact that the word had come down to stop swearing at the trainees.

Full Metal Jacket was quite a movie--Vietnam filmed on location in England. The drill sergeant celebrated the marksmanship of Lee Harvey Oswald thanks to his training as a Marine. My brother set the course record for qualification with the M-14 at Camp Pendleton which might still stand as they shortly afterwards went over to the M-16. Anyway, this is one of the great Kubrick films, as were most of his.

--Brant

Edited April 29, 2011 by Brant Gaede

[syrakusos]

I like his idea of using the terms “freed market” instead of “free market”. This could get a little gimmicky, but I think it would help get attention and communicate the distinction between Austrian economics and the likes of Bush.

Here’s a link to the transcript if you’d rather read than listen.

If you make three 90 degree left turns ... Sorry I don't have time to watch a 25 min video.

Well you could read the transcript, of course, if you were interested in the ideas. Nothing was surprising. I found amusing his claim that economies of scale become dis-economies of scale, especially contrasting my own 140-lbs to his 300.

Like any ism, Dr. Long's "Austrian" perspective views problems differently from my own "Austrian" standpoint. Hayek and Mises both asserted claims that to me seem contradictory of their premises, allowing a need for anti-trust laws or social welfare (cash transfers). Hayek insists in The Road to Serfdom that he does not favor full laissez-faire. Long does. Or so he says. What I find valuable in Hayek is his claim that absenting state intervention, we have no way to predict the final outcomes in markets: we can show the damage done; we can suggest the damage avoided; what happens next, we cannot know. In The Denationalisation of Money, Hayek parts from the Rothbardian claim - via Mises - that only 100% gold backing is honest banking, and that anything else is fraud (punishable by private suits in private courts and market responses as consumers flee the inflators). In fact, my understanding of numismatics as the history of money let me see immediately - by induction! - that Hayek is right. Money can take and has taken all kinds of forms and asserting that the so-called "gold standard" is "objective" because gold has "intrinsic" value is just ignorant because it ignores history. We have no idea what a freed market in banking would look like: we can only speculate like science fiction.

Also, I noted that Long claims:

Likewise, the more hierarchical a firm is, the more distant owners and managers are from information about what is actually happening on the shop floor. Hence if employers, out of traditional prejudice, believe that some groups are less productive than others, then the larger and more hierarchical their firms are, the harder it will be for market signals to penetrate into their organizations to correct their misperception; and

In this case, he is speaking about discrimination by race and gender, but it is an argument he makes throughout.

As a utopian, he posits a world that will be as he wants it. Uusally, they employ the modal verbs would, could, should. Long is more assertive, but not more correct. There is no metric to demonstrate that large firms are better or worse than individuals at decision making. The only physical law I know of in this case is the inverse-square law. I like it and cite it often. The farther away you are, the less you know by the square of the distance. But, a small firm or individual, does not have the "reach" of a large firm: getting the information is the first work to be done before you can measure by whatever means its "intensity" (correctness; usefulness). And an individual does not have the depth of expertise of a large firm. It is obvious from history that large firms can be woefully inefficient and make fatal mistakes. So do small firms.

As for "reaching the left" that is a different matter entirely. Myself, I believe that you cannot rationally argue a person out of an opinion that they were not rationally argued into in the first place. Moreover, those who can be wooed to your cause can also be seduced away later. Howevermuch I find collective political action a waste of time, it is obviously a lucrative market. If you want sell political ideas, then good marketing will keep you in business "one customer at time" for a long time.

Edited April 30, 2011 by Michael E. Marotta

[9thdoctor]

Myself, I believe that you cannot rationally argue a person out of an opinion that they were not rationally argued into in the first place.

When I took macroeconomics the teacher was a dyed-in-the-wool Keynesian. I’d say that students who bought in were rationally argued into the position, one had to study further and seek out opposing views to learn otherwise. Rather like buying into Ptolemaic astronomy circa 1600.

Moreover, those who can be wooed to your cause can also be seduced away later.

That’s true of every side of every issue. You may as well give up on any kind of persuasion if this is stopping you.

[Reidy]

Long makes some interesting points along the way, but in its essentials his speech is forty years out of date. The line he pushes was common back when Hess and Rothbard were selling it, but in the meantime it was tried out and found wanting. Long's target audience has, since then, only became more misanthropic, elitist or, in his term, "aristocratic." Liberalism in the modern sense was a contradictory mix of authoritarianism and libertarianism (as Rand, Hayek and Friedman all pointed out). As the contradiction became impossible to deny, liberals resolved it by giving up on the libertarian part. If the anti-privilege left exists - and I guess it does, somewhere, if Long can organize an alliance - it has no political or media influence and no prospects thereof.

The whole speech brings to mind what Eric Mack said about Sciabarra's attempt to sell Objectivism to the Derrida/Foucault crowd: even if you could, why would you want to?

[BaalChatzaf]

I am not convinced the Lefties want to be "reached". They will change their minds or outgrow their leftishness by themselves or they will not change at all.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[studiodekadent]

I am not convinced the Lefties want to be "reached". They will change their minds or outgrow their leftishness by themselves or they will not change at all.

