[Ombrageux]

Nunt - It's a fine argument. My principle is that power should be dispersed. What I object to is the idea that the ability to provide patronage or political contributions should be concentrated. In the economic sphere too, power should not be concentrated in a few individuals, but should be spread as evenly as possible across the entire population (e.g. high income equality and evenly spread purchasing power).

SR - Here is Friedman's "Republic of Millionaires" passage:

For advocacy of capitalism [in a socialist society] to mean anything, the proponents must be able to finance their cause - to hold public meetings, publish pamphlets, buy radio time, issue newspapers and magazines, and so on. How could they raise the funds? There might and probably would be men in the socialist society with large incomes, perhaps even large capital sums in the form of government bonds and the like, but these would of necessity be high public officials. It is possible to conceive of a minor socialist official retaining his job although openly advocating capitalism. It strains credulity to imagine the socialist top brass financing such "subversive" activities. The only recourse for funds would be to raise small amounts from a large number of minor officials. But this is no real answer. To tap these sources, many people would already have to be persuaded, and our whole problem is how to initiate and finance a campaign to do so. Radical movements in capitalist societies have never been financed this way. They have typically been supported by a few wealthy individuals who have become persuaded - by a Frederick Vanderbilt Field, or an Anita McCormick Blaine, or a Corliss Lamont, to mention a few names recently prominent, or by a Friedrich Engels, to go farther back. This is a role of inequality of wealth in preserving political freedom that is seldom noted - the role of the patron. In a capitalist society, it is only necessary to convince a few wealthy people to get funds to launch any idea, however strange, and there are many such persons, many independent foci of support. And, indeed, it is not even necessary to persuade people or financial institutions with available funds of the soundness of the ideas to be propagated. It is only necessary to persuade them that the propagation can be financially successful; that the newspaper or magazine or book or other venture will be profitable. The competitive publisher, for example, cannot afford to publish only writing with which he personally agrees; his touchstone must be the likelihood that the market will be large enough to yield a satisfactory return on his investment. In this way, the market breaks the vicious circle and makes it possible ultimately to finance such ventures by small amounts from many people without first persuading them. There are no such possibilities in the socialist society; there is only the allpowerful state.

Note that he doesn't just note the existence of millionaire political patronage but uses as an argument for economic inequality. It seems to me to be far preferable - in terms of democracy, of justice and preventing the concentration and abuse of power - that wealth be well-spread. This has practical implications: it means ordinary citizens have more money and leisure to dedicated to political causes, leisure which could also be used to educate themselves and be informed citizens. (This is essentially about the rise of the "middle class" which lots of perfectly mainstream commentators have seen as essential to mature liberal democracy.) The practical arguments Friedman raises against this kind of popular democracy (that it's hard to raise awareness) I think were dubious then and have no validity today in the age of the Internet.

It's also a pretty naïve view. He mixes two kinds of patronage: the "just convince me" kind of the benevolent patron (Soros?) and the selfish "I just want a return on investment" kind. It seems fair that most rich people, having been in the business of accumulating capital, will have an inclination towards getting even bigger returns on their "investments", including political ones. Some may be interested in financing an opposition or socialist pamphlet - if they think it will be profitable to sell. But many more will prefer the return of corrupting the political system (e.g.: financing a anti-tax-the-rich "freedom party"). For example, just before he argues:

Consequently, if economic power is joined to political power, concentration seems almost inevitable. On the other hand, if economic power is kept in separate hands from political power, it can serve as a check and a counter to political power.

But what movements can millionaire-patrons be expected to support, except precisely those which will lead to the breaking down of the barrier between their massive economic power and of notionally "democratic" (because there is the ballot box) political power? This it seems to me is the basic, fundamental cause of the total degeneration of American democracy that we've seen over the past decades.

Zenno - A) Though the term "liberal" has been applied to a lot of (often mutually exclusive) definitions, you don't think it is useful to have the concept of "liberal democrat"? I use it to distinguish people who believe in the basics of what we call Western democracy (constitutional rule, free speech, electoral politics..) from the authoritarians (Communists, Fascists, Reactionaries) and the anti-democrats (Anarcho-Capitalists).

