Peter quoted Milton Friedman as a response to a previous post. To paraphrase: "Businessmen and college professors are the biggest enemies to capitalism". Never heard this before and it fascinated me. I found irony in the fact that "liberals" characterize businessmen as evil conservatives and "conservatives" characterize professors as evil liberals (ughh I hate those two words "conservative" and "liberal". I shutter to think I used them both repeatedly in one sentence)
The aforementioned post spells out the businessmen side of the quote. It is the professor side that I find more interesting. My first thought was professors are liberal and liberals hate capitalism and that is what he meant. Well this is far too elementary and also bad logic depending on how one defines liberal.
Professor liberal = free thinking person in search of academic truth.
Capitalism hating liberal = socialist.
Even if one believes both these "liberals" are the same person, how are they a threat to capitalism just because they hate it?
Here is my second theory:
Professors are highly intelligent, educated, and also dedicate their lives to teaching and learning about an academic subject that most often furthers society. When thinking of solutions for society outside of their own domain, professors might forget that it is rare for a person to posses all three of these traits. A society structured around smart, educated, hardworking, people working towards the common good would look a lot different then one structured towards selfish lazy uneducated people. Capitalism might not be fair or efficient for the former where it works very well for the later. So educated hard working unselfish people (i.e. professors) influencing politics while forgetting that most people are not like themselves could damage capitalism.
I can see that one might see argument 1 being the same as argument 2 but it is the subtlety between the two that I find important.
interesting... I teach (art appreciation!) at the college level, I myself am an artist and a successful business owner( a hair salon of all things-- I work there 2 days a week). I am also a liberal, some have said a radical. My own perception is that my intent keeps my integrity intact... And yes, it's certainly a balancing act.
Like most things, capitalism itself isn't neccessarily the problem as much as our egos and desires can be. I have my business up for sale becasue it doesn't suit my long term goals, but I have every intention of starting a new one with the proceeds! I love retailing and the connections you can make with people--they are as powerful as the ones I make with my students, certainly.
I just have to remember that people are worth so much more than money and I make my business decisions accordingly.
again... interesting!
Posted by: laura murphy | December 29, 2004 at 09:28 AM
Erik- I'm going to quote your post at length to make various comments:
It also should be noted that Friedman considers himself a liberal, and never refers to himself as a conservative. "Liberal" used to be the term for free-market/classical economists as the word is derived from the latin word for freedom. One more reason to shun the labels as they change meaning from decade to decade.
I've been unable to find the quote but to the best of my memory it was from a Reason magazine interview in the early 1970's. That fact alone means that the words of "capitalism", "liberal" and "free-market", had entirely different connotations than they do today. In the early 70's if you said you were for laissez-faire/ free-market capitalism people thought you were nuts. That attitude was prevalent not only in the public in general but especially in the universities. Thirty-years later the trend has really switched. Today, "capitalism" isn't a bad word, while it is now "socialism", which at the time was viewed by many as an optimal form of government, now today is really on the fringe of political ideologies.
At the time, and still today in many regards, liberals (i.e. statists) had a near monopoly influencing the youth that were taught at academic institutions. Even today my brother at U.C. Berkeley (one of the best undergrad econ programs in the country) asked one of his professors to sponsor him for a outside study program in Austrian Economics. Readings included everything from Marx to Keynes but mainly focused on the great Austrian/freemarket economists such as Mises, Hayek, Friedman, etc.
The professor replied that while she would want to do it, she would not be of much use as she had not read any of the works of these free market thinkers. There was only one prof on staf she could recommend who had, even though he disagreed with all of them. He (Brad Delong) ended up being great for my brother... but it does go to show what's being taught in the universities are not the benefits of free-market capitalism. My bother has tons of stories dealing with profs in class and I've got a few more from UCSB to prove this point (and these are just the economics teachers.. not english dept, etc, which tend to be worse).
Erik I think you are really on to something here but I wouldn't be so hard on the non-college profs. (a topic for another discussion might be what is really meant by being selfish).
True implementation of capitalism means that each individual is the most qualified to make the choices how to live their own life, no matter what the "highly intelligent" ivory tower types think. Even if they are smarter, more educated, and geniuses... they still can't tell you how to live your life. That is to be determined by each individual. You're only constraint is that while you can live your life however you see fit, you cannot stop other from living their life as they see fit.
additional thoughts on this in this article:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2004/FleischackerSmith.html
One more point from one of you comments:
I'm actually completely against any kind of campaign finance reform. As McCain-Fiengold has proven (as was predicted before it's passage by thinktanks like Cato), these laws can't stop corps from getting money into elections. It's really just trying to solve one violation of our freedom and rights with another.
What needs to be done is to separate business and government. Businesses should not be able to use the government, which has a monopoly on the use of force, for any purpose. Accomplish that goal and there will be no need for businesses to give to politicians.
Posted by: Peter | December 29, 2004 at 08:05 PM
Responses to Peter's in-depth comment. Thanks Peter for the thought provoking dialogue.
Enjoyed the "liberal" definition. Plan on posts defining trying to define the L and C words with a plea for people to stop using them so loosely. "The problem with L or Cs is ... blah blah blah"
Here is rough definition of Selfish - putting ones own interests above others who are in greater need. This is very basic and I would like to do a post with some interesting stories.
How do we separate business from government without campaign finance reform? My campaign finance reform. Plan 1: all campaigns may only receive money from individuals ($2000 max). Plan 2: pay all campaigns through taxes where each candidate gets only a small dollar amount from the government. It is appalling how much money gets blown at election time. NO MORE POLITICAL COMERCIALS OR ROAD SIGNS!
Posted by: Erik | December 29, 2004 at 10:47 PM
Thanks for the kind words Laura. I couldn't agree more with what you said "I just have to remember that people are worth so much more than money". Check out http://economicswithaface.com for some more in-depth points along the same lines.
Posted by: Erik | December 29, 2004 at 10:52 PM
How do you reconcile this with a belief in free speech? Stop political commercials and road signs and whose to say that newspaper editorials and blogs won't be next?
Posted by: Peter | January 03, 2005 at 09:48 AM
You are absolutely right Peter about free speech. But with hard restrictions on campaign spending, campaigns may stop wasting money on both. Of course, citizens could always post signs on their own property. Just please get them off of public land so that I don't have to stare at hundreds of them while driving to work and wonder how they ever get a politician more votes! Then I turn on the TV and wonder the same damn thing when I see the comercials.
Posted by: Erik | January 03, 2005 at 04:23 PM
Liberal = leveller ... a usurper of power to skim off the top while levelling, eliminating all other elites (monarchy, clergy, aristocracy, etc) while making each of the masses equally poor.
Conservative = person who opposes science, particularly political science with its faux claims of using bogus rationalism run by a technocratic elite to make decision for the masses and the rich.
They're not polar opposites, contrary to what those of the stupidity and foolishness have been indoctrinated to falsely believe.
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