You'd be surprised. Many libertarians initially identitifed with the left rather than the right.

Long distinguishes between two kinds of leftist; the "aristocratic left" and the "anti-privelige left." The former are those that Hayek would've called the Constructivist Rationalists and generally have secret dreams of themselves as Platonic Philosopher-King. These cannot be reached, true, but I believe that Long is correct that the anti-privelige left CAN be reached.

Part of the reason libertarians struggle to reach the left is actually semantic. For instance, many libertarians and especially Objectivists use "Capitalism" as a synonym for laissez-faire free market economics (or "freed markets" in Long's terms). We use "Capitalism" in the same way that the gay rights groups use "queer." We use it as a reclaimed word which we expropriated from the enemy.

The problem with using "Capitalism" is that the term is originally a Marxist term used to refer to any economic system wherein which there is profit (in the Marxist sense (i.e. Worker makes good which sells for (p + w), worker is paid w, employer makes profit of p)). This is why the Marxists accuse Fascism of being a form of Capitalism; whilst Fascism is anything but free market economics, it is Capitalist in the sense Marxists use the term because wage labor exists.

This simply creates unnecessary confusion. This is why I have abandoned the use of "Capitalism" and instead talk in terms of free markets (or "actual, laissez-faire free markets" to differentiate between them and the real-world mixed economy).

Whilst I don't identify with either the left or the right culturally, Long's work on the subject does have value and the left-libertarian movement is certainly useful at dispelling the leftist myth that libertarians are merely pot-smoking corporatists.

[syrakusos]

Myself, I believe that you cannot rationally argue a person out of an opinion that they were not rationally argued into in the first place.

When I took macroeconomics the teacher was a dyed-in-the-wool Keynesian. I’d say that students who bought in were rationally argued into the position, one had to study further and seek out opposing views to learn otherwise. Rather like buying into Ptolemaic astronomy circa 1600.

I suggest that those who accepted the professor's teachings whole only did so because they were consonant with what the students had heard all along: we need govrnment to moderate the market; government spending stimulates the economy; too much of that is bad; etc. etc. If you searched further, it was because of a previous intellectual commitment. After all, strict Marxism is also "an opposing view" relative to Keynes. No one comes to school without opinions either of their own or from home. Few people enter any classroom complately ignorant or they would not be there in the first place.

So, if someone is predisposed to the free market, providing them with more of the same is beneficial. Occasionally, you do get the truly committed and intellectually active person who will abandon previous prejudices when presented with real learning. Sometimes, that learning is only piecemeal: they take the point, but do not integrate wider. In my micro class in 2007, the prof started early by disabusing everyone that there is a fair price or a just price for anything. "How many of you would trade your dollar bill for my quarter?" No takers. "What if you were in the desert and the only phone call was from a payphone? How much would you pay for a quarter?" I am not sure that anyone abstracted that further, though they took the learning moment.

Moreover, those who can be wooed to your cause can also be seduced away later.

That’s true of every side of every issue. You may as well give up on any kind of persuasion if this is stopping you.

People who share fundamentals can benefit from discussion of points of disagreement and they may not agree on either side of a persuasive claim, yet benefit from the opporunity to think more deeply or broadly with new data or new explanations. They might reach a synthesis. As you probably know, even if you do not win the argument, you may enlighten yourself with a new thought about an area you accepted as finalized. I recently read The Denationalisation of Money and I have my own evidences in support of Hayek, even though until then, I had accepted the Rothbard/Mises claim that anything other than 100% gold backing for paper is fraudulent. Some of Hayek's other claims carried less weight: I understood his point of view (prejudices) but do not share it (them).

Note, moreover, that I said "wooed" and "seduced." Being convinced (convincing), converted (converting), and won (winning) are not the modes of resilient mental growth. When you discover a truth, simply state the truth: give your evidence and your reasons; let the outcome be as it may; you are not responsible for the content of other people's minds.

Edited May 1, 2011 by Michael E. Marotta

[syrakusos]

I am not convinced the Lefties want to be "reached". They will change their minds or outgrow their leftishness by themselves or they will not change at all.

You'd be surprised. Many libertarians initially identitifed with the left rather than the right. ...the leftist myth that libertarians are merely pot-smoking corporatists.

That would also be the rightist myth.

In a world that makes the left "progressive" and challenging of the status quo, which is by definition "conservative" yes, it is expected that any number of people might begin their intellectual explorations of political science, sociology, and economics from the left. What counts is not so much where you start, but where you end up. Unfortunately, for many, a conclusion only marks the place where thinking stopped. The left-right dichotomy is one of those stopping points.

Myself, I wear a t-shirt that says "Enjoy Capitalism" (in the Coca-Cola typeface) when I go to the Ann Arbor Peoples Food Co-op where it was revealed I am not the only "capitalist" member. As co-owners, my wife and I look forward to our annual dividends from the profits, even as we complain to each other - but never the management - about the snotty attitudes of the communists at the cash registers.