The Economic Way of Thinking

Who Is John Galt?

One of my former advisees, Ashleigh, brought to my attention the above billboard.  The billboard can be found along I-95 near the Georgia-Florida border.  Here's a story about the person behind the Galt sign.  

I have seen a Mercer student driving around in a car with a "Who is John Galt?" bumper sticker.  After learning that I was teaching Atlas Shrugged last spring, the student e-mailed me and told me he was "the John Galt guy."

Do you, our readers, have any good John Galt sightings or stories to report?  

A Creative Genius

The quirky interview questions aside, this interview of John Mackey over at Reason TV is one of the smartest hours of television I've watched in a long time.  The man is a Misesian.  He has implemented an "outside the box" solution to rising health care costs at Whole Foods.  And, his discussion of monopoly and the FTC sounds like something straight out of Heyne, Boettke, and Prychitko's EWOT textbook. 

A Night of Enlightenment

Jim Otteson's talk here at Mercer last week was titled "The Scottish Enlightenment on the Promise and Peril of Commercial Society."  Jim gave us a wonderful overview of the Enlightenment (with particular emphasis on Adam Smith).  According to Otteson, the promise of commercial society was material abundance and greater freedom of choice; Smith, the great empiricist, speculated about the causes of economic abundance, and, with hindsight, his conjectures appear to have been on the mark. 

Jim then went on to discuss the perils of commercial society.  He started by explaining a concern Adam Ferguson had about the "voluptuousness" that comes with abundance.  Otteson then linked the concerns the Enlightenment writers had about voluptuousness up to the present by discussing happiness research and the progress paradox.

While I got to spend plenty of time with Jim while he was in town, there were still a number of questions I never got to ask him while he was in town.  Several of them can be found below the fold:

Brace For A Wealth Of Smith Stories

Mercer's new Center for Undergraduate Research in Public Policy & Capitalism (the site is still a work in progress!) and Center for the Teaching of America's Western Foundations are pleased to host Jim Otteson tonight for a talk titled "The Promise and Perils of Commercial Society."  The talk begins at 6:30 pm in the Fickling Recital Hall. 

Jim's  books and scholarship have helped him win a number of major awards, including the Atlas Economic Research Award (2005) and the Templeton Enterprise Award (2007).  His book Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life is one of the finest attempts to address and reconcile the "Das Adam Smith Problem."  He also has a blog that's worth following here.   

Local readers might also want to mark their calendars for upcoming talks by Steve Horwitz (Monday, October 26) and Bruce Benson (Wednesday, November 18).  Details are forthcoming.

Bryan Caplan's Common Sense

Here's an excellent example of Bryan Caplan offering up common sense philosophy to his readers over at EconLog.  My favorite parts are the following:

Suppose legalizing the market in human organs would make sick people healthy and poor people rich.  What moral premise would imply "don't legalize"?  Sheer malevolence?  Blind adoration of the status quo?  While these are coherent moral premises, they're so rare that addressing them is a waste of time...

...I grant that popular moral premises occasionally give conflicting policy recommendations.  But if an economist finds that protectionism sharply reduces economic growth and hurts the poor, or that labor market regulations increase unemployment and reduce happiness, he might as well go ahead and condemn these policies without apology - and without further explanation.

The NYT Goes Randian for a Day

"Mr. Allison of BB&T has the tall, lean frame, copper-colored hair and confident demeanor of many of Ms. Rand’s fictional heroes, including John Galt — a look 'which would not seek forgiveness or grant it.'

He also has a résumé befitting a Rand prophet."

That's the New York Times of all places describing BB&T Chairman John Allison in this must read article. 

HT: John Patterson

EWOT/IHS Paraphrase of the Morning

"Every time I feel a plane rumble down the runway and lift me off the ground, I stop for a second and think to myself: Wow that's the human mind lifting me up right now!"

Paraphrase provided by my friend up the way on I-75 and fellow IHS faculty member, Andrew Cohen.

