Wednesday 10 August 2016

In Defense of Sane Thinking

Since Charles Peralo's indignant attack on Rothbard yesterday, my social media feed has scarcely spoken about anything else - and since my Australian losertarians keep saying I'm a leftie, here are my two cents:

I'm probably in the midst of this Rothbard cult Peralo is referring to, especially considering my involvement with the Mises Institute and my deep passion for hardcore Austrian Economics. I have most certainly heard vague rumours about people who genuinely hates Rothbard - for reasons I have never quite understood. Charles Peralo over at BeingLibertarian.com clarified the issue for me; Rothbard sucks, because he
a) sometimes associated with terrible people - even racist people, or far-left people; and
b) never had a big impact on public policy.

I was honestly surprised by somebody labelling himself libertarian to resort to such politician-worshipping, SJW-style guilt-by-association and guilt-by-thought-crime. Considering that Peralo no less than a week ago literally called for libertarians to join cause with Black Lives Matter, we shouldn't be surprised that his reasoning has been so greatly impaired by this new favourite crowd of his, that his unjustified hatred for Rothbard finally spilled over. Maybe, however, Peralo discovered the foundations of a new ethics?

I present to you Politico-consequentialism: the ethics according to which the moral worth of an act (or a person's life, as it may be) lies in how much it influences political processes.

What if the rest of us sane, serious, non-racist libertarians don't agree with such a metric?
Maybe academic achievement isn't judged by a show of hands?
Maybe intellectual endeavours aren't valued by how many presidential administrations paid attention to them?
Maybe the problem in society is this childish compulsion to spend time, money and effort on politics, playing the game of statists?

Instead, Peralo spends his time chastising Rothbard for not being involved enough in politics, and not playing by PC rules to achieve political fame (and as David Gordon recently showed, Rothbard was also criticized Krugman-style for being too involved in politics; which one is it, critics?). Anybody not embracing this garbage ethical philosophy of Peralo would value somebody's academic contributions - by their academic contributions. So. Let's list a couple of Rothbard's intellectual achievements off the top of my head:
  • An excellent and mind-blowing two-volume history of economic thought; an absolutely indispensable work, turning most of our belief about past economists on the its head. 
  • Refining and coherently incorporating Austrian subjectivity into monopoly theory; a point on which even the brilliant mind of Mises was doubtful.
  • A complete overthrow of welfare economics, worthy of attention much beyond Austrian circles.
  • Convincingly overturning the standard Keynes demand-deficiency/animal spirit fairy-tale of the Great Depression - and preempt Peralo's hero Friedman & Schwartz in their attempt of blaming the Fed for not inflating enough?!
And I'm sure that's not even a fraction of all his achievements.  

Peralo's post is surely the most senseless piece of indignant garbage produced in half a decade.

2 comments:

  1. Well, I appreciate that you thought of me as the best piece of garbage in this half of the decade. My ex girlfriends normally just say best garbage of the year.

    For your article, I would like to clarify I've read three Rothbard books and listened to many of his speeches. Guess what? I actually do enjoy it. It feeds my libertarian and makes me very happy.

    However, my issue with Rothbard is just I feel people aspire to emulate him and ignore he had some pretty major holes.

    1. He wasn't really much of an economist. He did a lot of work in the early 50s, but his career was normally speaking on topics outside of econ. Also, his ridiculous opposition to fractional reserve banking does scare me.

    2. I think he created this mentality in the liberty movement where people can only back purist who claim to be libertarian, but if it's not perfect, go ahead and back someone such as Pat Buchanan or Donald Trump.

    3. I just can't respect the idea people wear the t shirts and idolize somoene who supported David Duke, Pat Buchanan & Strom Thurmond. I don't feel he had any logic in it.

    Btw, if you'd like to write a more detailed counter article for being libertarian, I'd love to see it and just email me at charles@pivotfoods.com for more info.

    Best

    Charles

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    Replies
    1. Hey,Charles!

      Nice of you to stop by. Ofc, every human being has "some pretty major holes" - that's true for everyone, this side of Eden... Is Rothbard's alleged shortcomings somehow bigger than other people? Well, so are his achievements, so what's your point?

      Nah, sorry mate, I'll decline. Everything I wanna say on the topic was said on the Tom Woods show. You had a weak case to begin with, now nothing is left standing: http://tomwoods.com/podcast/ep-714-roundtable-on-rothbard-founder-of-libertarianism/

      I'll gladly contribute something else, though

      Delete