Economiștii liberali sunt acuzați de fundamentalism. De obicei de către economiști cu evidente înclinații socialiste. Dar ce ne facem când un economist liberal (acuzat ei însuși de fundamentalism) îi aruncă altuia această acuzație?!
December 17, 1997
Dear Walter:
Having just read your piece on Hayek (Block 1996)—a piece written by a fanatic, not by a reasonable man—I have but one question I want to ask you. Please specify for me in not more than two brief paragraphs how you perceive a feasible transition in a nongradual way from the present state of affairs to your ideal, justified state of affairs. Have you ever thought seriously about the problem of transition? It is long past time that you should do so.
…
January 9, 1998
Dear Milton:
Thanks for your letter of December 17, 1997. I’m sorry you think my article on Hayek fanatical, not reasonable. I reread it, and I can’t understand your opposition to it. All I did was show many, many instances where Hayek’s views were incompatible with a defense of free enterprise. Nor can I understand the transition from my criticism of Hayek to my views on transition from our present state of affairs to an ideal one. Nevertheless, since you ask it of me, I will try to answer. If we are ever to move from our present mixed economy to a very much more free one, I don’t think it can be done nongradually. After all, it took us (at least in the U.S.) dozens of decades to go from
relative freedom to the semi-socialism we now have. Why should the way back be more abrupt? I at least think it unlikely.
However, if it were to occur, and this is a big if, the only way I could conceive of it happening is under the aegis of a very powerful spokesman for liberty. He would have to have the eloquence of a Ronald Reagan, and the passion for justice and economic sophistication of a person such as yourself. If I could combine the two of your
best relevant traits, that is, somehow get you to be president for eight years, I think we’d have a pretty nongradual change. I can just see you putting Ward Connolly in charge of Equal Opportunity, Walter Williams as Labor Secretary, myself in charge of HUD, David Henderson in Commerce, Tom Sowell as Education Secretary, etc.
etc., and you telling us you’ll fire us if our departments are not ended within one year. You would then pull out of Nafta and WTO and instead unilaterally declare free trade with all nations. You would end the minimum wage, rent control, the Wagner Act and all those other regulations—not gradually, but abruptly. Taxes would quickly fall from some 50 percent of GDP to, say, 10 percent. This is the stuff of dreams, unfortunately. You talk of “feasible,” and this is hardly feasible. There would be too much opposition. You would never be elected. If you were, and
you started to dismantle government, you would be impeached. The only way this could work is if the mass of citizens, or at least some critical number less than 50 percent (say 35 percent and the two opposition parties were divided—this, in my opinion, is why Canada was able to join Nafta) were appreciative of free enterprise. And how can that happen? Why, in the way all of us folks are working, and dedicating our careers: teaching at a university, publishing articles and books, giving speeches, etc. Your own efforts, for example, in trying to attain drug legalization is a case in point and an example for all of us.
…
March 13, 1998
Dear Walter:
I appreciate the lengthy reply you sent to my earlier letter as well as the e-mail I got about the same subject.
There are two different things you and I have written about. One is about an ideal society. The other, that I and to a far lesser extent you have written about, is how, given the imperfect world as it is, we can adopt changes that will make it better and will move us in the direction of that ideal society…
Your attempt to answer my question referring to a nongradual transition brings out clearly that you recognize that a nongradual transition is hard to conceive, that any transition will certainly be gradual, will consist of a great many small measures. There may be some cases, as was the case with rent control, where it is possible to go all the way in one fell swoop, but there are other cases, as I believe in education, where you cannot at the moment hope to go all the way—not only because of political feasibility but because of commitments made by the community and expectations that have led to irrevocable actions— but you can hope to move in the right direction. I realize that in this case you do not agree with me that vouchers would be a step in the right direction and obviously I can well be wrong about that. But my ultimate goal is to have a situation in which parents are fully responsible for schooling their own children and in which the government is not involved in education. Today the government is involved in administering education as well as financing it. It seems to me that it is a step in the right direction to limit its role to financing and eliminate its role as an administrator. Indeed, it seems to me that that will set up forces which will tend to further reduction in the role of the state. And, most important, I do not regard myself as being in any way a traitor to my basic values when I propose and discuss such changes in existing circumstances, though I may of course in a particular case misjudge how such a change would work.
