David L. Prychitko
Pete Boettke, Emily Chamlee-Wright and I have been part of a wonderful project created by Lenore Ealy and inspired by Dick Cornuelle's pathbreaking book, Reclaiming the American Dream (a book that was praised by Hayek in vol. III of Law, Legislation, & Liberty). The project is called The Philanthropic Enterprise and it offers, in addition to wonderful and thought-provoking discussions in the style of Liberty Fund colloquia, a journal called Conversations on Philanthropy. The goal is to analyze the "Independent" sector -- the panoply of non-profits, grassroots and other non-government organizations -- as a potentially vibrant spontaneous order that can serve as an alternative to government's attempt to, among other things, create a social safety net.
Back in 1984 2004 Pete and I attempted to advance Austrian theory into new territory -- nonprofit associations -- and criticize Lester Salamon's claims (Salamon being a big player in the literature) that an unmanaged independent sector would fail in the very same way that unhampered markets fail. He uses the standard Pareto optimality concept to claim that government-sponsored agencies and support can make the civil-society not-for-profit and non-profit associations more "efficient" and robust -- moving closer to the optimal arrangement. We, of course, demonstrate that the whole framework gets him nowhere.
Our paper is available here, along with Emily's comment. Since then Emily has gone much further than us and has taken the lead to not only develop but carefully apply the notion of social entrepreneurship.
Dave,
The YEAR WAS 2004, not 1984. We were in 1st year PRICE THEORY then. NO wonder silly things like Blogometric papers have me as publishing for 52 years. People keep trying to make me out to be 70 or 80 years of age. Folks I am not 50 YET!
Pete
Posted by: Peter Boettke | September 24, 2009 at 11:58 AM
I must've been thinking about that joyous occasion when we first met. Having said that, are you sure you're not over 50?
Posted by: Dave Prychitko | September 24, 2009 at 12:37 PM
He's not 50... YET. But he can see it up in the road ahead. ;)
Posted by: Steve Horwitz | September 24, 2009 at 01:08 PM
Pete is ageless.
Posted by: Mario Rizzo | September 24, 2009 at 01:13 PM
I recently read your 2004 paper and found it enlightening. I presented a paper at the 2009 ASC at the Mises Institute entitled Against the Third Sector as a Contrivance of the State, http://mises.org/journals/scholar/hodgkins.pdf , which provides an historical background as the founbdation of my Masters thesis in Public Administration on equity-like capital markets for non-profit enterprise.
My research has conviced me that although government intervention has certainly led to the 20th century explosion of non-profit enterprise, this intervention has led to most of the economic calculation issues discussed in relation to non-profit enterprise. I am currently working on the second chapter of my thesis, which humbly attempts to bring an Austrian persepctive to the economic analysis of the sector. I thank you for the information regarding The Philanthropic Enterprise, and as always, enjoy reading your informative blog.
Posted by: Kevin Hodgkins | September 25, 2009 at 11:00 AM
Kevin, you should alert Lenore Ealy about your article:
http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/main/contact.php
Posted by: Dave Prychitko | September 25, 2009 at 12:33 PM
I will, thank you.
Posted by: Kevin Hodgkins | September 25, 2009 at 04:56 PM