TheAgitator.com
What’s the Matter With Thomas Frank?
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008Thomas Frank takes aim at “Beltway libertarians” in today’s Wall Street Journal. His starting point is a recent America’s Future Foundation panel discussion on whether free marketeers do better to advance free markets in the private sector or while working for free market non-profits. The whole thing is worthy of a parsing I don’t have time for. But lemme’ just take aim at this part:
Personally, I would take this hard line one step further: Selling out is not a threat to the market order; selling out is how the market gets its way. Just look at the city in which all these remarks were made. Private-sector Washington is one of the wealthiest places in America. Public-service Washington lags considerably behind. The chance of ditching the one for the other is what accounts for everything from the power of K Street to the infamous “revolving door,” by which a public servant takes a cushy corporate job after engineering some extravagant government favor for the corporation in question – or its clients.
The libertarian nonprofits that line the city’s streets often serve merely to rationalize this operation after the fact, giving a pious shine to the policies that are made in this unholy manner.
I’ll go ahead and lay down a challenge for Frank: Show me where a Beltway libertarian organization (that would be Cato or reason, for the most part) has argued in favor the “revolving door” between Capitol Hill and K Street, has championed the influence of corporate lobbyists, or has in any way implied or argued that the huge transfer of wealth between public coffers and private interests that goes on every day in Washington, D.C. is in any way part of the “free market.”
I happen to find it pretty disgusting that “private Washington”–which produces very little–is one of the richest cities in the country, or that the counties that form the D.C. suburbs–larded with Beltway Bandits living in McMansions funded by federal contracts–are among the most affluent in America. And I’ve written as much. As has Cato. As has reason.
I find it pretty disgusting that just about every congressional staffer who helped push through the obscene prescription drug benefit bill now has a job with the pharmaceutical lobby.
It isn’t difficult to mock libertarians for arguments they aren’t actually making.
Straw man!
So I’d guess that this would be an indicator of the kind of changes the Wall Street Journal’s undergone since Rupert Murdoch took over…subtly shifting from attacking big government to supporting corporatism. That’s a damn shame, since I really loved reading the Journal.
…by which a public servant takes a cushy corporate job after engineering some extravagant government favor for the corporation in question – or its clients.
He calls it “free market”, I call it “corruption”. Oh well, you what they say, “You say, ‘tom-ay-toe’ I say. ‘You’re full of shit’.”
It’s simplistic beyond belief to claim that an employee of Defense Company X International is in the private sector and leave it at that. DCXI wouldn’t exist without the deep well of federal money. Ditto for any of a huge number of corporations and firms in the area. And good luck trying to measure the productivity of DC’s private sector
Truly, unless you live here it’s difficult to comprehend how vast the whole enterprise is. Spend a night in a Georgetown bar and you’ll be unlikely find a single professional who isn’t employed by a Congressional staff, lobbying firm, law firm with ties to federal agencies, or a government contractor.
I guess I don’t read that article the same way. Frank doesn’t say you argue for or champion anything; I read the “pious shine” comment to mean a “well, what did you expect?” tone that places blame squarely where it belongs - government power and money - rather than blasting away at lobbyists performing jobs that the “current” (as opposed to “free”) market incentivises heavily.
30 seconds of Googling “lobbyist site:reason.com” yields plenty of results that fit that description, including this from Kerry Howley dated April 4, 2006:
“Lobbyists do have too much power in Washington relative to regular citizens, and Congressmen are constantly consulting lobbyists for specialized information on a dizzying array of detailed issues they have no knowledge of and no business deciding. Lobbyists are substitutes for knowledgeable staffers in a federal government sprawled so greatly, micromanaging so intently, that K Street’s 14,000 foot soldiers are a necessary backstop.
If lobbyists have a hand in everything Washington does, that’s at least partly because Washington wants a hand in what everyone else does. Real “lobbying reform” wouldn’t outlaw free lunches. It would just make them worthless. ”
http://www.reason.com/news/show/117382.html
#5
But that’s sorta’ the whole point. Frank blames libertarians for making the world safe for lobbyists — whether actively or passively. But that’s not what we’re saying. What we’re saying is that if government were less influential, there’d be less influence for sale.
Lobbying in itself isn’t inherently good or evil. It can be used for both purposes. And let’s fact it, if you’re a corporation of any size and you don’t have a presence in Washington, you’re doing your shareholders a disservice–because all of your competitors do.
That said, I certainly don’t believe that lobbyists are an integral part of the free market. In a free market, lobbyists wouldn’t be necessary.
This does not reflect on the validity of your argument, but I don’t think it’s accurate to call Reason a Beltway organization. I mean, you know that. I guess it does have a Beltway *presence* now, but this would be akin to calling every newspaper with a D.C. bureau a Beltway news organization.
Starting with the whole RP newsletter thing ( at least that’s when I noticed it) all this “Beltway libertarian” nonsense seemed to pop-up. I don’t know if people are delusional or just really stupid.
If you believed everything that “beltway libertarian” critics wrote, you would know that Radley is a big-government Republican, pro-war, pro-police state “neocon” who spends all his free time doing lines of coke off male strippers.
And we know that is the case, right?
Oooops.
[...] vexes Frank so deeply, it’s be the very organization he’s using to symbolize it. As Radley Balko has just blogged, “It isn’t difficult to mock libertarians for arguments they aren’t [...]
i was on the fence about being insulted or amused. either frank ( supposedly brought up as a libertarian republican) is woefully ignorant of libertarians or has a severe case of washingtonitis. while not a libertarian myself, i know several and have never met a single one who object to subsidies, and indeed well over half of them subsidize other people themselves. the objection is not to subsidy but to government subsidy ( or coerced subsidy but many would argue that all government subsidies are coerced), a person should be free to accept or give any subsidy they want with their own resources and i know of no libertarian who would find this offensive. individualism does not mean being isolated from society but means that one must be allowed to be autonomous in control of one’s life.
[...] his book, and I’ll concede I haven’t read the rest of the book. I have read his prior criticism of Beltway libertarians, which is that we’re walking contradictions because we advocate for free markets while living [...]