Professor of Political Economy at King's College London; Post-modern Austrian political economist, Foucault Fan, Hayek Fan, classical liberal individualist
The brilliance of Lavoie: 'even if some supercomputers were invented that surpassed human mental powers in every respect their 'intellect' would be put to far more effective use if organized competitively than if organized by a single plan,' (National Economic Planning: 55).
Illiberal Reformers is great. Critics have focussed on whether 'progressives' favoured eugenics, were racist, sexist etc. The real message though is how an arrogant belief in expertise leads experts to demonise others. Today -think public health, ESG etc.
I am in awe of Vera Smith - later Vera Lutz. At just 24, in a male dominated and increasingly Keynesian dominated profession she produced one of the definitive cases against Central Banking and in favour of 'free banking'. An amazing, inspirational woman.
Individualism must be defended and this is a brilliant history of individualist thought. While there are disputes about what it means in specific cases, at its core individualism defends voluntary community and an ethical focus on the agency of the person.
My new book is out next Spring - Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge and Freedom (Oxford UP). I've wasted too much of the last decade being a bureaucrat! I can't believe it is 13 years since this came out: Robust Political Economy ()
A major flaw in Stiglitz's policy work is an inability to apply his conceptual apparatus consistently. Why doesn't he recognize that if asymmetric info is a source of market failure it is likely an even greater source of state failure, as the evidence on voter ignorance shows?
I oppose state enforced cultural conservatism because it stifles personal freedom and ethical creativity. I oppose state enforced DEI because it produces group based conformity, erasing the uniqueness of the person. I am an individualist and politically homeless in today's world
True, but you seem to assume instability is bad. Creative destruction is dis-equilibrating but that doesn't mean it has to, or can be, stabilized by public agency. Keynesian and post-Keynesian policy rests on the non sequitur that 'instability' requires equilibrating 'correction'
Neoclassical economists ignore the instability of capitalism.
Minsky showed that rising debt leads to economic crises.
We must abandon equilibrium models and embrace dynamic, far-from-equilibrium approaches.
Its a manifestation of Foucauldian power/knowledge - arising, at least partly, from the desire of some to control others through the claim to 'know' what produces a phenomena - and a justification to exercise a priestly 'pastoral power' over a 'wayward flock.'
When Coase showed in 1974 that asymmetric information is greater in the ideas market than in the commercial market for goods, hardly anyone concluded 'misinformation' justifies regulating political speech. How times change!
The Market for Goods and the Market for Ideas on JSTOR
Don Lavoie was taken tragically young - but this book should live forever. It is much clearer on the different aspects of the 'knowledge problem' than Hayek and offers compelling critiques of all the arguments for 'democratic' or 'participatory planning.'
Classical liberals are not climate change deniers - this collection shows a range of views on what responses consistent with respect for personal freedom, property and contract might look like. Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution | SpringerLink
I'm a huge fan of Dick Wagner - who is sadly under-rated. Politics as a Peculiar Business is public choice for grown-ups. It recognizes the insight that politics involves efforts by organized interests to impose costs on others without the crude reductionism found in most pct.
Crazy isn't it. Most of those who throw around the term neo-liberal with reckless abandon would have to admit that on their logic Lenin was a neo-liberal when he introduced the 'new economic policy' to save 'the revolution' from total collapse.
Absolutely Jen. I suspect it is because it offers too complex a reading when the 'post-liberals' are looking to deploy the simple dichotomies Elinor railed against for reasons of political advantage.
Often wonder why post-liberals never consider Elinor Ostrom's conception of self-governance. This approach to liberalism builds on communities and local traditions a basis for public policy.
By harnessing custom and tradition it addresses many of these critiques. It's an
'Missionary industrial policies' have become very popular but this brilliant book by Bryan Cheang challenges the narrative - the successes are laregly accidental or illusory and the policies are inextricably linked to cultural illiberalism.
@phl43
Deepak Lal's The Poverty of Development Economics has a an excellent section exposing the absurdity of various 'unequal exchange' theories such as this.
Vera Lutz's flame must be kept alive. She studied under Hayek at LSE and her critique of French 'indicative planning' is a classic that still has relevance to today's world of 'green new deals', 'new industrial policy' and 'missionary government.'