C) I also do not subscribe to your neo-mercantilist conception the global economy. China's getting richer does not necessarily involve us getting poorer, to the country, there are typically positive synergies between ever-richer economies (we notably share in each others' technological advances).

Further, I am completely convinced that the East Asians, in particular, will be as decadent as the West. Ignorant, impressionable, poorly-read businesspeople ran around like headless chickens in the 1970s and 1980s telling us that Japan was going to take us over. How did that work out? Japan is nothing but, and this is no shame, a fortified retirement home with even less productivity and even more unsustainable debt than your typical Western country. All the great developed East Asian countries have even lower fertility rates than the European or American average (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong..)... even China, already! They will have the same problems as us in terms of consumerism, materialism, structural imbalances, financial bubbles, boom & bust, etc.

Of course the West will decline relatively. That is inevitable and has been happening constantly since 1914. We can lament it but that is in the order of things. It was utterly unnatural that the people of Europe, that fraction of humanity on the Western appendage of Eurasia, should dominate the entire world. It could not last. This does not necessarily mean that we will be dominated, even if the EU today only make about 7% of humanity, so long as the powers balance one another, especially if we make allies with the other rising powers (Brazil, Russia, India, the new Arab democracies..).

...which also conveniently brings us to America. I for one think a love-hate relationship with America is exactly the right one to have given the good and bad the country is capable of. A reasonable person can only look at American politics, especially of the Right, and find it repulsive. But my scorn, or "disappointment", is far more targeted at the Europeans, who in their moral cowardice, even after the end of the Cold War made us no longer so dependent, have been such willing accomplices. And this, despite the fact that the U.S. undermines Europe on every issue (climate, GMOs, financial regulation, international law..) and, even when it helps, often it only serves to divide Europe (military intervention on Iraq, Libya).

Europe serves the United States' dark fantasies out of choice, not material dependence, and I am quite sure that in the future China will never have the material power to make Europe a dependency, and while European leaders will often cede to the temptation of flattering the strong, I'm also quite sure they will have, unlike their relationship with the U.S., no natural inclination to collaborate with China.

[Soixante-Retard]

In terms of [Milton Friedman's] model of democracy I quite clearly remember that it basically boiled down to a Republic of Millionaires. (He argues in particular for the desirability of having lots of exceptionally rich men around, as they can then support this or that political with their money, as they see fit...)

Okay. I will now attempt to persuade you, indirectly, that your assertions of Friedman, viz. a) Friedman advocated a "Republic of Millionaires", i.e. a Plutocracy and b). It is desirable "to have lots of exceptionally rich men around", are false.

Note that he doesn't just note the existence of millionaire political patronage but uses as an argument for economic inequality.

Except that he doesn't. In fact, you skimmed over a few very important sentences in your quotation of Friedman that undermines your argument, viz.:

In a capitalist society, it is only necessary to convince a few wealthy people to get funds to launch any idea, however strange, and there are many such persons, many independent foci of support. And, indeed, it is not even necessary to persuade people or financial institutions with available funds of the soundness of the ideas to be propagated. It is only necessary to persuade them that the propagation can be financially successful; that the newspaper or magazine or book or other venture will be profitable. The competitive publisher, for example, cannot afford to publish only writing with which he personally agrees; his touchstone must be the likelihood that the market will be large enough to yield a satisfactory return on his investment.

In this way, the market breaks the vicious circle and makes it possible ultimately to finance such ventures by small amounts from many people without first persuading them.

In other words, it is us, the consumers, who ultimately decide if venture X, product Y, or propaganda Z is going to be successful. As Friedman remarks, a "publisher, for example, cannot afford to publish only writing with which he personally agrees; his touchstone must be the likelihood that the market", that is us, "will be large enough to yield a satisfactory return on his investment."

For example: Mitt Romney in 2008.

Why did Mitt Romney not get the Republican nomination for President in 2008 although he had, personally, invested huge amounts of money ($35 million according to Wikipedia)? Because, we, the market, the electorate, weren't either persuaded, receptive, or enthused to his campaign - money didn't matter.

It all may be well and good spending millions of dollars of campaigns, advertisements and such, but that alone will not secure your consumers. The consumers first have to believe it themselves. "Most systematic studies, however, find no effect of marginal campaign spending on the electoral success of candidates."

