Another reference to Milton Friedman on the task we have left before us

Fred and I have often stated Milton Friedman's claim that while classical liberal economists since WWII won the battle of ideas, but lost the practical battle of implementation. I personally discussed this issue with Friedman on two or three occasions. Todd Zywicki reports on another similar conversation.

Friedman's challenge is one we must embrace.

Comments

[Sukrit]

Well I think Ron Paul has done a great deal over the past 2 years to draw in the young people (who will, of course, go on to become the intellectual freedom fighters of the future). He received 1.2 million votes in the Republican primaries on a hardcore libertarian platform and has an army of 100,000 volunteers all of whom have probably read Austrian economics. This is despite being marginalised by the media and Keynesian academics.

So, yes, I think the critical mass is building. Maybe in 20 years America will elect a President that will do what Ronald Reagan didn't do: cut the size and scope of government. Once America shifts to small government, the rest of the world will follow.

The ideas of liberty have been very well developed by American professors over the past few decades. Now all that is needed is for an army of second-hand dealers in ideas to spring up, in every nation. Once we have closed off all the avenues for intellectual sophistry by having libertarian academics in every social science discipline, then it will be possible to reverse the tide.

[Danny Shahar]

Sukrit, I hope you're right. Alternatively, though, we might try this approach instead: http://libertarian-left.blogspot.com/2008/11/polycentrist-party.html

[Martin F.]

Btw, today is Robert Nozick´s birthday:)

[Rafe Champion]

Classical liberalism can win the battle of ideas in philosophy and political economy but we have been outflanked in the culture at large through the soft social sciences, the humanities, the school teachers, novelists, script writers, poets, artists of all kinds and journalists. You can go back to Charles Dickens who lent his name to the "Dickensian horrors" of the industrial revolution, even though he supported himself as a child (while his reckless parents were in debtors prison) earning six shillings a week doing safe indoor work in a boot polish factory.

http://www.the-rathouse.com/2007/BH_Appendix.html

"The genteel middle classes and especially the literarati came to share the views of the aristocracy and the radical critics of trade and industry. Charles Dickens is just one of a galaxy of writers, poets, cultural commentators and even historians who failed to understand the nature of the processes that were at work and misrepresented either explicitly or by implication the reasons for the comparatively tough living conditions of the factory workers and other urban dwellers. The qualification 'comparative' is important because the baseline for comparison was usually the situation of the well to do, or else a sentimental and unrealistic image of the lifestyle of rural villagers and farm workers."