…
April 10, 1998
Dear Milton:
You raise a fascinating point about whether you are “a traitor to (your) basic values” when you advocate such things as educational vouchers. I think that “traitor” is far too harsh. To me, this word implies a knowing renunciation of your goals, a lying superficial public acceptance of them, while behind the scenes working to undermine them. Utter nonsense, in the present case. However, I do think it can be fairly said that educational vouchers are logically
incompatible with the free society, and, given that your basic values are those of economic liberty, that your advocacy of them is inconsistent with this goal. You say “Today the government is involved in administering
education as well as financing it. It seems to me that it is a step in the right direction to limit its role to financing and eliminate its role as an administrator.” Let us test the logical consistency of this statement by applying it to several other cases:
Right now the U.S. government is involved in administering the Post Office as well as financing it. In Canada this applies to radio and television (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), to airlines (Air Canada) and to the oil industry (Petro Canada). Previously, coal mines were financed, owned, and operated by the British government.
In India, this applies to such things as steel mills. In Italy, to autos (Fiat). Suppose I were to argue that the U.S., Canada, England, India, and Italy should continue to finance these myriad industries, but not directly administer them. This sounds to me like nothing but economic fascism, the economic system employed by Nazi Germany,
and Mussolini’s Italy.
Let me make this point in a far more radical way. The Nazis both administered and financed concentration camps for Jews, Gypsies, and other unfortunates. Surely no one whose basic values were centered on liberty could advocate that the Nazis give up administering these camps, but keep on financing them, supporting private efforts
along these lines.
William Hutt wrote a magnificent little book on just this topic called Politically Impossible . . . ? (1971). What I learned from him is that specialization and the division of labor applies, also, to public policy recommendations. That is, as libertarians, we must (logically) stick to advocating the ideal solution. We must leave it to others to determine what is or is not politically feasible. The reason I think you are inconsistent with (not traitorous toward) your basic values is that you are trying to straddle two incompatible horses: libertarianism on the one hand, and political feasibility analysis on the other.
…
June 6, 1998
Dear Walter:
I enclose a copy of a page from a recent Far Eastern Economic Review. I wonder why you believe that Hayek is on that page and not “others writing at this time who also wanted to show the socialists the error of this ways, but did so without making the numerous concessions made by Hayek.” More generally, you are a fanatic who finds it absolutely impossible to understand the thinking of anybody other than himself. It is time to close our discussion.
Cordially,
Milton
…
June 21, 1998
Dear Milton:
Thanks for your letter of June 6, 1998. You once again call me a “fanatic” and say that “It is time to close our discussion.” As for the latter, this seems unfair to me, in that you had the first word in this interchange (your letter to me of December 17, 1997). That being the case, it seems only proper that I should have the last word. Hence,
this letter…
I tried to do Hayek the honor of treating his writings seriously, unlike those who have uncritically accepted whatever he said because, after all, it came from the pen of Hayek. The Chinese scholars who are now discovering him can perhaps be excused for seeing in him a pure vision of free enterprise. They know no better. They have probably never been confronted with any more radical defense of markets than Hayek’s. But what can be said for those of us in the west who are, or could be, or should be familiar with less compromising advocates of capitalism such as Mises, Rothbard, Rand, Hoppe, Spooner, Oppenheimer, and still prefer the likes of Hayek? I suppose the best
that can be said of them is that they are not “fanatics.”
Even though you see me as a fanatic, I persist in thinking of you as my intellectual parent. (Officially, perhaps, you are my intellectual grandparent, because Gary Becker was your student, and my teacher at Columbia.) Paradoxically, because of your career (during which, on numerous occasions, I expect, you have been called a fanatic) my own views are seen by many as less fanatical than would otherwise have been the case.
Best regards as always,
Walter
P.S. I think a more accurate assessment of me than “fanatical,” from your own point of view, would be “extremist.” To that, I gladly plead guilty. In any version of the political economic spectrum, my views place me further to the extreme than do yours place you. But I wonder in this connection how you would evaluate the perspective
of your son David? After all, he and I share an “extremist” vision of free-market anarchism, while you favor government, albeit a limited one. Just out of curiosity, would you place David and I in the same category as far as extremism or fanaticism is concerned?
Despre economişti, Politică monetară | Bogdan Glăvan | 
iulie 30, 2010 1:05 pm | 
Comments (29) 
Subscribe