John Stuart Mill and the market economy

I have posted my own final note on the Liberty Fund website where I have had the great honour of writing the lead article and in which I have been joined by three great scholars: Richard Ebeling, Nicholas Capaldi and Sandra Peart. The entire discussion may be found here. One seldom has the opportunity of having one’s own work put before such an informed group and I cannot tell you how privileged I feel in having had such an intense discussion about issues that for the most part hardly anyone has any genuine understanding of. It has also given me an opportunity to focus wider attention on Mill, who is still to my mind the greatest economist who has ever lived.

And what may be the most astonishing thing I may have learned during this last month is that one of the greatest Mill scholars is now president of the Mont Pelerin Society. I read Pedro Schwartz’s New Economics of John Stuart Mill (1973) quite a while back and then Nicholas Capaldi’s intellectual biography of Mill (2005) when it came out. I felt I was dealing with kindred spirits with each yet never thought there was much else to it other than a similar regard. A a result of this symposium I appreciate that Nicholas and I have a similar understanding of the economics of Mill in much the same way for many of the same reasons. But I have also just found out, only yesterday in fact, that Pedro Schwartz is the recently elected President of the Mont Pelerin Society. I cannot tell you how astonished I am.

My assumption had always been that those with free market beliefs would shun Mill because of his promotion of economic experiment and his willingness to see “socialism” of some kind or other in a positive light. I would say to others that Mill has provided the best defence of the free market and the deepest understanding amongst anyone I have ever read. No one is exactly right about everything, or even if they were, since no two people see everything the same way, there will be differences that must come up. I only now feel an ability to insist even more than before, because of the example they have set, that if you would like to understand the nature of the market system, it is to John Stuart Mill you must go. Go through the posts on the Liberty Fund first to get you familiar with what you will find. But it is with Mill that you will find the best appreciation of the way an economy works and how it can be made to grow, than from any other of the great economists of the past. And for my own pale understanding of what he wrote, the second edition of my Free Market Economics is the closest attempt there is to bring the economics of Mill into the twenty-first century.

What forces has Obama let loose?

Found at Instapundit: Ruth Wisse in the Wall Street Journal on “Obama’s Racial Blind Spot”. She’s only, of course, being polite in calling it a blind spot.

Barack Obama’s election to the presidency represented to many Americans this country’s final triumph over racism. Reversing the record of slavery and institutionalized discrimination, his victory was hailed as a redemptive moment for America and potentially for humankind. How grotesque that the president should now douse that hope by fueling racism on a global scale.

Iranian regime is currently the world’s leading exponent of anti-Jewish racism. . . . Whereas Adolf Hitler and Reinhard Heydrich had to plot the “Final Solution” in secrecy, using euphemisms for their intended annihilation of the Jews of Europe, Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweets that Israel “has no cure but to be annihilated.” Iran’s leaders, relishing how small Israel is, call it a “one bomb state,” and until the time arrives to deliver that bomb, they sponsor anti-Israel terrorism through Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other militias. . . .

Perhaps Mr. Obama is oblivious to what the scholar Robert Wistrich (who died in May) called “the longest hatred” because it has been so much a part of his world as he moved through life. Muslim Indonesia, where he lived from age 6 to 10, trails only Pakistan and Iran in its hostility to Jews. An animus against Jews and Israel was a hallmark of the Rev.Jeremiah Wright’s church in Chicago that Mr. Obama attended for two decades. And before he ran for office, Mr. Obama carried the standard of the international left that invented the stigma of Zionism-as-imperialism. As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama felt obliged to repudiate his pastor (who had famously cursed America from the pulpit), and muted his far-left credentials. Mr. Obama was voted into office by an electorate enamored of the idea that he would oppose all forms of racism. He has not met that expectation.

Some Jewish critics of Mr. Obama may be tempted to put his derelictions in a line of neglect by other presidents, but there is a difference. Thus one may argue that President Roosevelt should have bombed the approach routes to Auschwitz or allowed the Jewish-refugee ship St. Louis to dock in the U.S. during World War II, but those were at worst sins of omission. In sharpest contrast, President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran is an act of commission. This is the first time the U.S. will have deliberately entered into a pact with a country committed to annihilating another people—a pact that doesn’t even require formal repudiation of the country’s genocidal aims.

