Brad DeLong, self-professed Keynesian and social democrat, writes an excellent review of Jame’s Scott’s Seeing Like a State. He points out that Scott doesn’t seem to understand the intellectual roots of his own ideas: those roots are Mises and Hayek.
This is a very good review and very much worth reading.
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Maybe I should know better, but it amazes me that such a fair, well-written review should have been followed by uniformly absurd comments. I especially get tired of “why should freedom end when you get a job” nonsense – the charge is that the firm is a form of dictatorship. As if you chose your dictator, received a mutually agreed upon wage from him, and so on. Particularly funny is the comment about being “forced” to eat bad tomatoes by capitalists who wouldn’t make anything else – as if not making something for you is the same as forcing you to do something else.
It’s interesting to note that James Scott doesn’t seem very aware of the influence of the government on the agricultural sector in the US, as evidenced by the “Rubber Tomatoes” section of the review.
Re Joshua Katz,
yes, they’re quite silly. Apparently, the railroad and insurance industries are the prime examples of why centralized planning can be applicable, and Houston is an unplanned city ruled almost entirely by the market (though you wouldn’t know it by their road and public transportation systems. And I’m guessing they have a public school system, too. And there’s the fact that the government represents 14% of the economy.)!
People usually whine about the market when it will not produce things they demand… e.g. railroads. And then, when the government does get the funds to perform certain projects and awards monopolies to certain ‘private’ individuals, those same individuals have the gall to whine about monopolies… cognitive dissonance?
I found a lot of DeLong’s review surprisingly good, but one cannot quite escape the schizophrenic nature of it all. He can acknowledge the failure of central planning in so many areas, but then refuse to acknowledge it in the realm of monetary central planning, or in his own advocations for government action in things like healthcare or the redistribution of wealth.
I view DeLong as being at war with himself in his review, and whoever is moderating his comments section is the cause of the uniformly ridiculous comments that you find there (DeLong himself, or one of his students).
Indeed, I tried commenting there and it was erased.
I don’t know how people have time for this level of micro-management of blogs. Maybe it’s a central-planning mentality at work!
Internet warriors, mayhap?
Brad de Long published this review essay awhile ago in:
http://www.gmu.edu/rae/archives/VOL12_2_1999/delong.pdf
It is a good review that raises a lot of interesting points.
thanks
Those of you who want to engage with others on the DeLong review might try at Crooked Timber, which has a criticism of DeLong and some interesting comments.
http://crookedtimber.org/2007/10/31/delong-scott-and-hayek/
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