A curious thing will be going on this election cycle. It appears that multi-billionaire Charles Koch will be sort of running a campaign of his own.
Charles appears to be coming out of the shadows. He just appeared in an interview this morning on CBS Sunday Morning and will appear tomorrow morning on CBS in part 2 of the interview.
A book by Charles will also, presidential style, be published, Good Profit: How Creating Value for Others Built One of the World's Most Successful Companies. It will be available on Tuesday.
Friends, who understand thinking within the Koch empire, suggest that this may be the Finkinization of Charles. Long-time Koch operative Ritchie Fink has apparently been advocating that Charles go public and high profile for a very long time. They are close. The inside story is that when Fink, then living paycheck to paycheck, first met the billionaire for a job interview, he wore a polyester suit. Charles says he didn't mind since he likes products made of oil.
As for the book, the only thing we know about the book at this point comes from curious remarks from a professor on the Koch payroll.
It is not completely known what the end game is here though it is doubtful that Charles will be able to raise excitement about libertarianism the way Ron Paul did. Charles Koch and Ritchie Fink are not Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell.
And the fact that less excitement will be generated is probably a good thing. The Koch brothers brand of libertarianism is if it were to be described in terms of oil, more BCF-17 than Bintulu Condensate. That is heavy and not carrying the most desirable mix of elements,
It is noteworthy that the CBS Morning Show interview mentions both the Cato Institute and the Mercatus Center, both of which are Koch Brothers funded.
Cato Institute is, of course, where Keynesian aggregate demand thinking has been featured, where the gold standard gets dissed and where it was argued that Bernanke was not printing enough money,
Mercatus now houses Scott Sumner, who appears to be a decent guy, but who holds the view that we not only need a central bank to manage the money supply but that the Fed needs to pump money out, targetting nominal gross domestic product.
Bottom line, Charles does not appear to be an end the Fed kind of guy. His, suspect, full libertarian credentials come into further question given that he does not fund the most consistent Austrian economics organization, the Mises Institute. In other words, when we are talking libertarianism and Austrian economics as promoted by Charles, we are certainly talking a BCF-17 mix.
Below Charles on national television tells the world that he is a "classical liberal":
- RW
Anarchism is nonsense. The Mises Institute would be much better if they actually taught Misesian minarchy.
ReplyDeleteThere are plenty of people associated with The Mises Institute who are minarchists, including Ron Paul and Judge Napolitano. I don't think most of the views from Cato / Mercatur that Wenzel points out above are minarchist at all, or even vaguely libertarian in the broadest sense.
DeleteBut minarchism makes sense because although we know the State cannot be trusted with money, roads, healthcare, education, industry and other things, it can be trusted with security/defense.
DeleteYes, that makes sense.
Cato and Mercatus call for more government intervention than Mises did. There's a world of difference between minarchism and anarchism though. There is no structure in anarchism. No one has authority to make laws. There's no justice system. It's just survival of the fittest.
Delete"Cato and Mercatus call for more government intervention than Mises did. "
DeleteYou'll always be fighting with not just Cato/Mercatus, but everyone who accepts a certain level of violence because when you abandon the NAP as you've done, there's no guiding principle behind where to draw the line on NAP violations.
It's simply your opinion on how much "intervention" there should be versus theirs-
Your strictly utilitarian approach will yield no long term victory in my opinion, aside from being logically inconsistent and immoral via your argument for NAP violations.
In that way, it's you arguing for "survival of the fittest"-in that you are encouraging violence in order to solve problems.
Those adhering to the NAP are rejecting "survival of the fittest" because they are rejecting violence, while you are embracing it.
Minarchism is logically inconsistent. Period. Full Stop.
ReplyDeleteNick and Averros hit the nail on the head here. The difference between a minarchist and a voluntarist is that the latter has fully thought through the logical implications of their views.
ReplyDeleteA minarchist has no limiting principle. Any argument made for a monopoly of force in one area could also be made for any other area.
Regarding Scott Sumner as a “decent guy”…. Back in 2012, commenter “Major Freedom” would daily post very solid Austrian critiques of Sumner on Sumner’s blog in a polite but firm manner. Sumner ALWAYS ignored both him and his analysis while generally responding to every other commenter. At one point, Sumner blew a gasket:
ReplyDeleteLucas, MF works hard each day to prove that he’s the most tasteless, classless, moronic and petty human being every to walk on the face of the Earth. It’s just my luck that he chose to make a fool of himself on my blog.
