Austrian economist Bob Murphy is considering heading to Haiti to help out in the disaster relief there.
Some have argued that Bob should concentrate on economics, where he has a comparative advantage, and just pay for someone else to go to Haiti. This all points to the problem of calculating from the outside what another person values with his own subjective views.
I know that Bob sees this as, in a non-Lloyd Blankfein sense, doing God's work. Which for Bob, I'm sure, is reason enough for him to head to Haiti. But in addition to this, Bob is a trained Austrian economist, who will be observing how a society and an economy works during a serious disaster period. He'll gain all kinds of insights from this. Further, The Man appears to be attempting to use the disaster to insert serious influence over the country. Again, for a Private Property Society guy like Murphy, who is trained as an economist, it would be fascinating for him to observe how this operation of The Man is going, and exactly what techniques The Man is using.
So I say to Bob, thumbs up. Buy a bunch of mosquito repellent, grab your laptop, a pad and pen, a camera and get your butt over there.
Some have argued that Bob should concentrate on economics, where he has a comparative advantage, and just pay for someone else to go to Haiti. This all points to the problem of calculating from the outside what another person values with his own subjective views.
I know that Bob sees this as, in a non-Lloyd Blankfein sense, doing God's work. Which for Bob, I'm sure, is reason enough for him to head to Haiti. But in addition to this, Bob is a trained Austrian economist, who will be observing how a society and an economy works during a serious disaster period. He'll gain all kinds of insights from this. Further, The Man appears to be attempting to use the disaster to insert serious influence over the country. Again, for a Private Property Society guy like Murphy, who is trained as an economist, it would be fascinating for him to observe how this operation of The Man is going, and exactly what techniques The Man is using.
So I say to Bob, thumbs up. Buy a bunch of mosquito repellent, grab your laptop, a pad and pen, a camera and get your butt over there.
Thanks for the pep talk! But it concerns me that the photo is titled "coward"...
ReplyDeleteActually, I did a Google image search for "Our Man in Havana" and this pick was included in the results.
ReplyDeleteIt's of Noel Coward, a man who was a Coward in name only. According to Wikipedia:
At the outbreak of World War II, Coward volunteered for war work, running the British propaganda office in Paris. He also worked with the Secret Service, seeking to use his influence to persuade the American public and government to help Britain.
I'm counting on you to run the Paulian propoganda office in Haiti.
BM,
ReplyDeleteBring a gun, if you can. True anarchists don't call the cops.
Taylor, what do true pacifists do?
ReplyDeleteBM,
ReplyDeleteGet their asses kicked anytime someone brings the ruckus.
I do agree with Wenzel, however, that it will be awesome to have an actual anarchist on the ground over there giving the low-down. It'll likely result in blog posts that are similar in awesomeness to the Edward Gonzalez stuff, minus the ignorance of what a stateless society is and means and without the moral hypocrisy of invading someone else's country via force of arms all while telling oneself they are "serving" their victims with Grade-AA federal security.
My only fear is that the emotional toll of witnessing the devastation will be so intense that you'll come back a teary-eyed statist and pen columns for the MSM extolling the virtues of violent statist imperial intervention in small island nations' affairs for decades to come.
May the anarcho-Force be with you, BM, always.