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I thought Posner was fairly positive for Friedman and highly critical of the opposition until the very last sentence which came out of left field without much to indicate in the preceding comments that he saw any problem with the proposal. Sure, he scrambled the message by suggesting that the decison could have been a mistake, that looked like a careless throwaway line. Like the guy who suggested that the middleclass starts at $120K.

Rafe,

I read Posner far more harsh than you. First, he is totally disrespectful of the field of history of ideas within the discipline of economics. Second, he doesn't see the recognition of enduring truths as part of the ongoing scientific enterprise in disciplines such as economics.

He does have a few good lines in the post, but most of it I read as rather silly.

I happen to believe our profession has way under-invested in the study of the intellectual history of economics. I also don't think it is a sign of intellectual immaturity to be looking in the past for insight. Economics is not an experimental science, nor is it a theoretical science like physics. It is its own unique type of science --- a human science; a philosophical science if you will. As such Adam Smith still speaks to us today in a very real sense.

Posner has no clue as to why the greatest of Milton Friedman should be honored by the University of Chicago, which he was so much a part of providing its identity to the world.

I realize that progress in philosophical movements are not made when persons are the center of focus rather than ideas (I've read Randall Collin's The Sociology of Philosophies), but I also think that there are pivotal people at pivotal times and that these individuals become synonymous with a certain research direction and orientation.

Milton Friedman is one and the University of Chicago is an ideal home for such an institute.

James Buchanan is another, and GMU is the perfect home for that --- though I would say again even though I am technically the Deputy Director of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at GMU, we have under-invested in this center and its programs at GMU. We should be doing much much more to honor Prof. Buchanan and push forward the research and teaching legacy.

I am absolutely shocked that there isn't a F. A. Hayek Center for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at a major university (and even more shocked that I am not its general director :)!!!). Seriously, I think this is a major missing opportunity, but very few get excited about it.

There is the Mises Institute --- which has been very active, but in my humble opinion the Mises Institute more reflects that great and inspiring research project of Murray Rothbard than that of Ludwig von Mises. A Mises Center should have been established years ago at NYU and under the direction of Israel Kirzner, or perhaps Richard Ebeling as the director. But as fate would have it, the Mises Institute was established in Auburn. They have done a better job than any of the other institutes around in (a) providing materials to young students to learn from online and in inexpensive form, and (b) standing firm on the boarder questions of economic and political liberty --- from the war to the financial bailout. In this regard, despite my quibbles here and there, one has to respect them and in fact acknowledge their importance.

There obviously is a problem is a name which represents something gets turned into something else due to the unscrupulous and opportunistic behavior of academics. That happens all the time. But I would hope that a named center after a figure that really stood for something would make that more difficult to do. Hard to imagine Paul Krugman running the Milton Friedman Institute, much easier to see Krugman use Ford Foundation money without a second thought!!!

As Anna Schwartz has argued throughout our recent debates --- it is just too bad that Milton Friedman is not here to tell the right story to Ben Bernanke and crowd. The lesson of the Great Depression is not JUST liquidity, and bailing out insolvent economic actors is not the way to fight this policy battle. And as Ms. Schwartz put it, only a man of Milton Friedman's scientific and public intellectual stature could have stemmed the tide toward these interventionisms.

Friedman was small in physical stature, but a GIANT among economists. It is too bad that the pygmies have been left in his place. We can do better, and professors at the U of Chicago can do better than invent reasons to tear into a man they couldn't intellectual touch when he was alive.

Pete

Pete,

What was Posner's audience? Wasn't he addressing his colleagues at U of C? He took each objection seriously and gave it a serious response. At the end he gave an even-if argument, which is perfectly legit and not a cop out. If that mild (and lawyerly) argument cools the fires of those who oppose MFI, surely that's a good thing?

Roger,

Perhaps.

But I just find the episode so outrageous that sometimes outrage is the right response. I mean who the heck compared to Milton Friedman are these "professors" at U of Chicago to object to a research and educational center named after arguably one of the greatest economic minds of the 20th century.