I love this 1973 Lachmann paper for IEA. In 30 pages of gentle prose he deconstructs the edifice of the Cambridge school and neo-classical growth theory. Theirs is an economics without people, or for pale substitutes. His is one for creative human beings
There is nothing wrong with 'critical theory' concepts being a required part of such courses, so long as they are themselves subject to critique. The problem is they rarely are - with universities now deciding what they consider the 'correct' epistemological stance.
My new paper published today looks at attempts by the Quality Assurance Association for Higher Education (QAA) to impose ideas from "critical pedagogy" across university curricula in the UK, and looks at what happens if you follow their advice... 🧵
Just turned 90 Jagdish Bhagwati has shown time and again why freer trade benefits north and south, and every intersection. If you value personal freedom and poverty reduction the new alliance of anti-capitalist left and nativist right must be resisted
The arguments that computers/AI can replace markets are very weak but why are socialists so keen on them. Many socialists used to rail against the 'alienation' from being subject to impersonal market forces - but what could be more alienating than having to obey an algorithm?
Very saddened about the loss of James C Scott. He was due to speak in person at our centre when the pandemic lockdown was introduced in 2020. Several months later he gave this typically enlightening talk to us online. Thankyou for the inspiration James.
Yes I agree with Steve on this. It also blocks creative destruction, preserves the capital structure of zombie firms -including banks - thereby preventing the reallocation of resources to more urgently demanded uses.
Quantitative easing has worsened inequality.
It inflates asset prices, benefiting the wealthy who own most assets.
Meanwhile, the majority, who own little, see no benefit.
This policy deepens the divide, rather than bridging it.
Hayek was sceptical of an all-encompassing welfare-regulatory state but The Road to Serfdom is targeted at the idea of 'democratic central planning' and not at the welfare state:
If JD Vance had been around in late 1700s Britain he’d have been opposed to spinning machine and, a generation later, to power looms. Aka the Industrial Revolution, which threw a lot of people out of work even as it created new jobs and unprecedented increases in living standards
@MrRBourne
In Whither Socialism and elsewhere, Stiglitz himself admits that corrective policy requires info on 'all estimated demand and supply elasticities on all commodities and cross elasticities' - and that ' the practical information required is well beyond what is available.'
If 'systemic power' reflects unintended as well as deliberate inequities, efforts to 'dismantle' it will create new inequalities. Unintended consequences -'good' or 'bad' are inevitable. They reflect the limits of the human mind - including the minds of the 'dismantlers.'
Matias Petersen is a beautiful writer with a beautiful mind. Looking for a considered account of MacIntyre's philosophy which arrives a radically different conclusions - this is the book for you - please let there be a pback soon.
A great book on race and political economy in the US. Shows how racism has been and is sustained by state power, and how market forces have historically undermined race based categories. The analysis has multiple applications to other systemic 'isms'
I've listened often to John Hasnas lecture on the common law -so its great to see his new book. A terrific defence of an evolutionist, bottom up approach to law and governance that rejects social contract models in favour of Hayekian spontaneous order:
They won't take note - because the majority of academics subscribe to a philosophy that would subject virtually every aspect of people's lives to rule by committee.
Universities should take note: "According to a 2023 Microsoft Workplace Trend report, two of the top five obstacles to productivity are too many meetings and inefficient meetings...the stress and fatigue of preparing for, participating in, and executing on the outcomes of the
It contains some previously published essays but this by Dave Schmidtz is a superb new statement of classical liberal philosophy and its relationship to social science
This little book (1988) inspired me to do a PhD on UK land use planning. Today the government continues the delusion that 'housing targets' are the answer. They won't work because target setting reflects an incentive structure insensitive to price signals
Land use planning has been a major obstacle to UK growth - for 70 years. I wrote two books - twenty+ years ago now explaining its pathologies. The system is a warning of what happens when strong property rights are subordinated to multiple 'stakeholders.'
One of my picks of recent years - situates the Austrian school in the tradition of continental philosophy and connects this grounding to its critique of scientistic hubris in positivist-social engineering models The Viennese Students of Civilization ()
The government is aligned with senior university managers many of whom are attempting to 'redfine academic freedom' to allow them to declare whether anyone is 'sufficiently qualified' to speak out on any topic. We need a simple rule - no freedom of speech then no public subsidy.