How successful do you think I would be if I spent $35 million trying to convince the electorate that Earth was in imminent danger from invading Martians? (Okay, I concede I might convince a few loonies - but were they persuaded or were they already convinced, i.e. prejudiced, in the first place?).

It sounds like, Ombrageux, it is you who is being specifically anti-liberal (or illiberal using your nomenclature) on this point - meaning what Aarron Ross Powell describes:

The anti-liberal...argues as follows:

I prefer X over Y. Other people prefer Y over X. The fact that some people are doing Y is (1) harmful to me because I don’t like Y and (2) harmful to them because they’d be better off doing X instead of Y.

The only difference between communitarians, conservatives, totalitarians, and the rest of the anti-liberal pantheon is the specific content of X and Y.

The practical arguments Friedman raises against this kind of popular democracy (that it's hard to raise awareness) I think were dubious then and have no validity today in the age of the Internet.

Again he never makes that argument. Friedman argues that it is hard to raise awareness in a socialist society. He had no qualms with the ability to raise funds and awareness in a capitalist society (see the above quote that I have provided). Additionally, I think you really ought to re-read chapter 1 of Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom (where you got the quotation from) so as to read the quotation in context.


Now you purport Friedman to say that is is "desirable" to have economic inequality. This beggars belief. Friedman is well-known to have argued that he considered poverty to be a negative externality that ought to be alleviated.


I think you, Ombrageux, are mistaken to not consider Friedman a liberal. When you gave a definition of what a liberal is, you made no mention of economic egalitarianism reached through government action (as oppose to market mechanisms) and so I can only conclude that when you talk about liberalism you do not mean economic egalitarianism. therefore I think you ought to consider Friedman a liberal.

(The online source of Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom does have a few spelling mistakes).

[Ombrageux]

SR - I differ with your interpretation on the Friedman quote and I don't have anything to add to what I previously wrote.

On Friedman not being "liberal", if I said or implied that, I take it back. I did say some libertarians (anarcho-capitalists) I don't consider liberal (because they reject democracy, ergo, want a "liberal dictatorship" of judges and police). I don't know enough about Friedman to assess him but all I was saying is that he was comfortable with inequality and with a concept of political activism as substantially bankrolled by the rich. Strictly speaking this would not make him illiberal. The important thing would be to know the extent to which he would want libertarian policies constitutionalized (e.g., the extent to which a democratic majority can violate libertarian principles). This isn't an abstract point by the way, the Germans are constitutionalizing low-inflation and balanced budgets in Europe. The Republicans have various schemes for balanced budget amendments and lower share of GDP government spending. I'd be curious to know where Friedman would come down on these issues.

[Soixante-Retard]

Ombrageux, it seems we must agree that we disagree.

I suspect Friedman would agree with Hayek, regarding liberalism and democracy:

Liberalism is a doctrine about what the law ought to be, democracy a doctrine about the manner of determining the law. Liberalism regards it as desirable that only what the majority accepts should in fact be law, but it does not believe that this is therefore necessarily good law. Its aim, indeed, is to persuade the majority to observe certain principles. It accepts majority rule as a method of deciding, but not as an authority for what the decision ought to be.

To the doctrinaire democrat the fact that the majority wants something is sufficient ground for regarding it as good; for him the will of the majority determines not only what is law but what is good law.

(My emphasis above)

However, I would need some time to support this assertion with some quotations from Friedman himself.

Regarding anarcho-capitalists. I agree, they are not liberals, in the political sense; they are anarchists. However, in the philosophical sense, they are liberal insofar as they believe that everyone ought to have self-ownership and that no one should interfere with the body and property of another person without consensual agreement, i.e. the individual is to be respected.

[Soixante-Retard]

I have inferred from reading Chapter 5: Created Equal in Free to Choose (where he constrasts equality of opportunity against equality of outcome) Milton Friedman would have agreed with Hayek (above) on the issue of political equality vs majoritarianism. Here is a key passage:

The goal of the framers of the Constitution of the United States, drafted by Jefferson's contemporaries, was a national government strong enough to
defend the country and promote the general welfare but at the same time sufficiently limited in power to protect the individual citizen, and the separate state governments, from domination by the national government. Democratic, in the sense of widespread participation in government, yes; in the political sense of majority rule, clearly no.