Acts of Civil Disobedience

When visiting Dave a couple weeks ago, we had a discussion about activism and civil disobedience.  Dave has a few good stories he can tell of protests he was involved in.  I, on the other hand, have to really stretch to say I protested anything as a kid.  The only thing I can even remember advocating was the preservation of this lake, but my activism was limited to an op-ed and a high school presentation. 

I attribute my lack of activism to the relatively good times of the late 1990s.  Once the logic of collective action became clear in my studies, the chances of me becoming an activist on much of anything were nil.

I'm curious: have any of our readers gotten their hands dirty by joining a protest movement, jumping in a van, attending a tea party, etc.?  Does this activism in any way reinforce your ideology?   

Economic Nonfoundationalism

I'm doing some reading for an upcoming conference, and here are the first few sentences from James Ceaser in a piece titled "A Clear and Present Danger: The Doctrine of Political Nonfoundationalism":

The greatest threat to America today comes from a theoretical doctrine that has offered in all sincerity as the friend, even the savior, of liberal democracy.  For want of a universally accepted name, this doctrine will be designated here by the label of political nonfoundationalism.  Political nonfoundationalism holds that liberal democracy is best maintained by renouncing public reliance on a first principle (or "foundation") that claims to embody an objective truth--something, for example, along the lines of the 'laws of nature' that are invoked in the Declaration of Independence.  Political life should either be neutral towards such principles or exclude them altogether...This new way of thinking, called 'reasonableness' by one philosopher and 'irony' by another, is already said to be trickling down from the intelligentsia to the people.

A similar trend away from foundationalism seems to be taking place in economics.  Our profession's general appetite for the pragmatic has become quite clear throughout the financial crisis.  If we are, indeed, trending towards the expedient and "reasonable," what are the equivalent foundational principles in economics that are being treated as neutral or being excluded altogether?

Don't Ignore This Video

Here's the Foundation for Economic Education's president, Larry Reed, giving a talk at Northwood University titled "Lessons from History We Dare Not Ignore."  The talk draws lessons from the history of ancient Rome, and it's far better television than most other Sunday morning alternatives.

Make That 3

Last week I blogged about commencement and said I have two memorable moments from past commencements.  After yesterday's commencement for our graduating business students in Atlanta, I now have a third unforgettable moment. 

That's because I was given the honor of introducing our keynote speaker, the renowned BB&T chairman, John Allison.  In addition to introducing our special guest, I got to spend the afternoon talking to him about the financial crisis, his retirement plans, and the future of freedom. 

It was great to be able to spend the afternoon with Mr. Allison, and his commencement talk on integrity, purposefulness, and self-esteem was terrific.  For those wanting a longer version of his talk, here's a Youtube video of him talking about leadership that has a lot of overlap with last night's talk. 

Thanks for all that you do, John!  And, congrats again to all of our graduating students!

What Is Freedom?

Recall Scott's post on Monday.  A claim is raised that "you are born into this world 100% absolutely free" but the State attenuates that freedom.  I say that the "100%" freedom used by the author must have nothing to do with the empirical existence (or nonexistence) of the State, but has everything to do with existential freedom.  (I'm bracketing the question of whether or not existential freedom really exists.)  He fails to understand that his own claim rests on a distinction between two very different concepts of "freedom."

It seems to me that the author's own notion of "100% free" must be an existential freedom.  What else can it mean to be born "100% absolutely free"? 

If you agree with me that the author's argument rests implicitly on a distinction between the two types of freedom, are you prepared to depart from the author's own conclusion and argue if one is really born"100% absolutely free" he remains absolutely free regardless of the actual political liberties and constraints he faces?

This Is Jason Osborne Speaking

...at a Tea Party (Part 2 of his speech is available here) in Defiance, OH, which is a city that I've always assumed to be radically libertarian and out of an Ayn Rand novel.    

My favorite lines from Osborne's speech: "...you were born into this world 100% absolutely free.  The government is that institution that takes that from you and expects you to wave a flag to celebrate.  I say, 'No, thank you.'"