John Jewkes et al challenged what today is called the case for 'missionary government' in 1958. They showed via detailed case studies that the causes of innovation are so varied and complex they cannot be accommodated by a central mission or plan.
LP Hartley wrote the romantic tragedy The Go Between. Less well known is his dystopian Facial Justice depicting the logic of efforts to equalise people who differ on multiple dimensions. A warning for those favouring equity over equality before the law
@IMurtazashvili
But you can't 'correct' for unequal histories or starting points. We all have different parents with different parenting skills. Taken to its logic 'equity' requires totalising control such as removing children from their parents. We want more and better opps for all, not equity
@olilangarica
Perhaps - but the question is always 'compared to what.' Markets can be slow to adjust because they are dealing with complex adjustment problems but there are very few systemic reasons that would explain how bureaucratic government agencies would somehow adjust more effectively.
@IMurtazashvili
You can't have equal opportunity in a free society because people with different cultural values, histories etc will generate unequal starting points. To eradicate those is to end cultural pluralism. End rent seeking and legal privilege yes - but that wont produce equal opps.
This aspires to what Marxists term 'conscious control' of economic life - in the intellectual sphere. Yet you can no more integrate the specified intersections to deliver 'equity' through conscious cultural control than you can deliver efficiency via conscious economic planning.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be
G L S Shackle
To acknowledge that there is novelty, in the sense of fundamentally undeducible things, waiting to be encountered for the first time, is to acknowlegde that we cannot build models that will exhibit the course of a society's history over even a limited span of time.
If you're not familiar with it check out Panmure House - run by Adam Dixon. Its a model of what academia should be, but all too often isn't - a forum for civilised and pluralistic debate across political divisions. This is liberalism in action:
This is the level of economic understanding that a First in PPE at Oxford gets you folks. Much of our economic and political establishment did PPE at Oxford. Aren't we the lucky ones?
Had a number of people ask: what is ‘regulatory rentierism’: a situation where a state-quangocracy extracts economic rent through regulatory power rather than through productive activities and that is incentivised to expand power/rents. Often justified through moral policing.
I'd have no problem, if as well as associating 'whiteness' with 'individualism' they'd also associate it with the worst forms of collectivism. They might also mention that colonialism breaches the libertarian principle of negative liberty. There's a reason they won't do so.
There are ways of teaching children (and training teachers) about racism, but inculcating an antipathy toward “whiteness” isn't only educationally toxic; it is societally harmful. It also contravenes the Education Act 1996 (V.iv §§406-7) regarding political indoctrination.
A short text based on a speech I gave to Civic Future last week. All of the parties on the ballot today are committed to principles that are likely to make matters worse - not better.
I enjoyed my discussion with Sam Bagg on elite power and how best to control it. Check out his book
Podcast - The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy - Centre for the Study of Governance & Society ()
@cafreiman
It is worse than that Chris - almost all government action imposes negative externalities because it systematically allows majorities to impose terms on those outside any majority coalition. Only by chance are all relevant costs and benefits internalised by such a process.
Foucault's view of 'the subject' as a 'work of art', shaping itself in the face of pressure to conform is thoroughly entrepreneurial. 'Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same - leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order.'
@FriedrichHayek
I don't demur- but the post-Keynesian framework sees any kind of disequilibrium as somehow in need to 'correcting' - which presumes the right amount of stability can be achieved and that we know what it looks like. This worldview produces a demand for permanent intervention.
It certainly is - and what is most interesting and disturbing is how Universities Uk want to be part of that project 'aligning' the research of their institutions with an explicitly corporatist agenda.
State capitalism is all around. Just consider
@UKLabour
plan with Great British Energy.
@IliasAlami
and I unpack what we are seeing globally in our new book from
@OUPAcademic
. For more, listen to the latest New Enlightenment podcast
Market liberalism and standpoint theory are a marriage made in heaven. The great value of markets is that they act as a bridge facilitating cooperation across those with different 'lived experience.'
Some bizarre editorializing on economic systems from the
@nytimes
coverage of the Venezuelan election.