Similarly, Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French political philosopher and sociologist, in his classic Democracy in America, written after a lengthy visit in the 1830s, saw equality, not majority rule, as the outstanding characteristic of America.

A concise summary from Friedman here.

Additionally, I have found a couple of good quotes from Mises, who I think you should also consider a liberal (if you don't already), that are in the same vein of Hayek's warning against the despotism of majoritarianism (if that is what democracy is interpreted to be).

Democracy guarantees a system of government in accordance with the wishes and plans of the majority. But it cannot prevent majorities from falling victim to erroneous ideas and from adopting inappropriate policies which not only fail to realize the ends aimed at but result in disaster.

(The NSDAP did get 43.9% of the vote in March 1933, okay it wasn't an absolute majority but they had a relative majority - just sayin' - but don't interpret that to mean Mises (a liberal) was against the NSDAP standing altogether, he favored freedom and with that the opportunity to combat illiberal ideas (read Liberalism by Mises, especially here). For instance, would you, Ombrageux, be against illiberals having the opportunity to stand for election, bearing in mind that the ability to have a plurality of opinion is central to the liberal creed? That being freedom of speech, but of course such freedom doesn't necessarily entail that there will be a plurality of opinion just that the opportunity to have that plurality is there)

Also:

The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.

(I realized I could have also quoted from J. S. Mill railing against majoritarianism, however, I think you probably already consider him to be a liberal - which of course, he is)

[Quantum]

It is not obvious that liberalism is the answer in the Middle East, Africa, Asia or any of the other historical victims of Western civilization. There nationalist and militarist solutions may be the only way to defend oneself.

True, but leaders like Sankara and Lumumba have a tendency to be assassinated by agents working on behalf of Western imperialism. I never heard of Sankara until a few years ago yet he achieved more for his country than any other leader in Africa and Burkina Faso made real progress which was quickly reversed after this assassination. It's a wonder why Africa is in shambles when competent leaders tend to be killed by the West, leaving the corrupt.

[hip hop bunny hop]

As for me. I'm staying a Good Liberal, a Good Social Democrat and a Good Peacenik too. I'm convinced they're the right things for France and America, at the very least. I've a lot of reasons for thinking that. But it is not a given like it used to be and it isn't obvious that it's right for every time and place or person.

I don't understand how you can advocate the U.S. continuing to use the very political system which has led to all the ills you described above. Or do you feel that the culture caused the decline in quality of governance?

[KPres]

I'm absolutely astounded that somebody who claims to understand American politics could find the Republican party the less liberal party. The Democrats are essentially socialist incrementalists, while the Republicans are mixture of liberals and the religious right, who were only brought into the fold in order to secure enough votes. Is it the media that feeds you this outlook? You realize the American media is highly bias in favor of the Democrats don't you? What you read there should be taken with a grain of salt or at least a heavy dose of skepticism.

[Malatant of Shadow]

Why did Mitt Romney not get the Republican nomination for President in 2008 although he had, personally, invested huge amounts of money ($35 million according to Wikipedia)? Because, we, the market, the electorate, weren't either persuaded, receptive, or enthused to his campaign - money didn't matter.

But it did. There are two ways in which money can matter -- in which it can distort democratic outcomes and lead to a plutocratic government in effect -- and you are considering only one of them.

The one you're considering is the idea that the amount of money spent affirmatively determines the outcome, that is, by spending more money on candidate A than is being spent on candidate B we can ensure that A will be elected. You are right that money doesn't "matter" in precisely this way.

The other way, though, is negative rather than affirmative. It flows from the idea that denying campaign funds to a candidate can ensure that he is not elected. In effect, money exercises veto power in this regard rather than selection power.

In this way, while wealthy campaign donors cannot ensure the precise candidate that will win an election, they can ensure that any candidate that seriously runs against their interests will not. It isn't a matter of making sure that candidate A wins instead of candidate B, but rather of making sure that candidate C, who in contrast to A and B would legislate and govern against the plutocrats, will not win. A might be marginally more desirable to them than B, but either is acceptable while C is not.