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=17692&cpage=1#comment-205619
To my knowledge, Sumner has never seriously responded to Austrian complaints that his funny money proposals result in distribution effects and/or economic miscalculation.
Major Freedom responded to Sumner:
DeleteLucas, Sumner just doesn’t want his most informed critic to be taken seriously. Just look at that ad hominem attack. According to Sumner, I’m worse than Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Ivan the Terrible, and Ghengis Khan.
That should tell you whose worldview is more under threat.
It is understandably discomforting to have one’s entire intellectual and career investment demolished by a random internet poster. It refutes the just world theory, and that often elicits tremendous outbursts and vitriol.
I am both intellectually and emotionally mature enough not to devolve down to Sumner’s level of ad hominem discourse. My conscience is clean.
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=17692&cpage=1#comment-205636
I follow him from time to time so I can get a look at the viewpoints of an economist with closer ties to the establishment. (RW seems to follow Krugman for the same reason I would assume)
DeleteThere was a point in time the Fed almost changed their metrics to NGDP targeting(08'), and according to a recent post of Sumner's that showed another quoting Bernanke's new book, the reason the Fed didn't go to that metric during the last financial crisis was basically psychology.
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=30804
So much for the Fed being "data driven."
Anyhow, I find his charges interesting because he seems to be petty himself....he went so far as to recently make a big production over calculating coins in circulation as a bigger metaphor for "money supply" and claimed it was a joke after spending a ridiculous amount of time monkeying around with it....
That's a lot of work for a "joke"...I'm not sure he wasn't trying to backtrack to save face, because I re-read his post on it and can't quite see the tongue in cheek in it.
Anyway, he's definitely petty & dismissive for the most part. The few times I've posted it's been a mixed bag but he always dodges and NEVER concedes anything. Making matter worse there's another guy named "Nick" that posts there that seems pretty much mainstream in his economic thinking.
Regardless, I just lurk most of the time and don't post because it's really not an atmosphere where actual meaningful dialogue seems to occur with any routine. I'm just looking for a different perspective from someone that seems to have had the eye of those in charge of the Fed now and then.(even if I don't agree with his premise/thoughts most of the time, it's helpful to see what others are thinking)
I think the funniest thing re Scott Sumner I've every seen was the caption above the following article:
http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2013/08/scott-sumner-ignores-banks-so-what.html
The caption pretty much sums up his worldview.
1. It is never clear to me what problem either Sumner, the MMTers, the post-Keynesians, the Minksy-ites and/or the monetarists of all stripes are attempting to cure. They all propose initiating violence against non-criminals all to cure non-existent problems while not admitting that they are relying upon violence. In fact, that is why Sumner was so mad at MF for him pointing out the implicit reliance upon violence by Sumner.
Delete2. My theory still stands: No non-Austrian will contemplate either the NAP or economic calculation because it means appreciating the non-Austrian’s own call for violence against average people whom the non-Austrian believes are too stupid to be left unmanaged by them. Austrians propose allowing average people to freely engage in voluntary exchange if only to generate the essential information of honest pricing. Not only is there no role for the congenitally bossy non-Austrian to play under such scenario but it is our theory that most economic problems are fundamentally the fault of the non-Austrians. Our opponents are afraid to even think about that analysis considering their own self-image as saviors of the world. No pal, you are not a savior. You are a plague.
I also think this shows our opponents to be deathly afraid of us which is why they want to ignore us, distort us or shut us up. Is that a positive thing for us in the future and can we take advantage of it?
3. How can banks be irrelevant under the current system? Aren’t funny money bank loans which are made from nothing the source of the majority of new money which the statists insist propels all economic life on earth? I thought that the big complaint by the Minsky-ites was that the present system depends upon funny money injections by “private banking” (aka as “capitalism” using their strange and dishonest jargon) while they are demanding that money injections should be controlled by the social democratic government (because you want to make sure that the government that engages in endless wars and putting Edward Snowden in prison is not “revenue constrained”.
To use technical terms, our opponents are a bunch of nuts.