"If the election decision holds and Mr. Maduro remains in power, he will carry Chavismo, the country’s socialist-inspired movement, into its third decade in Venezuela. Founded
Great new paper by our recent speaker Adam Gibbons (
@WallfacerAG
) on different conceptions of political ignorance and their relationship to problems of political capture.
If you do work on markets, capitalism, institutions, or economic freedom, consider consulting the up-to-date research overviews provided in the new Handbook of Research on Economic Freedom, published this year by
@ElgarPublishing
. See
Virginia - please do a new release of the Future and Its Enemies. It has never been more needed. The most inspiring, popular statement of classical liberalism I have ever read.
@OrdoliberalBG
@GrudevLachezar
Hello Stefan - funnily enough I read that blog last week. She is a real heroine - and very sadly neglected. She did a great book critiquing French 'indicative planning' as well. We need to give her memory some more publicity that is for sure. M
Foucault's concepts of 'bio-power' and power/knowledge are very congenial to a sceptical libertarianism that emphasises the limits of expertise under complex conditions - and especially so in the case of public health.
@enzoreds
@Kpourvand
Resource scarcities will continually change and require market adjustments even if no growth - adjustments better conducted through markets than planning. But capitalism has no inherent tendency to expand - if time preferences change it is compatible with economic contraction.
@NoisyTroublemkr
@MrRBourne
absolutely - the relevant data are constantly changing - it isn't a matter of simply searching harder for a fixed stock - the data can never be 'given' in that way - which was always Hayek's point.
There is no better intro to Austrian economics and its relevance to public policy than this classic by Steve Littlechild. Relevant today for competition policy, energy and enviro reg.
The Fallacy of the Mixed Economy — Institute of Economic Affairs ()
@WallfacerAG
Ideas also matter, and many outcomes are not deliberately intended by those who make political deals - no one is able to anticipate the strategic moves made by other actors in the political game - a point missed by versions of pct which attribute quasi-omniscience to agents.
I long for more books like this. Classical Liberalism is not 'atomistic'. As Hayek once said, it seeks to understand the implications of what it means to live as a 'social being.'
To give you a taste of The Nehru Development Model, here are the first two pages of the book. They will give you a good idea of what this long book is about.
@jonewilson
As that doyen of the neo-liberal thought collective, otherwise known as Wendy Brown once put it - 'the comparative worth doctrine makes Taylorism look like child's play' (States of Injury, 1995:171)
@tonyannett
Read the book - the full text of which is attached in the posted link. She showed that most of the 'success' cannot be attributed to the 'planning.'
@LukeMNeve
MK is one of the few considered to have been a success - but most of the others have been abject failures with socio-economic indicators well below their adjacent areas.
@FriedrichHayek
I'm not sure. You could say its down to rent seeking or bureaucratic over-reach - but reducing it to that would neglect the discursive/cultural context that facilitates such behaviour. The complex interaction between culture and agency is one of the reasons I like Foucault.
@m_j_hannon
I don't think they can - but that doesn't mean that there isn't room for a degree of overlap across standpoints that allows for some form of understanding and cooperation,
@benjit14
@rcolvile
@JulieBygraves
You'd need to define what you mean by an 'over-supply' of capital before I, or anyone else can refute the claim. You also need to define what you mean by a justice/distribution issue. Are you suggesting that concentrated ownership is the issue - if so, why was it not in the 30s?
One implication of this analysis is that there is no scientific way to define externality. More often than not the concept is used as device to secure power.
@profdws
@trussliz
It is not only the growth in spending that has carried on unabated Andy Haldane showed that the number of financial regulators increased by 3600% 1979-2012. The 'markets let rip' narrative is total rubbish.
@mcshanemusic
@phl43
Agreed, but the point is that event absent inequalities that are due to theft, colonialism etc. cultural pluralism or diversity generates inequality - the Islamic world used to produce more opportunity than did Europe, as did China - and most of that was not due to theft.
@ianpacemain
No I don't think so - the key problem is the misguided belief that people need to go to university for social mobility reasons - but without willing to fund it either through fees or taxes. A better approach would be to have multiple routes to mobility - not privileging univs.