Monday, February 27, 2017

A Lefty Economist Attempts to Support the Lefty Economic Arguments of the Pope

Following my post, The Pope's Problem with Basic Economics, Tony Annett, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Advisor, Earth Institute, Columbia University, responded with a series of tweets.

Among them were these.

But my post was about economics, it wasn't about libertarianism. I never used the word libertarian in my post. Libertarianism is not economics at all, it is a political philosophy.

I quoted F.A. Hayek and Murray Rothbard in my post. Hayek was a key driver in the formation of Mont Pelerin Society. But the Society was founded in 1947, Rothbard was only 21 at the time and had nothing to do with the founding. In fact, at the time, he probably was unfamiliar with the name Hayek---and probably couldn't have found Mont Pelerin on a map.

There was also this:
I followed up the above Annett tweet with this:
He responded using an appeal to authority argument (himself being the authority).
But aside from being a sloppy way to argue, when you use it against Hayek you lose.

Hayek lectured at the London School of Economics, debated Keynes face-to-face, predicted the 1929 stock market and downturn, has a book that is ranked #1 in international economics more than 70 years after publication:


He also taught at the University of Chicago, has numerous biographies written about him,  was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II, received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.  In 2011, his article "The Use of Knowledge in Society" was selected as one of the top 20 articles published in The American Economic Review during its first 100 years. And he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics.

Claiming authority, by stating "an Econ PhD with almost 2 decades experience," against Hayek is about the same as claiming Twiggy would win a hypermammiferous contest against Pamela Anderson.

 -RW

3 comments:

  1. I just reviewed Tony Annett's Twitter timeline. I saw few tweets about economics and mostly tweets about Trump's authoritarianism (cuz Obama was a classic liberal?) or calling libertarian ideology evil (ironically while quoting tweets from Paul Ryan and Mike Pence) or retweeting economic bantamweight Matty Yglesias and the pedo-protecting Pope.

    Annett is just a radical leftist who learned some neat tricks in MS Excel in grad school and now fancies himself as a serious economist. Now he pulls the classic leftist move - project your inner thoughts onto your opponents.

    The crown jewel of his tweets Feb 21. "If Fox News and Breitbart had existed in the 1930s, would the US have gone fascist?" Bwahahaha. What was the New Deal if not fascism you utter ideological shill? The NIRA, the AAA, the CCC, the WPA? Has he never read about Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States? Does he not know that FDR's economic program was incredibly similar to Hitler and Mussolini's?

    Advocating price and wage fixing, Annett is himself a fascist! More projection by the unhinged left. Sad!

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  2. ─ Libertarianism is not "basic economics" and it cannot be Catholic. Anthropology is false. ─

    Perhaps Annett thinks the last sentence (or assertion) is self-evident and thus does not see the need to explain the Non Sequitur. Apart from that, the idea that libertarianism is somehow anathema to Catholicism reeks of a gratuitous assertion without base or merit. Is Annett instead arguing against selfishness, or individualism? I can understand selfishness but that would be a moral argument and not an economic one, while individualism is not per se anti-Catholic if one understands it as the political philosophy that holds the individual as sovereign, not that the individual is God. Clearly he's not much of a theologian, either.

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  3. Yes, libertarianism is not Catholicism. Marxism isn't catholicism either. In fact, Jesus wasn't a political or economic leader and was angered by those who cloud religion with these things. He never stole from the rich to give to the poor nor told anyone else to do that... That was Robin Hood.

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