There have been several interesting posts as of late, re how people refer to themselves. In particular George Selgin's recent explanation as to why he doesn't call himself a libertarian, is worth reading...and serves as yet another reminder that the term libertarian is shorthand which only goes so far, if indeed it is even "useful" in my circumstance! (At the very least it's closer to an appropriate label for me, than Austrian) Early on in the process of discovering blogs some years back, I quickly learned that the more hardcore libertarian blog sites were not really "safe" to visit, given my viewpoints! The term "bleeding heart libertarian" didn't seem to fit, either. But by the same token, I have to be careful how I word arguments in comments on some of the more progressive sites which I visit - if indeed I'm capable of leaving a reasonably sympathetic comment at all - well at least I try.
So, how to categorize myself? Deep down I mostly feel like a liberal - after all I started out that way and only felt "left behind" after I lost access to office work. That in turn prompted me to take a belated plunge into self employment, after which I chastised myself for not doing so much earlier in life when the opportunities for what I wanted to do would have been far more substantial. At any rate, the (resulting) bookstore saw its share of both conservative and liberal visitors, all of course welcome.
Certainly, I share the desire of any liberal (U.S. definition or otherwise) to have a world where knowledge use is a central aspect of wealth creation and organization. But just as I believe the conservative takes concrete forms of wealth too much for granted, I also have concerns that the progressive (Lars Christensen's preferred description and recent reference) takes knowledge wealth too much for granted in its present formation. I like Lars' reasoning as to using liberal by the older designation, and thus need to use the term "progressive" more often.
One area where I "part company" with liberal/progressives so to speak: their interpretation as to how a knowledge based job scenario might be maintained in society. One might find two arguments, the first that we just need government to "save" jobs and that robots should just be scaled back. Here my primary disagreement is that government can't save jobs just because it may "want" to do so. It's people at local levels who have to save respectable working arrangements for all concerned, because they in fact want to.
Also I have issues with progressive interpretations as to efficiency, and in particular Noah Smith recently mused that economic scenarios as currently structured are relatively efficient. While I wildly disagree with that assertion, my reasoning might not make immediate sense to either conservatives or progressives. Again, this is not easy to explain in a single blog post, and is something I probably need to focus on more often. Inefficiencies have a lot to do with structural ideas of how our lives could - or should be organized. Consequently they involve definition of experiential product as well as value in use structures for societal organization, which affect the bigger picture. In other words, what appears as "ultimate" efficiencies we are supposedly utilizing in the present are often mostly static interpretations of how people actually want to live.
Part of what also makes me different from a traditional progressive: I no longer believe redistributive taxation can get us to either the desired state of services which Democrats believe in, or a "survivable" standard for low income. As to the latter, I believe this issue needs to be addressed through active and ongoing redefinition of product on multiple levels. What might I call myself with such an odd belief?? Who knows. I'm not sure if a bleg would help...mmm, probably shouldn't go there! Just the same, when we try to arbitrarily define product by completely obstructing potential innovation, the relevance of experience, and those deemed not "worthy" of participation, we aren't just holding back our minds: we are also holding back our destinies.
Suffice to say, the fact that I don't easily fit into a label requires a fair amount of explanation that doesn't come across in a blog post or two! For me, it's also a reminder of the years of playing music professionally, when there was never really an apt way to describe one's personal preference for categories, or the music an audience might expect to hear at any given moment.
In spite of their talk of freedom, some of the hardcore libertarians believe in concepts which strike me as profoundly unfree, in that they see little role for any societal coordination for common purposes. Often I come across wealth defined in static terms which don't seem a good fit for the lives of the younger generations in particular. My last post is a fairly good example why I am somewhat hard to categorize, in that my arguments for redefinition of services are - as far as I can tell - mostly my own. In particular, I wish to demean no one when I say that things need to be done differently, and perhaps that's when the "impartial economist" part of my nature really comes out - when I see something as profoundly inefficient or just simply not sustainable in its present form.
Whatever labels might be attached, I continue to hope that people can be freed by - and for - the marketplace of ideas. There seems to be an entire value in use economic realm just under the surface that people want to be able to tap into, which is discouraged and sometimes even outlawed altogether. On the other hand, there is much in the squabbles over the "real" values in exchange political models that go right over my head, and Scott Sumner's recent post as to having hippies for friends is no exception!
By the same token I am of course sympathetic to the neoliberal label, even if I have not personally spent enough time to consider the neoliberal concept in the historical or social context which it deserves. In the U.S. one doesn't really suffer the consequences of leaning neoliberal in the manner they might elsewhere, for instance. Also, even though I advocate for change, much of what concerns me in this regard is not so much in a complaining or agitating sense, but simply out of concern that we could lose some aspects of life which are very important to us.
Aaaaand, in the course of seeking out labels in the grouping I use to apply to the bottom of posts, there was only one which seemed to apply: Market Monetarist...till the next time!
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