David Brin Confronts Atlas Shrugged

David Brin points out the parallels between Atlas Shrugged and Occupy Wall Street on Red, Green, and Blue Blog HERE

Brin's essay goes over several issues – follow by clicking on the ‘next page’

(Brin also writes on his own Blog, Contrary Brin, HERE . This Link carries a much more readable summary of his views on Atlas Shrugged and I commend it if you are in a hurry.)

“But no one can deny my ongoing campaign to get folks to read Adam Smith, the founding sage of both libertarianism and liberalism. Like Smith, I believe in fair and open and vigorously creative competition - the greatest innovative force in the universe and the process that made us. Encouraging vibrant, positive-sum rivalry – in markets, democracy, science, etc – is one reason to promote universal transparency (see The Transparent Society), so that all participants may base their individual decisions on full knowledge.

That positive aim - also preached by Friedrich Hayek - should be the goal of any sane libertarian movement… instead of fetishistically hating all government, all the time, which is like a poor workman blaming the tools. Anyway, a movement based on hopeful joy beats one anchored in rancorous scapegoating, any day.

(Adam Smith favored feeding and educating all children, for the pragmatic reason that this maximizes the number of skilled, adult competitors, a root motive of liberalism and a role for government that is wholly justifiable in libertarian terms.)
For my full, cantankerously different take on the plusses and minuses of contemporary libertarianism — and other oversimplifying dogmas — have a look at this essay.”

Comment
Brin is worth readig for his critique of Ayn Rand’s dismal brand of libertarianism in Atlas Shrugged, book and film, which I have never found attractive, nor motivating. Libertarians of her ilk are more depressingly aggressive than enlightening. Their libertarian anarchism – they hate the idea of government – does not improve on the far left’s anarchism – a pox on both of them say I!

Liberty is more important than democracy; the former cannot be faked, the latter often is. Ayn Rand’s version is more than a few steps towards tyranny.

I much prefer the humanitarian libertarianism espoused passionately by the Adam Smith Institute in the UK, of which I am a Fellow.

I also noted that David Friedman on the Ideas Blog gives David Brin’s piece a bashing over a single sentence that he wrote about Adam Smith HERE: “David Brin and Adam Smith”

Long-term readers of Lost Legacy may remember that I had a debate a couple of years back near the end of the summer academic break on Lost Legacy with David Friedman, lasting several weeks (or so it seemed) on Smith’s use of the IH metaphor. He eventually retired from the debate, neither of us giving an inch, but I enjoyed the tussle for the time it lasted.

Whatever the merits of David Friedman’s criticism of David Brin’s single sentence, I remember how mistaken he was on Adam Smith’s use of the IH metaphor. This probably goes to show that the centre-right can be as factious as the far left.

To Criticise Libertarianism, First Get Your Facts Right

“bgamall” writes in Hubpages from Reno.NV HERE:

This is a contentious piece by a politically-motivated person, and normally I would ignore such twaddle, but it struck me as a fine example of the dangers of running with similar-sounding words in an attempt to add authority to a poor argument about modern politics in the United States.

“Libertarianism: Just a Smoke Screen for Avarice and Racism”

“Spontaneous order is one of two major assumptions in Libertarian thought. The other is the necessity of voluntary relationships. The two are closely related and make assumptions that are simply not true. These assumptions lead to outright lies.

Spontaneous order was a concept developed by Adam Smith. He believed that order arises in society spontaneously through the invisible hand of self regulation. He cites the development of language, the market economy, and the development of law. Regarding law, judges were to find the law rather than make the law. The natural law was out their lurking about, and all one had to do was to find it!

Natural law is a concept that was popular with the rise of historic liberalism, which was similar to today's libertarianism. Libertarians count as fathers, John Locke and Adam Smith. Adam Smith did not say that benefits from government could not exist, but rather were not the best way to help the poor. George H. W. Bush's thousand points of light and the importance of charity would have been praised by Adam Smith.”

Comment
I have little sympathy for bgamall’s ‘thesis’, if the coherence of calling it a thesis could be applied to it.

On the facts that I know about, ‘spontaneous order’ was not an idea of Adam Smith’s – ‘unintended consequences’ is the nearest we get to it in Smith’s works, and even that notion included the possibility of dire consequences of an action and not just the possibility of only ‘benign’ consequences.

Natural Law philosophy pre-dated Adam Smith’s thinking, inventive as it was, and was brought to Scotland from Grotius and Pufendorf’s works in the 17th century, the latter books of Pufendorf being a rich source for the teaching of Moral Philosophy in Scottish Universities, especially at Glasgow under professors Carmichael and Hutcheson (Smith’s tutor), and his texts had wide circulation across much of Western Europe into the 19th century. John Locke, among others was influenced by Pufendorf on natural law.

