Calling mainstream economists left wing or leftist feels a bit extreme. This is just quibbling over definitions but I think calling them center-left or liberal would be more appropriate.
But there is no intergenerational free market in land tenures. They are based on "first come, first grabbed". Later generations are excluded from competing. Hence wealth inequality.
You could make something like this argument in reverse (not as strong of an argument). Because you focused on labor economics, your libertarianism was not challenged by that focus. If you had focused on health economics (asymmetric info) or macroeconomics (success of great moderation), you might be 99% libertarian rather than 100%.
I’ve never really been exposed to the views of free market economists, so I’m curious how they reconcile that view with what they know about economics. Do they deny market failures exist? Or do they think the government is incapable of taking action against market failures? Or something else?
Market failures happen in the market, but are uncommon. Market failures are built into democracy and are common! I'll explain. The tragedy of the commons is one kind of market failure. Unbiased, careful thinking about policies is a commons with a positive public good benefit. From market failure theory, we would expect public goods to be underproduced compared to the ideal. "unbiased careful thinking about policies" therefore should be expected to be underproduced. That's the market failure that is built into all democracies.
To put it more concretely: Wendy has 10 hobbies and a full time job. She knows there's a presidential election in 4 years. If she forgoes her hobbies and conducts some social science experiments at her own expense, and reads broadly in the scholarly literature, and deeply scrutinizes the potential candidates, then she will be well informed in several areas of public policy that are likely to be raised in the election.
If she is willing to risk her sense of self worth, willing to risk losing friendships, then she can try really hard to be unbiased. After all, maybe she was biased before, and had befriended people and married someone with compatible biases.
After all that, Wendy has become a voter with unbiased and careful thinking. Yay! But it cost her social activities, hobbies, time, and money. It may have cost her friendships. Now it's time to vote. She votes in an election which can't be predicted. Optimistically, she has about one chance in 152 million for her vote to be decisive. Otherwise, whoever would have lost would have lost no matter how she voted. There's never been a presidential election that was decided by one popular vote. This time turns out to be the same way.
Wendy's neighbor's note that Wendy dedicated a lot of time to being the best possible voter and got nothing for it. That's a market failure in voting. But even if her vote had been decisive, she would get a fraction of the benefit of voting properly. There's 340 million people in the US (sorry I assumed the USA for my example) and she would get only 1/340 millionth of the benefit of the good outcome. That's another market failure built into voting.
TLDR: Look at the large literature in public choice economics.
I feel like I've just learned what I knew all along, but didn't know I knew: the description of PhD students learning deeply such a narrow subject while changing their overall views not a whit. It describes most adults, too, but it takes them a lot longer than a PhD student because they aren't so focused on deluding themselves.
Calling mainstream economists left wing or leftist feels a bit extreme. This is just quibbling over definitions but I think calling them center-left or liberal would be more appropriate.
Stiglitz could count as one. Mainstream enough to win the Nobel, leftist enough to act as an apologist for Venezuela.
I’ve heard far more about the “Chicago Boys” and Pinochet than Galbraith and Mao
I think left-wing is fine, but Caplan is probably not online enough to know that “leftist” generally refers to the hard left.
But there is no intergenerational free market in land tenures. They are based on "first come, first grabbed". Later generations are excluded from competing. Hence wealth inequality.
Compare and contrast https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/26/compound-interest-is-the-least-powerful-force-in-the-universe/
You could make something like this argument in reverse (not as strong of an argument). Because you focused on labor economics, your libertarianism was not challenged by that focus. If you had focused on health economics (asymmetric info) or macroeconomics (success of great moderation), you might be 99% libertarian rather than 100%.
I’ve never really been exposed to the views of free market economists, so I’m curious how they reconcile that view with what they know about economics. Do they deny market failures exist? Or do they think the government is incapable of taking action against market failures? Or something else?
Market failures happen in the market, but are uncommon. Market failures are built into democracy and are common! I'll explain. The tragedy of the commons is one kind of market failure. Unbiased, careful thinking about policies is a commons with a positive public good benefit. From market failure theory, we would expect public goods to be underproduced compared to the ideal. "unbiased careful thinking about policies" therefore should be expected to be underproduced. That's the market failure that is built into all democracies.
To put it more concretely: Wendy has 10 hobbies and a full time job. She knows there's a presidential election in 4 years. If she forgoes her hobbies and conducts some social science experiments at her own expense, and reads broadly in the scholarly literature, and deeply scrutinizes the potential candidates, then she will be well informed in several areas of public policy that are likely to be raised in the election.
If she is willing to risk her sense of self worth, willing to risk losing friendships, then she can try really hard to be unbiased. After all, maybe she was biased before, and had befriended people and married someone with compatible biases.
After all that, Wendy has become a voter with unbiased and careful thinking. Yay! But it cost her social activities, hobbies, time, and money. It may have cost her friendships. Now it's time to vote. She votes in an election which can't be predicted. Optimistically, she has about one chance in 152 million for her vote to be decisive. Otherwise, whoever would have lost would have lost no matter how she voted. There's never been a presidential election that was decided by one popular vote. This time turns out to be the same way.
Wendy's neighbor's note that Wendy dedicated a lot of time to being the best possible voter and got nothing for it. That's a market failure in voting. But even if her vote had been decisive, she would get a fraction of the benefit of voting properly. There's 340 million people in the US (sorry I assumed the USA for my example) and she would get only 1/340 millionth of the benefit of the good outcome. That's another market failure built into voting.
TLDR: Look at the large literature in public choice economics.
So is this an argument against paying attention to the Clark Center Economic Experts Panel?
https://kentclarkcenter.org/us-economic-experts-panel/
I feel like I've just learned what I knew all along, but didn't know I knew: the description of PhD students learning deeply such a narrow subject while changing their overall views not a whit. It describes most adults, too, but it takes them a lot longer than a PhD student because they aren't so focused on deluding themselves.