The Great Caplan-Boettke Debate

David L. Prychitko

On YouTube.  Video 1 of 13.

Comments

[Peter Boettke]

Just a note --- this debate took place, I believe, close to a decade ago. I have never rewatched it. I am sure there are subcontexts of debates that were going on at GMU at the time that are perhaps not explicitly referenced, but shape the way I put things.

My main points, if my memory serves me correctly, are (1) that Bryan's critique of Austrian economics applies to Rothbard, but Rothbard doesn't exhaust the Austrian tradition (nor does he perfectly reflect Mises), and (2) Bryan's critique of radical subjectivism and Kirznerian alertness are not as devastating as he often presents it, and in fact, that Bryan's own presentation belies his admission of Kirzner's main point.

Additionally, I don't know if this comes up in the debate, but I would argue that Bryan's emphasis on public ignorance in politics is in fact consistent with Austrian, dare I say Hayekian, ideas.

But again, I have no rewatched the debate, Bryan is a brilliant economist and an effective public speaker. So I remember walking away from the debate thinking Caplan "won" because I didn't make my points as effectively as I should have, but not because he has the "better" argument.

One last thing -- this was the first debate I was ever engaged in my life.

[Dave Prychitko]

Pete, I watched ALL of this debate a couple months ago (that's what the gray skies of winter do to me). Anyway, I recall a response that you should have made to Bryan. He said (indeed if I recall correctly) that there is no such thing as surprise. But look how he argued it. *After* the "surprise" event you could place a probability on its occurrence. But you could have replied that our choices are framed ex ante, that, sure, you could assign a place within the set of all possibilities after the fact, but we look forward while making the choice.

At least that's how I recall this debate point.

It's like when Julie and I ran into John Kenneth Galbraith on Park Ave in NYC when we flew there (for lunch!) from Chicago over 25 years ago. Genuine surprise. Only after the fact could I try to construct the chance of meeting him. Before the fact it never entered my mind, not even the more general category of meeting an economist, and actually not even the general category of meeting "someone famous." So it hadn't influenced my choices at all. True surprise. But Byran tries to deny this.

[TGGP]

Pete already had a front-page post linking the video. Surprised Dave is revisiting it:
http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2009/10/not-too-good-at-debate.html
The thing that most surprised me was the Austrian-Leijonhufvud connection. I'd never heard of that before.

[Dave Prychitko]

Right -- I forgot about Pete's earlier post.

On Leijonhufvud: Pete and I were first exposed to his work (Information and Coordination) as a text in our macro II grad course at GMU, taught by Don lavoie.

[Richard Ebeling]

There is nothing "genetic" in it, but it never surprised me that Axel Leijonhufvud formulated a variety of arguments that had "imperfect knowledge," process analysis, and adjustment through periods in a more "micro-foundations" approach to macroeconomic issues.

He is, after all, Swedish, and from Knut Wicksell through the first half of the twentieth century, the Swedish or "Stockholm" School of Economics ran parallel to that of the Austrian School on a number of topics in monetary and business cycle theory, and in the idea of period and process analysis.

It must be in the Swedish "blood," or if not the blood, then, at least in the water some of their economists drink.

Richard Ebeling

[Rafe Champion]

On Leijonhufvud, in the piece that we wrote for Lakatos and contributed to the first Greek Island conference on methods, he was talking about the Keynesian debate of the 1930s and he wrote that the elephant in the room (not his words) which was never clearly addressed, was the coordination problem.

Wicksell had an interesting exchange of correspondence with Marshall. When Marshall wrote Menger out of revised editions of his big book. Wicksell deplored this and urged Marshall to reconsider.

[Rafe Champion]

It is practically impossible to beat a really good debater (in terms of who looks like the winnner), however strong your case may be, so I think Pete did really well.
Bertrand Russell was one of the most formidable and effective controversalists of the 20th century but he said the one person who he was terrified to debate was Maynard Keynes.
Hayek was concerned about the problem for people who were puzzlers and possibly deep thinkers but did not meet the criteria for support, tenure etc. He suggested a form of support for these people to make their way for a while in case they had something valuable to contribute.

[topills.com review]

Bertrand Russell was one of the most formidable and effective controversalists of the 20th century but he said the one person who he was terrified to debate was Maynard Keynes.