Concise and accurate

Matthew Yglesias calls "Bullshit" on David Brooks. Of course that's too-often easy so maybe I shouldn't even take notice. But someone, for the record, has to do it and it's Yglesias turn.

What really galls me is Brooks' statement: "People who instinctively trust the markets support the Bush reform ideas, and people who are suspicious oppose them." It strikes me as pretty nervy that a guy that a guy who (I assume) has been an intellectual (sorta) all his life and who has, I'd wager, never risked any of his own money in a business enterprise of his own, can repeat this weird cant about "trusting the market." I have lived by the market for most of my adult life and I can tell you that markets are fine and accurate in many respects but they are not perfect. Markets are a tool of communication (per Hayek) and to trust a tool, per se, is silly. Remember that old saw about "Guns don't kill; mudererers do." Well just like a gun, the market is a tool to do things and it can be both misused and/or not adequate to the task. Moreover, it is assinine to dismiss criticism of a specific plan to use the market by saying that the critics simply don't like markets. Has it ever ocurred to guys like Brooks that differences of opinion are fundamental to markets? The whole expression "that's what makes markets" is about differences of opinion.

My own epiphany about markets came to me -- not out of theory as it does to so many arm-chair entrepreneurs -- but by actually taking place in a market: the real estate market. After one project in which I had helped into existence a bakery -- a bakery which became renowned as a community center, no less -- I realized that what we had done (the bakers and I) could not possibly in a thousand years have been done by any sort of "community group" or governmental body. It took the skill, capital and nerve of individuals to see the opportunity and to organize the enterprise. By the same token, we benefited from a regulated (i.e. by zoning) real estate market which allowed us to make an investment with reasonable expectations that our situation would be stable.

So Brooks' presumption that criticism of a specific approach to using the market is seen as "distrust" of markets in general annoys me no end. I say "Poppycock."

Comments

[TM Lutas]

I think I'll frame this article as a prime example of anti-intellectualism on the left. Really, if you haven't invested in a business but have acted as an intellectual (whether "sort of" or the real kind) your positions are not as worthy as somebody who has fought in the trenches. That's almost a textbook case of soft anti-intellectual bias. It's like dissing Machiavelli because he never, you know, actually ran a country.

Moving along, I think that both you and Yglesias are misinterpreting Brooks and every other free marketeer out there who talks about trusting the market. Given perfect information, those who trust the market v those who distrust it will always pick the most optimal solution between two candidate solutions, one being market oriented, the other government oriented.

Given imperfect information, where you really can't guarantee how things are going to turn out, those who "trust the market" will have a higher propensity to guess that the market solution will be superior to the government solution than those who distrust the market.

You can say that it all reduces down to some sort of trite truism that those who trust, will trust. That doesn't make it "bullshit" nor do I think it particularly galling at this stage of the game when there is so little actual information out there that the only people seriously peeved or revved about Social Security reform are gathering to tribal banners, not really expressing anything about policy.

Having read the Brooks article, it seems to me that he's making a sociological observation about the Democrat tribe qua tribe. The old head shaman has retired and some of the new ones are dabbling in dark magic, preparing the tribe for a dirty fight. Some other shamans are looking to bring the tribe forward to a different path.

At a certain point, the reform proposals will come out and we'll get to the point of hashing out policy. That's going to be way after we've finished with our tribal posturing. That tribal posturing really is going to determine the battlefield. Are we going to have a new "no child left behind" bill which merely sets the stage for further reform as the measurement data comes in? Are those on the right going to go for the brass ring straight off? It all depends on the tribal alignments and who trusts what. That's what Brooks seems to be talking about and I find it interesting.

[David Sucher]

Of course people who have had no actual experience of the market are frree to comment. But their lack of direct experience should be noted, as from my observation, it is precisly people with little experience of something who most tend to glorify it. Most everyone you read in any mainstream media is safely ensconced in a large organization of some kind and is an employee and has little experience with this thing they fetishize.

Look, the market is a tool. A great tool for organizing economic matters. But it doesn't solve all problems -- such as what do you do about people in their dotage who have made bad choices in their investments. If Republicans prefer to let old poor people die on the streets, they can go elsewhere.

At the end of the day, no matter the pompous contortions of the Republicans, we will have a safety-net under all people who have worked to take care of those who have made bad investment decisions with their "retirement accounts."

[TM Lutas]

Again, at this point in the game any statements like "If Republicans prefer to let old poor people die on the streets, they can go elsewhere" are entirely based on faith and trust and have no basis in reality. There are no proposals written down yet. You can't show any evidence that a nasty outcome like you describe will happen due to section x.y.z because that hasn't been written up yet.

You have very imperfect information at this point and you choose your heuristic to deal with that. Your heuristic apparently is to ascribe the cruelest and most inhuman impulses to Republicans who, last I checked, are a bit less than a third of the population. That's your privilege and I won't gainsay it but it says volumes about where your gut checks lead you.

As for your foray into anti-intellectualism, intellectuals don't do much of anything. That's the whole point, intellectuals sit and think mostly. So if lesser credibility is to be assigned to theoreticians, that does seem to be stacking the deck against intellectuals in most circumstances unless the subject under discussion are intellectuals themselves or their allied professions. I want to be clear, what I'm seeing is a pretty soft example of the phenomenon but it's very much there and your reply makes it clear that it's not an accident.

[David Sucher]

Of course you are right and of course my post was NOT about the Bush proposal because we don't have it before us to see. I was writing about the argumentative trick to defuse criticism of the plan when it is revealed by claiming that people who critique the plan -- or even who put up performance requirements for it -- are "anti-market."

And if the Republicans come back with a program that puts yet a new layer of "safety net" under some new investment accounts, then that works for me; but of course as that provides a disincentive for people to be really careful with their own money, it undercuts the whole policy zeitgeist of Republican thinking which still has a fetish about "the government."

[MLE]

I've read Brooks pretty widely -- for better and worse -- and I'd have to take issue with anyone's description of him as an "intellectual".

[TM Lutas]

David Sucher - I believe that the most probable of results is a new system framework that will be imperfect and unoptimized but perfectible and sustainable. What we currently have is something relatively optimized, unsustainable, and imperfectible in its current framework without radical changes like a heavy lack of children tax that drops as you have more children (really, really not recommended btw).

It's no going to be perfect out of the gate. Heck, it may not even be pretty (see NCLB & prescription drug coverage for examples of that) but it'll shift us to a state where we've got a fighting shot at a sustainable system.

And of course, the above paragraph is my own tribal statement of faith. Now that I've beaten my chest over the whole thing, I'll get back to work.

[David Sucher]

Of course there is also quite a bit of debate about whether Social Security actually needs any "reform." I do not know enough to have an opinion on this point but people -- very smart people -- have doubts.