Prime Time for Paul Ryan’s Guru (the One That’s Not Ayn Rand)

New York Times ^ | 08/24/2012 | Adam Davidson

[SeekAndFind]

As Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney take the stage in Tampa next week, the ghost of an Austrian economist will be hovering above them with an uneasy smile on his face. Ryan has repeatedly suggested that many of his economic ideas were inspired by the work of Friedrich von Hayek, an awkwardly shy (and largely ignored) economist and philosopher who died in 1992. A few years ago, it was probably possible to fit every living Hayekian in a conference room. Regardless of what happens in November, that will no longer be the case.

Hayek’s ideas aren’t completely new to American politics. Some mainstream Republicans, including Ronald Reagan, have name-checked him since at least the 1980s as a shorthand way of signaling their unfettered faith in the free market and objection to big government. But few actually engaged with Hayek’s many contentious (and outré) views, particularly his suspicion of all politicians, including Republicans, who claim to know something about how to make an economy function better. For these reasons, and others, Hayek has become fashionable of late among antigovernment protesters, and if Ryan brings even a watered-down version of his ideas into the Republican mainstream, the country’s biggest battles about the economy won’t be between right and left, but within the Republican Party itself — between Tea Party radicals who may feel legitimized and the establishment politicians they believe stand in their way.

For the past century, nearly every economic theory in the world has emerged from a broad tradition known as neoclassical economics. Neoclassicists can be left-wing or right-wing, but they share a set of crucial core beliefs, namely that it is useful to look for government policies that can improve the economy. Hayek and the rest of his ilk — known as the Austrian School — reject this.

[ConservativeDude]

To say that Hayek had “no problem” with a national health care program is rather misleading.

Yes, Hayek believed in a minimal safety net. But he also believed that anytime the government starts providing these “services” for “free” they will get much worse, unless there are outside competitive forces which will keep it somewhat honest. And he certainly would not have wanted to keep expanding and expanding any program until it uses up all of our wealth and still gives worse and worse service...which is where the US is headed.

Hayek would have advocated, I think it is fair to say, for example in the UK, sort of allowing the NHS to continue to exist, but don’t expand it, and make competitive forces work for the rest of the population that want to avoid the death trap of the NHS religion.

[kenavi]

Nice post.

I was in favor of a gov't health insurer, as long as they got only a one-shot of equity, and were required to pay dividends back to the gov't.

I saw it as the best way to cure, once and for all, leftist scapegoating of private health insurers, about half of whom (in market share terms) are not-for-profits anyway.

[ConservativeDude]

Thank you and the fact that many health care providers/hospitals are also run along non-profit lines is a good reminder, as well.

[Navy Patriot]

Good point. There are some morally acceptable pursuits of government, however, government competition in the free market must be under the closest supervision and control, as the temptation to use the power of state to handicap and boss the “competition” is overwhelming.

[Erasmus]

But few actually engaged with Hayek’s many contentious (and outré) views [...]

The jejeune absurdity is as delicious as it is palpable.

Most of the rest is almost equally risible.

[Ohioan]

Calling Hayek a "guru" is the New York propagandist's way to subtly smear both Ryan & Hayek. It is also noteworthy tht the Times, as usual, completely ignores the reason that Hayek--despite the Times' claim, has long been well known in American Conservative circles--long before Reagan: His book The Road To Serfdom, which delineates how contemporary Western managed economies are taking the West back to Serfdom.

Since the Times has been carrying philosophic water for those leading America along that path for the past three generations, at least, the omission is not surprising.

Hayek, as I remember, started out as a contemporary "liberal" in his youth, but understood the consequences of policies that led to the Socialist tyrannies in the 1930s & 1940s.

It is because of such intellectually dishonest media players as the New York Times that we have been losing more & more of our Liberty, while our economy continues to deteriorate.

William Flax [Truth Based Logic]

[Ohioan]

You correctly focus on the absurdity of Keynesians, like the New York Times staff, treating Hayek as a sort of passing fad among those who are anti-Government, rather than actually address the underlying issues.

When Henry Hazlitt, for example, "actually engaged" Keynes' contentions in the latter's General Theory. he demonstrated that Keynes wrote nothing that was both true & original; that much of what he wrote was not true & much that was not original and much that was neither true or original. The New York Times, of course, is notorious for its own shallow approach to the issues of the day--voluminous prose, but very, very sloppy focus & analysis.

For a better understanding of the sham economics that really is little more than a logically indefensible fad, see Keynesian Harvest. It persists for generations, only because it has so great an appeal to those building the sort of Governmental systems that Hayek warned against.

William Flax

[Ohioan]

Bump as an illustration of the silly pretense for analysis that is typical of New York Times journalism.