Media Bitchfest

A Funny Little Thought For The Weekend

November 18th, 2006 by Justin

The intensely incredible econ-blog Cafe Hayek sent this letter to the Wall Street Journal.

16 November 2006

Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281

Dear Editor:

Re “Pelosi and Pork” (Nov. 16):

Reflecting on the recent election, I conclude that people can be divided into three groups. Members of the first group (consisting of left-liberals and some conservatives) imagine that society is a consciously created machine requiring an operator and a bevy of busy technicians to keep it working properly. Members of the second group (consisting of libertarians and some conservatives) understand that society is a complex and undesigned organism that, when rules of private property are well-enough entrenched, works quite well according to its own logic - a working that is typically disrupted for the worse by government meddling.

The third group is made up of politicians and their hangers-on: they see society as a she-goat to be milked for their own power and glory.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Boudreaux is a professor at George Mason University. If you have even a passing interest in money or freedom or stuff related to the combination of money and freedom, you should read Cafe Hayek.

Posted in Politicos, Money

3 Responses to “A Funny Little Thought For The Weekend”

1. Noralil Ryan Fores wrote on 11/18/06 at 9:51 am :

   Yet, I’d only ever apply this constriction of categories to a strictly American commercialist framework.

2. Noralil Ryan Fores wrote on 11/18/06 at 10:00 am :

   As an aside, when you visit the Cafe Hayek site, there’s an Amazon advertisement which addresses you directly by name. Further down on the advertisement, there’s a link which reads: How Do We Know Your Name. I didn’t click on it. Frankly, I’m certain that would open up a can of worms, and I’m not much up for suprises. But, here’s the bitch of it: a name to a certain extent is an extension of intimacy, and by exploiting that intimacy, the advertisement seeks out to personalize your motivations while also depersonalizing the act of saying or writing a name. It’s a double-edged sword, and perhaps I’ve read The Crucible a few too many times, but a name carries a significance, which here violated, feels to me at all expenses too high. Now, I suppose in reality it’s no different than snail mail, yet with that there’s a free will exerted which allows a person to ignore the violation. With the Internet,however, these violations are immediately present (and, yes, is a fact I’ve myself used.) But, hm, for some reason it feels all the worse with ads.

   As an aside, I’m skeptical of the MacKinac Center for Public Policy, which Cafe Hayek, supports. When a person or group sets there sights on understanding society through economics, as I mostly do myself, they open their life experience not only to overly energized idealism but also a certain amount of morality harshness. In either case, it’s a tough road to follow.

3. Recourser wrote on 03/11/07 at 10:48 pm :

   How cleverly the author creates the foundations for our ideas by setting the tone of the three different groups. The first and third are abjectly slandered, albeit indirectly. Only the true group, the second, ‘understand’ the true workings of society. As the author clearly dictates to us:

   “Members of the second group (consisting of libertarians and some conservatives ) understand that society is a complex and undesigned organism that, when rules of private property are well-enough entrenched, works quite well according to its own logic - a working that is typically disrupted for the worse by governme nt meddling.”

   The author, while providing no mathematical proof of the control of such a nonlinear problem, never the less presents the solution as one for a autonomous system exhibiting global stability. The prospects that such a complex system as ” society”, which is never defined by the author, exhibits global stability to an infinite input domain is quite telling of his understanding of such subjects.
   Clearly, the author has little understanding of stability and control of nonlinear dynamic system.

   And yet he boisterously claims so.

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