Steve Randy Waldman has a characteristically excellent post where he argues that the monetary policy we observe in Japan, the Eurozone and to a lesser extent America, is simply the result of the preferences of the political influential class of savers.
I love this post for a lot of reasons but one is that it gives me a chance to say: I just don’t buy it.
Lots of time in intellectual discourse we don’t buy the arguments from others and feel compelled to give reasons. This results in a lot of – for lack of a better term – intellectual bullshit.
I don’t have a clear well defined reason for rejecting Steve’s contention. I am just not yet convinced. So rather than committing myself to a half hearted argument and muddying the conversation with junk talking points its better just to announce that I am not sold.
This has the tendency to lower my status as any good intellectual should be able to defend his position, but luckily with Steve this is not a concern.
I can feel comfortable simply saying, I like it but still no. At least not yet.
Among other things this makes it much easier to change my mind if he does convince me as my defensive arguments are likely to trick my subconscious into being more committed to the notion that he is wrong.
5 comments
Comments feed for this article
Thursday ~ April 19th, 2012 at 6:39 am
Edwin Perello
I’m disappointed you don’t see eye to eye with Waldman, because what Waldman said was so in line with my suspicions, I practically got a broner.
Thursday ~ April 19th, 2012 at 8:57 am
Phil Koop
I had the same “yes, but” reaction to SRW’s piece. Although I didn’t agree with all of his specific points, I thought that Scott Sumner was right to assert that no one explanation is likely to have enough explanatory power to justify excluding other explanations.
Steve’s argument was plausible, but would have benefited from more support, as it skates perilously close to a tautology. Suppose I applied the same style of analysis to the first world war; would I not conclude that the eventuation of war demonstrated a “revealed preference” for war? Yet that is a doubtful proposition. Up until the last moment, the smart money was convinced that war would be averted because the consequences would be so bad. The error in this analysis was the failure to account for the fact that people make mistakes.
Perhaps one could say something similar about our collective failure to apply economic remedies that we think will work: there are diverse interests in play engaged in a continuous process of negotiation, and in that negotiation they sometimes make mistakes.
Thursday ~ April 19th, 2012 at 11:08 am
Ken
Bravo for intellectual honesty. Thank you for setting a good example that many would do well to emulate. The behavior to set out opposition points to those with whom we simply do not agree seems nearly ubiquitous (not sure if that’s culture or species specific – I suspect the former as this behavior seems more occidental than oriental).
Not agreeing with someone is not identical to disagreeing with them.
Oppositional behavior is so rampant in some organizations that I’m occasionally bemused by arguments between people who essentially agree (known as “violently agreeing” in my organization, but mention this to the antagonists and they too often instantly unite only in opinion that the observer is wrong and that they don’t agree on the previous subject at all). Ah well, we all live in our own heads.
Friday ~ April 20th, 2012 at 1:20 am
Glen
I haven’t read Steve’s post yet, but i like your position.
Feeling a need to defend a previous positions by discounting good opposing arguments seems universal. It’s good to be open about that.
The thing i’m not sure about is whether we lock ourselves into beliefs just by kicking this around in our heads and coming to an internal position. Is it still difficult to change our minds when we should, even though there’s no public status riding on it.
Friday ~ April 20th, 2012 at 7:05 am
Sigve
Yes. You can say that every behavior is a “revealed preference”, so that it doesn’t really explain any of our behavior.
However, political theory and election theory suggest that at least parts of the story might have aspects of truth to it. If you are into that as a variable of course.