I find the same thing bothersome about Duke's decision NOT to name Caldwell's new center the Hayek Center. Absurdity at a fundamental level.

I am not yet 50, but I have grown tired of the smallness of academics and I am coming to the opinion that while we need to pick our battles, when we do decide to fight them it is time to really fight them aggressively as we can. In some of these "discussions" I hate to say it is not about finding a reasonable compromise, but about simply exposing the intellectual fraud on the opposite side and laughing them off the campus grounds.

I feel horrible coming to this position ... for years I was taught by my mentors -- Don Lavoie and then Israel Kirzner --- that seeing your opponents point of view and reasonableness is the way to proceed, and I was taught by my wife and life partner that you catch more flies with honey than you ever do with vinegar, and I guess I still want to believe that. But when I see people who are no where in the league of a Milton Friedman, or even close to the scholarly accomplishments of an F. A. Hayek, and they are able to block the name due to "embarrassment of the association" and "fear of the reputation" of the school --- I really have to wonder went is wrong with the universe.

Let me be clear, this is not an ideological issue --- I think there should be at the New School or at UMass Amherst a Karl Marx Center for the Study of Political Economy, and I would be a big supporter. I would not consider it "evil". I would be concerned if we had a Stalin Center for the Advancement of Socialism, or a Hitler Center for the Study of Race. But to say Marx = Stalin, and therefore having a Marx Center would be the equivalent should be grounds for outrage on the part of the left. But at U of Chicago such an argument is going on -- Friedman = Pinochet, so the Milton Friedman Center is similar to having a General Pinochet Center for the Study of Democracy!!! Do you see why I find this a reason for outrage?

In the face of that Posner's lawyerly rhetoric falls short of what is needed in my opinion.

A Marx Center in a University would be a legitimate cause of enormous outrage because, although Marx is not quite Stalin, he goes beyond the limits of intellectual argument and intellectual posture : not only does he he makes a (false) prophesy regarding the impersonal and inevitable coming of socialism based on the workings of his material and dialectical theory of history, but in The Communist Manifesto he also openly and cheerfully advocates a voluntarist revolutionary line of so called proletarian despotism that must proceed inevitably - in order to bring into being the socialist society - to a indiscriminate killing of the "bourgeois and capitalist classes" that in his view are on the wrong side of history. The fewer university institutions named after people who unambiguously advocated genocide the better.

Pete,

I suppose even Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple.

I think Posner gets a complete pass. He was good IMHO. I think you are right, however, to feel anger over over "scholars" who substitute a false sense of propriety for argument, who ignore analysis on the putatively lofty grounds of a morality that is really just piety and not morality at all. I've certainly met many of those types. I recall an English professor criticizing my classroom treatment of slavery (in an economic history class) because "the only issue is the moral one." When "scholars" substitute piety for logic, you must often just call them out for it in no uncertain terms.

And you get it completely right IMHO when you talk about a Marx Institute and so on. It's not the other guy's radically different social theory that irritates. Such differences can be discussed rationally. It when you substitute attitude for argument. I imagine you would agree that such substitutions are made by persons from all the various points on the ideological map. But the numerical dominance of "left" scholars in our universities sometimes makes it seem that only "they" are guilty.


I like Posner and I do not think we need a Marx Institute. As to the "smallness of academics", I believe it was Kissinger who wrote that "The strikes are so bitter because the stakes are so small..." which is not quite right either since ideas do matter...

Dear prof. Koppl, with the risk of being labeled a pietist, I'm wondering : would you say it's OK, fine, no problem if - for instance - your university would like to establish a center for the study of Hegel's philosophy and name it in honor of Giovanni Gentile, the bright Italian neo-hegelian philosopher who co-wrote the Doctrine of Fascism with Mussolini?

Where is the line to be drawn when it comes to promoting that rational and argumentative tone that you suggest should characterize the academia ?

And - by the way - what is the point of bringing Jesus (or, for for that matter, Mohammed, or Manu, or the first Buddha) in a discussion more or less about scholarly standards?

