On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 15:52:05 -0700 michael perelman
<michael.perelman3 at gmail.com> writes:
> Jim, Wouldn't Hayek qualify as one of the intellectuals he despised?
Apparently, consistency wasn't his strong suit.
Naturally, GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan is a great admirer of Hayek (as well as Ludwig von Mises). Thus far, he hasn't seen fit to repudidate Hayek, the way he did with Ayn Rand.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math
>
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 5:25 PM, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com>
> wrote:
> > That is certainly true. One example of this is the strange case
> of
> > Friedrich Hayek. In 1949 in a vituperative criticism of
> intellectuals,
> > who Hayek maintained are without “that experience of the working
> of the
> > economic system which the administration of property gives” and
> thus
> > without “direct responsibility for practical affairs,” he lamented
> that
> > “the growth of this class [of despicable people] has been
> artificially
> > stimulated by the law of copyright.” (see: Hayek, “The
> Intellectuals and
> > Socialism,” The University of Chicago Law Review, XVI (1949) ,
> 420.) On
> > the other hand, years later he would declare that “encyclopedias,
> > dictionaries, textbooks and other works of reference could not be
> > produced if, once they existed, they could freely be reproduced.”
> (Hayek,
> > ed. W. W. Bartley III, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
> (1988),
> > 36-37.) By that logic things like Wikipedia, MIT OpenCourseWare,
> > healthfinder.gov, pubmed.gov, should not flourish.
> >
> >
> > Jim Farmelant
> > http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
> > www.foxymath.com
> > Learn or Review Basic Math
> >
> >
> >> > It is absolute freedom and protections for haves and
> competition
> >> and
> >> > market discipline for have-nots, stupid. Intellectual
> property
> >> rights
> >> > are good because they protect the former from the encroachments
> by
> >> the
> >> > latter. By the same logic - social welfare is bad and against
> >> free
> >> > market, but bank bailouts and corporate subsidies are good and
> >> > perfectly compatible with free market.
> >> >
> >> > Pointing logical contradictions in what these people say is a
> >> waste of
> >> > time. A better way is to chop off the heads that hold these
> ideas
> >> -
> >> > as good old revolutionaries did. All crowned heads deserve a
> >> > guillotine.
> >> >
> >>
> >> Woj, I am not sure I agree with the above. AFAIK, for Adam Smith
> and
> >> Enlightenment liberals the free market and capitalism were a
> means
> >> to an end that included general welfare and common good. They
> were
> >> convinced from their “understanding” of “human nature” that a
> free
> >> market was the way to get there, but they also called for
> explicit
> >> attention to moral goals/outcomes. Modern
> >> conservatives/libertarians, from what I can tell, proceed rather
> >> from a goal of purely individual rights point of view. The goal
> is
> >> the preservation of an individual’s rights, which is to say, his
> >> ability to just about do anything as long as it does not directly
> and
> >> demonstrably harm another individual. Free market and capitalism
> as
> >> a means, to them, are expressions of this goal and make sense
> only
> >> insofar as they preserve/enhance individual liberties and
> prevent
> >> expropriation of his/her effort. The way I see it, for a Smithian
> or
> >> old-school capitalist or free-marketeer IP rights are
> problematic
> >> because they make the market inefficient. They face this and
> other
> >> paradoxes and invent ad hoc fixes (e.g: trust busting) rather
> than
> >> examine their assumptions. For the modern
> conservative/libertarian,
> >> OTOH, the goal of the free market is not about the “spread of
> ideas”
> >> or “competition”, but the safeguarding of individual rights in
> the
> >> marketplace. The market remains “free” as long as it does not
> >> trample the rights of the individual to participate in his own
> terms
> >> (including the choice of non-participation). There is no
> conflict
> >> since general welfare is *not* a goal (that’s under the purview
> of
> >> religion and charity).
> >>
> >> At least that’s how I see it,
> >>
> >> —ravi
> >>
> >>
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>
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA
> 95929
>
> 530 898 5321
> fax 530 898 5901
> http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com
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