Serfdom and Freedom, part 5
Jun. 17th, 2024 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellNow to crack open The Road to Freedom. Summary of intros and part 1: many familiar modern left-wing talking points, with an unfortunate level of distraction from authorial and copyediting quirks.
Preface: Musings on the various historical meanings of "freedom". Much as Hayek was annoyed that people not sharing his liberal (in the European sense) politics used "freedom" to mean something other than he did, Stiglitz complains that the US right wing uses the word "freedom" in too limited a sense.
Chapter 1: Ha ha, this is actually titled "Introduction". Like the introduction to a textbook, lays out the topics to come chapter by chapter. Also many many mentions of Hayek and Milton Freedman, switching the order of their names back and forth each time.
Chapter 2: Wait, the names were in the same order twice, what happened! Stiglitz gets around to specifying his preferred definition of "freedom", which is what economists call a large opprtunity set-- having many different courses of action available instead of being forced by circumstance into one. The Road to Serfdom specifically noted and rejected this sense.
Chapter 2 also touches on the idea that markets are self-regulating if everyone has enough information-- Adam Smith's "invisible hand". In fact, Stiglitz says, a lot of this only works if everyone has perfect information, and much economic work has gone into showing that even small differences from an ideal world rapidly lead to very non-Smithian results if the market is unregulated.
Chapter 3: All about externalities. Stiglitz quotes a passage from The Road to Serfdom endorsing environmental regulations. But, he says then, the neoliberals treat externalities as rare special cases, when in fact they are everywhere, forcing tradeoffs about everything.
Chapter 4: Stiglitz chooses to use the word "coercion" a lot in the right-wing sense, meaning basically any kind of law, while arguing that it's a good thing.
Chapter 5: Social contracts, starting with how they are and aren't the same as legal contracts. Introduces John Rawls's concept of the "veil of ignorance", which is clearly going to be on the test.
Chapter 6: Looking at the various ways wealth can be morally illegitimate, to argue that redistribution of that wealth through taxes and social programs is thus legitimate. The standpoint that people generally deserve their wealth he calls "just desserts", which unfortunately has been copyedited throughout to "just deserts".
Chapter 7: Returning to the themes of unequal information and unequal opportunity, looks at how market power can be abused and the arguments for reining it in.
Preface: Musings on the various historical meanings of "freedom". Much as Hayek was annoyed that people not sharing his liberal (in the European sense) politics used "freedom" to mean something other than he did, Stiglitz complains that the US right wing uses the word "freedom" in too limited a sense.
Chapter 1: Ha ha, this is actually titled "Introduction". Like the introduction to a textbook, lays out the topics to come chapter by chapter. Also many many mentions of Hayek and Milton Freedman, switching the order of their names back and forth each time.
Chapter 2: Wait, the names were in the same order twice, what happened! Stiglitz gets around to specifying his preferred definition of "freedom", which is what economists call a large opprtunity set-- having many different courses of action available instead of being forced by circumstance into one. The Road to Serfdom specifically noted and rejected this sense.
Chapter 2 also touches on the idea that markets are self-regulating if everyone has enough information-- Adam Smith's "invisible hand". In fact, Stiglitz says, a lot of this only works if everyone has perfect information, and much economic work has gone into showing that even small differences from an ideal world rapidly lead to very non-Smithian results if the market is unregulated.
Chapter 3: All about externalities. Stiglitz quotes a passage from The Road to Serfdom endorsing environmental regulations. But, he says then, the neoliberals treat externalities as rare special cases, when in fact they are everywhere, forcing tradeoffs about everything.
Chapter 4: Stiglitz chooses to use the word "coercion" a lot in the right-wing sense, meaning basically any kind of law, while arguing that it's a good thing.
Chapter 5: Social contracts, starting with how they are and aren't the same as legal contracts. Introduces John Rawls's concept of the "veil of ignorance", which is clearly going to be on the test.
Chapter 6: Looking at the various ways wealth can be morally illegitimate, to argue that redistribution of that wealth through taxes and social programs is thus legitimate. The standpoint that people generally deserve their wealth he calls "just desserts", which unfortunately has been copyedited throughout to "just deserts".
Chapter 7: Returning to the themes of unequal information and unequal opportunity, looks at how market power can be abused and the arguments for reining it in.