The ‘invisible hand’ was never about ‘self regulation’, as firmly asserted by Bgamal; it was a metaphor used only twice by Adam Smith in his major Works, first in strict reference to landords feeding their serfs, slaves, and peasants from the produce of their lands. This was he case for many millennia since 110,000 year ago and arose from an absolute necessity. Nobody can labour without daily food, hence, no food, no labour, and its companion, no labour, no food (Moral Sentiments Book IV, 1759). The second reference to the IH metaphor (a widely used metaphor in the 17th-18th centuries by theologians, preachers, dramatists, poets, and novelists) by Smith was in strict reference to some, but not all merchants, who were risk averse to investing their capital abroad, and preferred, instead, to invest domestically, which had the unintended benefit of being a public benefit because their investment added to ‘domestic revenue and employment’ (Wealth Of Nations). Self Regulation was nowhere mentioned by Smith in his use of the IH metaphor (nor were markets, nor equilibrium, nor supply and demand, nor any of the other imaginative inventions of modern economists).

In Smith’s Works he was quite clear that the likely origins of “the division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived is not originally the effect of human wisdom, which foresees and intends the general opulence.” It is the unintentional consequences of human actions that had the important unintended effects that they had and have. And the outcome of human actions could lead to benign as well as destructive consequences, which is an important corollary of unintended consequences and needs to be remembered rather than brushed over in the idea (Hayek’s I believe) of ‘spontaneous order’.

Instead it is “the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. Whether this propensity be one of the original principles in human nature, of which no further account can be given, or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech is not our present subject to enquire” (WN I.ii.1: 25).

Bgmal links ‘spontaneous order’ and writes “many aspects of man's cruelty, greed, and racism have also been manifested by spontaneous disorder” thus creating an effect that appears to be a criticism of Libertarianism. But Smith is not guilty; his critique of mercantile political economy is all about the malign unintended consequences of sovereigns, legislators and those who influenced them. Acting to deal with a particular problem – seeking finance for the regular wars they engaged in, the state introduced tariffs to ‘protect domestic industries’ from the outflows of gold. By doing so they unintentionally undermined the domestic economy and distorted resource allocations, not always as intended, and antagonised suspicious neighbours, adding to the risks of war.

The Elizabethan Apprentices Act unintentionally lowered product quality, created troublesome local monopolies, raised prices, and undermined consumer choices; the Settlement Acts intended to localise poor relief, instead they restricted the movement of labour and localised poverty; the trade Guilds aimed to encourage local enterprise, stifled innovation and ended in ‘conspiracies against the public’, and the Cromwellian Navigation Acts intended to provide a strong navy for the defence of the islands of Britain, instead they instituted exploitative monopoly pricing of imports and exports sent to the North American colonies, distorting domestic capital allocation (eventually, leading to a Rebellion).

That some modern libertarians – and most modern economists – have many fallacious ideas about Adam Smith is not a valid reason to vilify libertarianism by distorting the substance of an argument based on misunderstanding Adam Smith’s work as well.

Bgamal has some ways to go before he articulates a valid case against Libertarian ideas. Selective quotations from individual Libertarians about race, religion, and business ethics, are never convincing of a congenital link between libertarianism and certain disreputable ideas and a political philosophy. Many leaders among social democrats and religious leaders in the 20th Century are on the record supporting Eugenics, many business leaders give financial support to Biblical ideas of the Earth’s age as only 6,000 years, and what they call ‘intelligent design’ (the direct opposite of Smithian ‘unintended consequences’), and some do business with quite appalling regimes. Neither side of this argument is ‘Lilly white’ (metaphor).

Stick to the content of libertarian arguments, not the tittle-tattle of the association of individuals.

A Malaysian Economist On the Invisible Hand

Hishamh, an applied and practicing economist in the Malaysian financial sector. writes on Economics Malaysia writes the Economics Malaysia Blog HERE:

“I’m not a free market fundamentalist, nor do I believe in the doctrine of self-correcting markets. To me, market failure is as likely an outcome as well-functioning markets – we are after all dealing with human beings who are fallible. There is no “invisible hand” that infallibly guides markets to the first-best outcome that maximises social value and welfare. On the other hand, the market mechanism is infinitely superior to the alternatives – so in that sense, [Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad ] has it right. Markets need regulation to ensure that they remain efficient and fair.”

Comment
Hishamh is right on his assessment of the so-called ‘invisible-hand’ myth that has entrapped its believers among modern economists. Incalculable harm has been created by this gross distortion of Adam Smith’s use of this particular metaphor.

Markets are very visible – they would not work if they were invisible!

Whether markets would work without the rule of law, justice and competition is highly debateable. While libertarian in outlook, I am not an anarcho-libertarian. (Liberty is more important than democracy.)

