Comments on: Voices In The Wilderness

By: Daniel Larison

Daniel Larison — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:12:14 +0000

Then I think we, as well as Rod and Berry, are more in agreement about things than it seemed at first. Glad to hear it.

By: David Gordon

David Gordon — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:10:11 +0000

Yes, all government subsidies for corporations are wrong and libertarians condemn them. Monopolies come about through government grants of privilege.

By: Daniel Larison

Daniel Larison — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:08:13 +0000

Well, that was part of my frustration in the first place. Perhaps I am dwelling on the point too much, but ever since I was lectured on some newsgroup over a decade ago that I was a “statist” for favoring a strict construction reading of the Constitution I have been wary of throwing the term around too freely.

By: LMaggitti

LMaggitti — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:05:02 +0000

There is a surreal quality to this argument, in that, from Gordan’s perspective (and, increasingly, mine) virtually everyone in the United States is a statist. Using that perspective, as accurate as it may be, to call Berry a statist, it isn’t particularly illuminating. Especially since, given the real range of opinion ion the United States, Berry is probably less of a statist than 95% of his countrymen.

By: Daniel Larison

Daniel Larison — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:59:59 +0000

I wasn’t assuming that you were necessarily an ideologue, and I’m not sure that I would say so now. That is quite a charge to make.

As for trusts, I suppose collusion among firms with the goal of preventing competition is a kind of cooperation, to borrow from your article, but I don’t see how it is the sort of cooperation that can be squared with a free market. We would agree, though, that government subsidies and supports for corporations are undesirable and would represent a clear case of statism, wouldn’t we?

By: David Gordon

David Gordon — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:47:56 +0000

I’m afraid that this will confirm your view that I’m an ideologue, but I don’t support anti-trust laws. Chapter 10 of Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State, “Monopoly and Competition” is the best defense of the position I support.

By: Daniel Larison

Daniel Larison — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:26:19 +0000

That seems fair. Would you also agree that opposition to trusts (which are arrangements designed specifically to thwart open competition) is not at odds with your own understanding of the merits of competition?

By: David Gordon

David Gordon — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:20:30 +0000

That is a very good question; I’d take favoring measures that forcibly interfere with the free market at the national level to be evidence of statism, although one would have to favor a substantial number of them, I think, to count as a full-fledged statist. Someone who wanted to restrict the market only through local communities wouldn’t count as a statist, on this view.

In my TAC post of Lukacs, I should have included a link to my review. It does sound unfairly dismissive without this background.

By: Daniel Larison

Daniel Larison — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:16:29 +0000

Well, technically you don’t “just dismiss” Berry, either, but you call him an ideologue (not at all fair) and a statist (at best very debatable). You don’t “just dismiss” Lukacs, but you find some mistakes he has made and then say that this is characteristic of him, which I assume is not intended to be taken as a recommendation of his work. It is intended to be a very harsh judgement on him, and to my mind one that is not at all fair. I’ve read the review you’ve linked, and I should add that I have made some of the same critiques of his interpretations of American history. It seems to me that one can find fault with certain arguments that Lukacs has made without making an overblown claim about allegedly characteristic illogicality.

By: David Gordon

David Gordon — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:00:57 +0000

Sorry: I thought that Mr. Larison was referring to a review of Lukacs that I wrote: http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=279 rather than to the TAC blog post. Even there, though, I give an example of a mistake; I don’t just dismiss Lukacs.

By: Daniel Larison

Daniel Larison — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:57:44 +0000

I don’t rule out that Berry supports some measures that would be undesirable, but I would be interested to know what you think statism is such that the label would apply in these cases. As I read your article, *any* kind of coercion or regulation seems to count as evidence of statism. If that isn’t what you mean, I’ll be glad to hear it.

As for your remarks on Lukacs, you said “characteristic ineptness in logic,” which I assume would apply to more than the one review. I happen to agree with parts of Tom’s critique of the Lukacs review, and I don’t think your remarks about the review itself were that far off as far as they go. But to generalize from that one review about Lukacs’ capacity for logic was dismissive and was intended to be so.

By: David Gordon

David Gordon — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:45:26 +0000

Wendell Berry favors a progressive income tax, parity pricing, and protective tariffs, measures not usually applied at the local level.

In my review of Lukacs, I didn’t confine myself to dismissive pronouncements but gave examples to show that he was inept in logic. If Mr. Larison thinks that my criticisms were mistaken, I’d be most interested in learning why. Perhaps he thinks that the meaning of Goedel’s Theorem should be determined by the local community.