Message from discussion To David Friedman: Antitrust

From: David Friedman <D...@best.com>
Subject: Re: To David Friedman: Antitrust
Date: 1998/05/13
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In article <199805130741.AAA20...@cybere.creative.net>, "Vincent Cook"
<Use-Author-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:

>Gordon Sollars wrote:
>
>>I enjoy reading Rothbard in high dudgeon as much as the next libertarian, but
>>I would suggest that it is a mistake to confuse this aspect of his writing
>>with good scholarship.
>
>This is more polite than Friedman characterizing Rothbard's work as a
>hatchet job, but it suffers from the same problem - unsupported attacks
>against Rothbard do not add up to a refutation of his analysis.

How about supported attacks? You gave us a series of conclusions you drew
from Rothbard's book. I have now provided you with quotes from Smith,
Cantillon and Turgot which demonstrate pretty clearly:

1. Cantillon was a statist and was not a supporter of laissez-faire

2. Smith was not unambiguously in favor of any government involvement in
education at all--he thought there were arguments for and against it.
Turgot, on the other hand, was enthusiastically in favor of centralized
government control over the whole French educational system. 

I have also pointed out that Rothbard makes a series of assertions about
Smith's views, without providing support for them, that some of them are
false and others misleading. Would you regard an attack on a modern writer
who favored the legalization of marijuana as a hatchet job, if the author
stated that the writer advocated taxing marijuana--and said nothing at all
about the fact that marijuana was currently illegal and the writer was
arguing for shifting it to the status of tobacco? How about if there was
no way the reader could be expected know that marijuana was illegal? That
is precisely what Rothbard did on the question of wool exports--if you
don't believe me, go read Smith.

A book praising Turgot and damning Smith, which asserts that Smith was in
favor of public education when he wasn't and fails to mention Turgot's
views on the matter, is either incompetent or a hatchet job. 

What sort of support are you asking for? Do you expect me to waste my time
writing a book to answer Rothbard's? How am I supposed to prove that Smith
did not advocate a government monopoly of the mint if he never discussed
the matter? It isn't as if Rothbard provided any evidence for the positive
claim. Somehow, you seem a whole lot less sceptical when reading Rothbard
on Smith than when reading Friedman on Rothbard.

>Well, I'm not that fussy about academic titles and positions, so I 
>sometimes treat people as experts in a field even when they don't 
>have a state-approved degree declaring them as such.

So far as I know, nobody here has a state approved degree declaring him an
expert in economics. My claim to being considered an economist is that
journals print my articles and universities pay me to teach their
students.
-- 
David Friedman
D...@Best.com
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
"No man is secure in his life, liberty or property 
while the legislature is in session"