Oh come on, Bogdan. It is certainly true that the Marxist-Leninist regimes of the world have done great evil. Yup. If you don't get that, you sure need some teaching. In the immortal words of Sarah Palin, "You betcha." For better or worse, however, Marx has a permanent place on the list of respectable thinkers and there are plenty of serious, sincere people who take him seriously. What would you have us do with them? Talk or shout? Argue or shoot? I believe in the power of truth. I'll stand by that. I'll talk with serious interlocutors even when I think their sincere intellectual errors are dangerous to humanity. In this attitude I have the esteemed company of many of the most illustrious thinkers in world history, including the great John Stuart Mill. I have the company of F. A. Hayek, too, who dedicated _The Road to Serfdom_ to socialists of all parties.

Notice that I haven't propose burning Marx books in the public square or curse people who consider themselves Marxists. I'm just asking, why is Marx more respectable than Gentile, for instance, a man whom Benedetto Croce - his rival in political theory but allied in metaphysics - considered the greatest neo-hegelian philosopher ? Isn't it a very telling question ?

Okay, Bogdan, I'll bite. What does the question tell us? Perhaps you wish to say that Bolshevism is worse than Italian Fascism? If that's it, well, so what? Anyway, do please reveal to me what your question tells.

I'm not trying to say that Bolshevism was worse than Italian fascism (though that's probably correct according to some measures).

I'm simply pointing out the deep asymmetry between how the vast majority of people - intellectuals, politicians and everybody else - judge the so-called "left wing" totalitarianism (essentially communism) and the so-called "right-wing" totalitarianism(s) - fascism and Nazism; by extension I point out the asymmetry that exists between the way people judge the intellectual traditions suspected - rightly or wrongly - to have fuel the two political systems; and then I simply ask : why, for instance, praising Heidegger or a Heideggerian philosopher can get you labeled a cold, xenophobic, nazist (there have been cases) but praising Marx can get you labeled as a progressive, compassionate, humane ?; why, for instance a political gesture like condemning Nazism and fascism as criminal political systems is considered a sine qua non of "democratic" credentials, but condemning communism in the same way makes a lot of good-will people extremely furious and outraged ?; why, for instance, the existence of a communist party, or a Leninist or Trotsky or whatever people's socialist party is considered - by many of the most prestigious experts in the matter - as, well, normal for a democratic commonwealth, but the existence of an openly Nazi or fascist party is seen as absolutely unacceptable?; and finally, why, for instance, wearing a Che Guevera or a communist symbols T-shirt is considered cool, while wearing a Himmler or a swastika T-Shirt would generally get you in jail? ...

I do not have all the answers to these questions; and sometimes the questions are more interesting than the answers anyway; but please don't understand that I'm trying to say that people should praise Hitler and Gentile just as others praise Lenin or Marx; or that people should start writing books about how to revive the idea of bringing about an Aryan Empire just because others write books about how to relaunch the second coming of a socialist society; or that people should start to wear swastika T-shirts because other people already wear Che Guevara T-shirts; that they should form neo-nazi parties just because other have their communist or whatever they're called parties etc.

You know that's an interesting comment, Bogden. (It's "interesting" in the European, not the American sense!) Of course you're completely right about the asymmetry. And you stimulate the thought that we're probably on better ground with the hard left than we are with Fascism. Fascism is pretty fluid stuff. The Fascist economic model was a muddle that amounted to a hodge-podge of interventions, controls, and such. And now nobody, but nobody owns he label. Even the neo-Nazis use the Nazi label, not the Fascist label. Thus, when you're looking straight at Fascism, the protagonist will tell in all sincerity that he opposes Fascism. Precisely because the name is an orphan the child is being well cared for.

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debra

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tatiana

mmm yes kind of silly!
but he make the effort!
peter

Milton is a great economist, I know his work.

Can you explain me more about that?

Richard Posner sometimes upset me. I prefer to hear some Alfred E. Newman discourse.

the institute helps me a lot.

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