Peter Boettke wrote: > >You sound like someone who likes Japanese food complaining that there > >are too many Chinese restaurants in your area. Maybe you are really > >just unhappy with the preferences of the consumers around you. > >This is exactly the response that George Stigler had to Milton Friedman ... >about the "market" for regulation and government intervention ... >... I side with Milton Friedman (and others) who believe that one of the most >important roles of the economists is to point out paths for improvement in >arrangements. Given that you write on the topic of improving the >arrangements in activities, I am surprised to see you making an argument in >favor of the presumption of efficiency. For example, why don't we see many >of the sort of improvements you suggest on a wide-scale if they are indeed >improvements in the arrangement of affairs?
We might say that the U.S. transportation market in 1900 was efficient, even though few people traveled by car or airplane. By doing so we would be trying to distinguish the efficiency of the market given available validated technologies from the efficiency of the market in validating technologies. In a certain sense cars and airplanes had been possible since 1850, and perhaps were even advocated then, but the market hadn't validated them yet. I do envision what I think are great improvements in the technologies of academia and government, and I even sometimes complain that these technologies have long been possible. But interpreted as complaints about efficiency, those are at most complaint about the validation of technologies. Given widely known and validated ways to generate prestige, i.e., identifiable smarts, academia is now efficient at producing prestige via such mechanisms. If my efforts are successful, we may soon have more widely known and validated mechanisms (based on betting markets) for producing prestige, mechanisms that as a side effect will better produce truth. I also have hopes that similar mechanisms can displace existing forms of government. But I don't want the role of the lone inventor who complains about the inefficiency of a world on the basis of the evidence that the world hasn't yet beaten a path to his door. >So I don't think my argument simply turns on a preference issue -- I prefer >verbal economics and historical argument and others prefer models and >measurement. Instead, I would argue that there is a great demand for clear >headed economics and illuminating economic history by other scholars, and an >interested lay and policy community, but that the institutions of our >profession tend to mute this demand and exault the demand for another type >of economics ... If there is agreement on the mechanisms for producing clear headed economics, I conclude that probably the demand for it is less than you think or the cost of producing it is more than you think. If, on the other hand, you base your claim on some as yet un-validated mechanism for producing clear headed economics, then I will remain agnostic until I can examine your proposed innovation. Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
