Slay that Straw Man!
30 September 2007
The Editor, New York Times Book Review
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036
To the Editor:
Reviewing Naomi Klein's anti-market book Shock Doctrine, Joseph Stiglitz excuses her oversimplifications by saying that Milton Friedman and others who advocated free markets "were also guilty of oversimplification, basing their belief in the perfection of market economies on models that assumed perfect information, perfect competition, perfect risk markets" ("Bleakonomics," September 30). This accusation is nonsense.
The most celebrated contribution of F.A. Hayek, a free-market proponent nearly as influential as Friedman, was to show that markets are important precisely because the information that each of us has is always incomplete and often wrong. And Friedman himself built his case for markets not on their imaginary perfection - a fantasy that he never alleged to exist in reality - but on their relative superiority to production and exchange directed by government.
For a Nobel laureate economist such as Mr. Stiglitz to join in the slaying of straw men is unbecoming.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
The Editor, New York Times Book Review
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036
To the Editor:
Reviewing Naomi Klein's anti-market book Shock Doctrine, Joseph Stiglitz excuses her oversimplifications by saying that Milton Friedman and others who advocated free markets "were also guilty of oversimplification, basing their belief in the perfection of market economies on models that assumed perfect information, perfect competition, perfect risk markets" ("Bleakonomics," September 30). This accusation is nonsense.
The most celebrated contribution of F.A. Hayek, a free-market proponent nearly as influential as Friedman, was to show that markets are important precisely because the information that each of us has is always incomplete and often wrong. And Friedman himself built his case for markets not on their imaginary perfection - a fantasy that he never alleged to exist in reality - but on their relative superiority to production and exchange directed by government.
For a Nobel laureate economist such as Mr. Stiglitz to join in the slaying of straw men is unbecoming.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Friday March 28, 2008 at 10:22pm