I linked to Ross Douthat’s substack on decadence and the intellectuals the other day, but today I want to comment on its main theme.
Which brings us back to the question of traditionalism and dynamism, and their potential interaction: If you’ve had a cultural revolution that cleared too much ground, razed too many bastions and led to a kind of cultural debasement and forgetting, you probably need to go backward, or least turn that way for recollection, before you can hope to go forward once again.
He thinks that starting in the 1960s, our culture threw away too much that was of value. We will have to rediscover it or else suffer from bad ideas.
I certainly think that this will be the case in economics, which as you know I believe is on the Road to Sociology. This will mean a great forgetting of the ideas of Hayek, Buchanan, and Sowell. Those few students who seek out those ideas will have insights into the horrid policy regimes under which they will have the misfortune to live.
It’s normal for Empire to become parochial and start getting high off its own farts.
Humans are really bad at looking beyond the short term. Empire is large, and can get away with being narcissistic. Can, therefore does. Until, all of a sudden, they can’t get away with anymore. Oops.
I agree that economics as sociology is a bad idea.
On the other hand, US elites have sold the employee class down the river for the last 50 years, and then wonder why Trump (even with his manifest deficiencies, which are elephantine) is a popular figure.
The globalists touted “free trade,” which was really subsidized multinational exporters globally targeting US markets. See “Trade Wars and Class Wars” by Michael Pettis. There is no such thing as “free,” “fair” or “foul” global trade—the entire theater is so completely defined by effective subsidies, protectionism, and tax mysteries that “comparative advantage” is a chimera.
Citing comparative advantage is like citing a rule book to a WWE referee (World Wrestling Entertainment, for the non low-brow readers out there).
Then the US had de facto open borders for desperate Third World labor.
Add on property zoning so property owners can extract all income gains from renters in many regions.
Soaring Social Security taxes over the last 50 years—applied only on wages.
You think Trump was a one-off? Maybe so, the elite media is building moats against any and all Trumpers.
The elite media—owned by globalists—simply cannot tell the truth. They go heavy on ID politics (very ugly and even sinister, btw), and throw some do-goody social welfare programs at the population.
So now we ponder that economists are becoming sociologists. Which is better: A deluded economist citing theory or a sociologist?
“So now we ponder that economists are becoming sociologists. Which is better: A deluded economist citing theory or a sociologist?”
The former. No matter how bad things, they can always get worse.
It’s not about becoming sociologists. The Road to Sociology is the “corruption of the epistemic process in an entire discipline” when everything becomes subservient to progressive political ideology, and those in the field who are promoted in rank and status are those who make the greatest contributions to that cause as opposed to our knowledge of truth.
Often that will require publishing and influencing people to believe the very opposite of truth, when truth is an inconvenience to the cause. Truth gets its revenge.
Handle:
BTW, I have enjoyed your commentary many times.
“[E]verything becomes subservient to progressive political ideology.”—Handle
I agree with this in the sense you meant it, but often the globalists and multinationals are honking about “free trade” in a world in which the idea is useless. They are promoting free markets in rhetoric (while participating in subsidy and repression in fact, especially in China).
BTW, I would be happy in a libertarian-ish world of no borders, no nations, no property-zoning, no militaries, no government social welfare and private-banking only. I enjoy reading Mises and Smith and Friedman and so on.
But we live in the world as it is. We also have to get the employee class to buy into the system.
The US elites have not included the employee class at the table for 50 years. Trump and Biden/Harris are results of this.
BC: As I understand it, here is your proposition:
“free trade,” = subsidized multinational exporters globally targeting US markets.
Now, Free trade in quotes refers to a type of Orwellian Newspeak, where familiar concepts are used to mean their opposite.
Or at least: the familiar concept, free trade, is being used in bad faith — to refer to ideas very much at odds with the original meaning.
Well, is there room for authentic free trade anywhere in the social world under such a view?
If you could bring the concept of free trade back from this alleged misuse, how would you do it?
If there is no space for legitimate free trade in your analysis of how human beings from different nations exchange things, that is probably due to an assumption that all exchanges are zero sum, and all labor reduces to one kind of exploitation or another. Is this your view?
Carl K-
No, I do not make the assumption that all exchanges are zero sum.
I recognize that in a perfect world, all voluntary exchanges would be positive sum.
In a perfect world, military outlays are purely parasitic.
While I think the US military is bloated, I do not advocate 100% standing down. There are real threats.
The real world is out there.
In general, I think 30% across-the-board tariffs on imports is a rough and good solution, along with minimum taxes on US-based producers.
BTW, there is a theoretical justification for my plan. Let us assume that about 30% of the true cost of overseas products represents subsidy. That results in the inefficient use of resources.
The 30% tariff would re-balance production back to where it would be in free markets, thus resulting in greater global efficiency.
Of course, there is a lot more, such as great social stability in the US, more self-reliance, probably greater domestic technological progress in the long run, and tighter US labor markets.
Anyway, no worries. My plans are not likely to be adopted.
Getting the reading lists of economics classes, undergrad and grad, in the top 50 schools.
Check if there are any readings from Hayek, Buchanan, or Sowell on the lists. Or even Stigler. Does Ludwig von Mises ever get mentioned or Austrian theories of the business cycle?
I suspect not. They are already gone.
Daron Acemoglu has been publishing articles on political economy, essentially rediscovering Buchanan, without even citing him.
Nancy MacLean has done her best to cancel Buchanan. Has she succeeded?