To which Elizabeth Price Foley has added:

Exactly. Why most American Jews are standing silently by, like sheeple, in the face of these facts is a utter mystery to me. Why did American Jews not demand, at a minimum, Iran’s repudiation of its genocidal aims against Israel? Admittedly, such a repudiation would not have changed the hearts and minds of the Iranians, but it would have at least forced the Administration to publicly recognize and discuss Iran’s genocidal intentions.

As it stands, however, the genocidal aims of Iran toward Israel have been swept under the rug, not even worthy of discussion, which is exactly what the Obama Administration wanted. The Administration’s failure to even discuss the inhumanity of Iran’s racist/ethnic hatred is both shameful and telling, particularly given that Obama is our first black president whose entire presidency has focused incessantly on issues of race and ethnicity. The Obama Administration’s indifference to Iran’s hatred of Jews will further fan the flames such hatred across the globe.

The only explanation I can fathom for American Jews’ acquiescence to the Iran deal is that most are liberals/progressives first, Jews second. How tragic that this attitude has emerged only one generation removed from the Holocaust.

And if you are looking for a bit more along these same lines, there is Sultan Knish discussing The Useless Jewish Organization. This is from somewhere near the end, but you should read it from the beginning.

If Obama’s nuclear deal is to be defeated, it won’t be done by the establishment insiders. The establishment is invested in its own credibility and its politics. It will make a show of fighting the Iran deal before fundraising off its miserable failure. And the money will go to fund its progressive causes.

The establishment will not stand up to Obama, just like it didn’t stand up to FDR. The real action will come from ad-hoc coalitions, like the one behind the Stop Iran Rally, that throw things together. And it will come from a handful of kids somewhat that do what the adults aren’t doing.

It’s not an answer for me that Israel could damage Iran if it started up. The aim of policy ought to have been never to give Iran even the opportunity, but perhaps that was too hard. It is certainly too hard now that they have stopped trying, for no discernible reason. We are all living on the edge of a volcano. When it will erupt, it seems to me, is now only a matter of time, not whether. On the other hand, in spite of its rhetoric, why should the Iranians risk having their country turned into a nuclear wasteland. Tragically, that kind of calculation is all that stands between Israel and a nuclear war.

If you would will the end you must will the means

Here’s a story that will run endlessly on the ABC-Age-SMH, not. From Andrew Bolt, under the heading, Will Wong and Shorter repay us? More to the point, will anyone care?

Senior Labor figures, including Bill Shorten, Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan, Penny Wong and Nicola Roxon, have claimed $13,600 in taxpayer-funded travel to address party fundraisers in Bathurst.

The single largest claimant was Mr Swan, who as treasurer chartered a $7981 return flight from his Brisbane electorate to the country town, 200km west of Sydney, in September 2009.

We have a Prime Minister we do not deserve. Honest, considered, sensible, and filled with a wish to make Australia a better place. He wants to stop the boats, which he has done, and is trying to get some rationality into dealing with global warmists. He has enemies, however, and even some of his friends are fair-weather at best. His enemies, on the other hand, never stop and they are not found only on the other side of the House. From a couple of days ago:

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull added pressure by live-tweeting his morning journey by public transport from Melbourne to Geelong — the same journey for which Mrs ­Bishop notoriously claimed a $5227 helicopter bill in ­November. “One tram, one train, one car,” Mr Turnbull said.

That is so much of what this is about, the leadership of the Liberal Party. Go on, take Abbott down. Use Bronwyn Bishop as a lever. But if you do, all the junk you go on about global warming and stopping the boats will be just so much cant. In fact, speaking of Kant, let me remind you of his most useful maxim: if you would will the end, you must will the means. If you think the Green-Left faction of the Liberal Party will give you the ends you say you want, you may find out soon enough just how untrue that is.