According to the UK's Financial Times, international financial speculator
George Soros is going to spend $50 million of his money in an effort to
start a new think-tank whose purpose will be to counter the "unwavering
belief in unchecked free markets …[that] remains pervasive in
universities" ("Soros to invest $50m in economic think-tank," October 27).
As Soros put it himself thus: “The ideologists in the free markets are
still in command and I think they’ll be very difficult to remove because
they have tenure." Actually probably because even those who don't have
tenure consider the free market system sound while other options deeply
flawed--but never mind.
There is so much wrong with Soros's claim and plan that it would take a
book to refute all of it but, as Professor Don Boudreaux, one of the few
genuine free market economists, and one who heads the economics department
of George Mason University, put it, "Mr Soros should check his facts
before wasting his money. As my colleague Bryan Caplan reports in his
critically acclaimed book 'The Myth of the Rational Voter' (2007), surveys
show that, while economists are to the right of their university
colleagues in other disciplines, '[c]ompared to the general public, the
typical economist is left of center.' "
As Caplan notes, university economists do tend to work from the free
market frame of economic reference, but this is actually only in their
purest theoretical studies. When they teach about the ways of the economy
they normally factor in all the non-free market variables that are present
in actual economies around the world, such as extensive government
regulation and other intervention, protectionism, laws intruding on the
employment relationship, etc., etc. Arguably, too, it is difficult to
conceive of teaching and studying economics without the use of the free
market economic model since trade itself, business and economic activity,
rests on the idea that people voluntarily exchange services and products.
There is no such thing as socialist economics since under socialism trade
isn't voluntary. There is only socialist planning of production and
consumption, all of which happens as a result of the government's orders.
What else can economists do but turn "right" when they study and teach
about bona fide economics? Imagine teaching and studying biology where
life has been nearly fully extinguished!
What Soros wants to have done at universities is unclear but probably he
is intent on having teachers and students focus on how production and
consumption should be given firm direction by public officials. Because
once one abandons the free market model, that is the alternative left,
planning by edicts instead of the demand and supply of free market agents.
Indeed, Soros appears simply to want to abolish the teaching and study of
economics proper. Without such a drastic measure, economics will always be
mostly about the conduct of free market agents who, of course, may be more
or less constrained by regulations, and such. And that means that all
economics will lean toward free market studies.
Soros tried to torpedo what's left of capitalism in the past, including by
starting up a bunch of Open Universities in the former Soviet bloc where
he appears to have been worried the public would embrace the free market,
having had its fill with socialist planning. The designation of his
institutions as "Open" came from Soros's vague affinity with the late Karl
Popper's politics, advanced in that thinkers famous book The Open Society
and its Enemies (1953). But while Popper had meant by "open" pretty much
what "free" means in the context of political economy, Soros appears to
have meant by "open" simply a society that's not closed to any experiment,
however oppressive it might be. His schools, too, would be open to the
teaching of any form of economics, preferably, I would guess, those he
could proceed to manipulated for his own ends.
Whatever it is that Soros is aiming for, one thing is clear: he despises
freedom in the market place. And so long as there is any trace of
respectful discussion of free markets in universities, Soros is going to
spare no money in thwarting it.
I must admit that it gives me some pleasure to see Soros behave this way
which disproves all those who claim that people who escape from
oppressive, tyrannical regimes automatically prefer the free society. Not
so by a long shot, as Soros demonstrates all too clearly.
[Possibly my last column for Freedom Communications papers, unless I hear
otherwise soon.]
The Promise of Liberty: A Non-Utopian Vision, by Tibor Machan
