Over the years, several friends and Family members have encouraged me to read The Economist, ostensibly for the clear-headed and somewhat pro-market views. Yet every time I’ve browsed their site, I’ve come away disappointed. Not today.
I already have forgotten where I snagged this image (sorry!), but a quick trip to the web site confirms that this is indeed their cover for the current issue:
Now, my question is this: if the folks behind this rag are smart enough to come up with this graphic and have the cojones to run with it, why do they let their writers spill so much ink cooing over these very same agencies and propping up their socialistic, coercive “solutions”?
For the same reason...
...some libertarians drool over Ron Paul: they can't see cause and effect from one issue to another... or relate the "solution" back to the problem.
My answer
is actually two-fold. First, like much of the popular press these days, everyone from the writers on up is probably more concerned with maintaining a specific image, rather than being consistent on any particular point or ideology. The Economist strikes me as a publication more interested in being perceived as “intellectual” than ideologically pure. Second, and most important, the picture offers an implicit agreement with the idea that the world is “runnable”, which it most certainly is not.
Exactly Correct
The Economist staff and management are technocrats. They believe the world is runnable from the top. The only problem they perceive is that those currently charged with running it are not doing a good job. Freedom is not part of the equation.
That shall also serve...
As a sound indictment of the likes of Mike Huben, Friedman (Milton and David both) and many who identify themselves as libertarians. They start out from a preconceived social optimum that shall be achieved, it's fundamentally similar in those three cases (and most others, incidentally) and that optimum is the real goal. Milton Friedman's pseudo-liberalism, David D. Friedman's apparent anarchism, and Huben's monstrous ordo-liberal views are of a piece in that sense.
The problem, quite simply, is that liberty has absolutely nothing to do with what they believe in or advocate, it never has, and it never will.
Er...this is in response to Jorge, though by an error on my part it's not properly nested.
Friedman?
Interesting point, Brian; I would daresay that many people harbor some agreement with the idea that the world can be run—and yes, that includes some in the Family. Milton Friedman’s inclusion amongst those I grok; but what about David is not genuine anarchism? I’ve not read any of his books, but I did hear him speak at a Freedom Summit and he seemed like the real deal then (2005, if I remember rightly).
It is not so much the positive content...
...of the ultimate position he adopts that troubles me, it is the ethical framework he rides getting there.