I think we should be pragmatic in all things. ‘Men of System’, as Adam Smith called them, are dangerous meddlers, whether peddling so-called laissez-faire or statist-interventionist.

Much more sensible – and safer – to advocate and practice ‘markets where possible, state intervention where necessary’, which I believe is closer to Adam Smith’s legacy.

Adam Smith Was Not an Extremist

Marc Lombardo writes: ‘Your Government Lied to You. So What?’ in the The Public Sphere Blog Here:

“John Locke argued for limiting governmental powers on the basis of a strict distinction between public and private: the king can perhaps tell a man what he ought to do when that man is out in the world, but no one should tell him what he can or cannot do when he is in his own home. The male pronoun is instructive in this case, as Locke was effectively transposing the classical figure of the pater familias, resulting in the birth of a peculiarly modern entity: homo economicus.

Adam Smith made the economic significance of Locke’s notion of private liberty more explicit, showing that the concepts of property and liberty are fundamentally intertwined. Smith argued that even the public good (i.e., what is best for all) is most effectively and efficiently pursued only when private interests are left unchecked by any external influences whatsoever (most especially, that of the government). The liberals defined private liberty as existing only to the extent that the government did not interfere with it. This in turn required that private liberty could only be protected if and when private individuals came together collectively in order to limit the exercise of governmental power upon their lives.

As such, from the liberal viewpoint, the ability to do what one wants in one’s private life depends entirely upon the public and cooperative practice of constantly and diligently surveiling and criticizing everything that the government does. The active public manifestation of the distrust of government is the basis for all other private liberties. The U.S. Founders, being good liberals, naturally placed the “First Amendment” first in the Bill of Rights.

Comment
The article is actually about President George W. Bush and his alleged wrongdoing over the Iraq war, of which I have no comments as I do not vote in the USA. I am, however, concerned with Marc Lombardo drawing Adam Smith into the argument:

“Smith argued that even the public good (i.e., what is best for all) is most effectively and efficiently pursued only when private interests are left unchecked by any external influences whatsoever (most especially, that of the government).”

This is not what I read of Adam Smith’s views (he didn't believe in Homo economicus. The private realm was not absolutely sacrosanct. That is stretching Smith’s philosophy too far (well past breaking point). There are numerous exceptions to the absolutist viewpoint – Adam Smith was not a libertarian. In the absence of other revenue-raising sources of taxation he accepted the need for import tariffs to fund government expenditures, even at the expense of sacrifing Britain being a free-port.

Certain areas of private life were sacrosanct – the natural law theories of the right to one’s person, one’s labour, one’s property (the latter modified because he accepted the right – the necessity – of taxation for legal purposes, as voted by the legislature, not demanded by the sovereign).

It was in this respect that he saw Britain’s parliamentary veto over the King’s taxation powers as the real essence of liberty, which made the British sovereign a constitutional monarch and not an absolutist monarchy as per France, Spain and elsewhere. Liberty in Britain, and what liberty became in the United States, were not quite the same idea, at least as far as Smith was prepared to acknowledge publicly.

Contrary, even to quite modest libertarian ideals, Smith endorsed the Acts of Navigation, instituted by Oliver Cromwell and continued by the restored monarchy into the mid 19th century, which conferred on British -owned, and British-crewed, shipping an absolute monopoly of commercial trade with and among the British colonies in North America.

These Acts constituted a breach of natural liberty, as did the coinage, the post, the quality stamping of cloths, assay marking of gold and silver plate and bullion, the need to erect party walls to prevent the spread of fire, the issuing of small denomination currency notes, interest rates, banking, public works to facilitate commerce, education, health, organizations of religious denominations, and the administration of justice.

I am not convinced that Adam Smith would have agreed with:

‘As such, from the liberal viewpoint, the ability to do what one wants in one’s private life depends entirely upon the public and cooperative practice of constantly and diligently surveiling and criticizing everything that the government does.’

That amounts to a policy of perpetual criticism of government practice, an impractical ideal and a rather juvenile ambition of a small minority of ‘professional demonstrators’ whose single-issue agendas easily lead to extremism and becomes as tyrannical as the stereotypes of the people whom they are criticising.

Most people in Smith’s day – and I dare say in ours – have other things to do of greater importance to them, such as families, work and play, than to be in 24/7 opposition to ‘everything’ governments do. The obsessions of the people in the ‘beltway’ and the ‘Westminster Village’ are of limited interest to most people in democracies, even when governments behave really badly.

It’s hard enough to get a large majority to vote out the lot currently in and to vote in the lot currently out.

Adam Smith did not have a vote under the existing franchise in Scotland and I do not detect any particular wish he may have had to have a vote.