I have always had a particularly soft intellectual spot for David Friedman, the economist, for it was he who wrote the first book I ever read which seemed really to describe for me how I wanted to think about the world. It is called The Machinery of Freedom. (David Friedman has a father, called Milton, who also dabbles in economics.) And I now like David Friedman’s blog, which he calls simply Ideas.
However, I do not always agree with David Friedman. Here are some recent thoughts of his:
Finding presents for friends and relatives is often a problem, made harder by the economist’s puzzle of why one should give presents instead of giving cash and letting the recipient, better informed about his own preferences, decide how to spend it. A possible answer is that although I know less about the recipient, I know more about the gift. Acting on that principle, I occasionally pick a book that I and my wife particularly liked, buy a bunch of copies, and give them out as Christmas presents.
What giving money and giving the same book to several different friends have in common as present giving strategies is that they both exhibit an unwillingness to think about the individual desires of the person receiving the gift. “It’s the thought that counts” is no empty slogan. And the particular thought that matters is: “What particular kind of person is he, and what might he really like?”
In one of my very favourite movies, The Apartment, the Shirley MacLaine character’s rich and uncaring married man lover, chillingly played by Fred MacMurray, gives Shirley MacLaine a twenty dollar bill as a Christmas present. He does not even put in a pretty envelope. He just gets it out of his wallet and hands it over. Soon after that, she dumps him, and quite right too. Why? Because this moment proved that he did not care enough about her to give any thought, before meeting with her, to getting her a real present, of the sort that she would like, and which would show that he had thought about what she would like. He simply hadn’t been thinking about her.
Were I one of David Friedman’s friends and I got the same book last Christmas from him that several of his other friends had also got, I would feel ever so slightly slighted, and for the same reason. “He has thought about his own opinions, but he has not thought about mine.” (A copy of The Machinery of Freedom with a carefully composed and hand-written message inside the front cover would be another matter entirely.)
Blog postings, however, are different. Those, like Christmas presents, also come free of charge to the receiver. Yet I do not feel in any way slighted because a blogger has failed to craft an individual thought entirely for me, but has instead given the same thought away to all his readers. On the contrary, incoming emails full of individual thoughts, just for me, can be rather scary, because, like Christmas presents, they can imply an obligation to reciprocate, also individually, which may be unwelcome.
However, notice that a similar principle applies, and in a good way, to blog postings with which one happens to disagree, by thoughtful people like David Friedman, as applies to Christmas presents. A present that shows that the giver has done some thinking is welcome, even if one already has that CD or that book, or happens not to like that kind of chocolate. The “wrong” thing is still right, because it’s the thought that counts. I feel the same way about David Friedman’s occasional wrong (as I think) thoughts in his blog. These mistakes, if mistakes they be, show that he is at least always thinking. Far better lots of thinking, and the occasional consequent disagreement between me and him, than no thinking, and a mere string of truisms.
I have met D.Friedman several times and can vouch for what a nice fellow he is. Isn’t one of the contributors to the excellent Cattalarchy blog one of David’s children? These Friedmans are very productive in turning out lots of free marketeers.
The Machinery of Freedom is a good primer for folk who want to understand what folk like Samizdata bloggers are about. Maybe we should send Euan Gray a copy for Christmas in the hope, however faint, of enlightening him.
Is this just to remind us you’ve an important birthday coming up?
Couldn’t agree more with you, Brian, about The Apartment. Why don’t they make films like this any more? Whatever happened to a great plot, fine dalogue and great acting. In a similar vein, 12 Angry Men (nothing but 12 jury members in a room for the whole film) is one of my favouries – no glamorous location, no CGI, etc.
You’re right about presents. It offers an opportunity to introduce the receiver to something new that they may not have considered themselves. This requires thought and consideration. Similarly, my wife once bought me the Screwpull lever model corkscrew (when it was still within patent they cost around £90). £90 isn’t a huge amount of money, but I never would have paid £90 mysef because it’s hard to justify £90 on a corkscrew (even though I could afford it), but I was absolutely delighted to receive it.
Just to comment on the closed thread about the demo that’s due to take place in Trafalgar Sq this coming Saturday. (11/20/06)
Some of you here suggested that it has been organised by the BNP. I can state categorically that the BNP have nothing to do with this demo, what-so-ever, and are asking members and supporters NOT to take part. The whole thing is a charade organised by Left-wing and British Intelligence services with the express purpose of causing a clash with the anti-Islamaphobia demo taking place at the same time, and to generate bad publicity for the party in the approaching May elections.
Not that I expected you bourgeois “libertarian” types to actually take part, or do anything practical to defend civil liberties outside of cyberland, come to that. I appreciate it can be difficult to hold a banner when you haven’t got a spine.
Simon J., your off-topic sneering is misplaced. We do attend rallies: take this one(Link), for instance.
Actually, it’s a hundred dollars. And as Shirley MacLaine bitterly realises, it’s worse than thoughtless: it’s a payment for sex. So she begins undressing. When he reprimands her for being cheap, she replies, ‘A hundred dollars? I wouldn’t call that cheap.’
His insulting present is in sharp contrast to hers: an LP by the pianist at the Chinese Restaurant where they meet. A cheap gift, but full of meaning. Everything worth knowing about giving presents is in this scene.
But I’m a bit alarmed, Brian, that you include chocolates among your list of thoughtful presents. Unless you happen to know that the recipient is unusually fond of chocolate, giving them as a present says, ‘I’m not in the slightest bit interested in you, so here are some chockies. Happy Christmas!’ It’s almost as bad as bath salts.
Actually, I’ve already read it and found it to be seriously unimpressive even when it isn’t hopelessly Panglossian. You shouldn’t assume that mere exposure to libertarian writing is sufficient to guarantee conversion. As with all ideological thought, it’s not nearly as compelling or convincing as the zealot assumes it is.
EG
The analysis of present giving is indeed more complicated than the one sentence summary I used as the intro to discussing my Christmas books. The problem with your “he didn’t care enough to bother” is that bothering is itself a cost. If getting you the right present–one almost as good as you would have bought for yourself with the same amount of money–costs me ten dollars worth of effort, and the present also costs ten dollars, then simply giving you twenty dollars will prove the same amount of caring and leave you substantially better off.
To make your argument work, you need to carry it one step further. If I care about you–in my language, if I’m a Becker altruist with regard to you (for details of what that means see my Price Theory, webbed on my site)–it is in my interest to know a good deal about your utility function, so as to know when I can benefit you at a low enough cost to me to make doing so in my interest (allowing for the fact that I get utility from your utility). Knowing that reduces the cost to me of finding a suitable present.
So buying suitable presents can be viewed as a signal of altruistic feeling. It works as such because the signal is less expensive if the fact it signals is true than if it is false.
That’s my best economic explanation of present giving so far, but I don’t find it entirely adequate.
Euan, I doubt you would be persuaded. I was just seeing if I could provoke a suitably pompous response from your limited statist brain. It worked!
Next time try to at least do it politely.
EG
Euan, sorry. But come on, having read your comments over the years (yes, we’ve been jousting on this site for years, gawd), I have come to regard you as a not a particularly fair debater, frequently misrepresenting the libertarian position. Your dismissal of D. Friedman’s book is typical. Yes, there is stuff I contest in his book but it is an excellent way of questioning the statist assumptions most people carry around in their heads and illustrating a different way of looking at things. Which is no doubt why Brian fondly recalls reading it.
“If getting you the right present–one almost as good as you would have bought for yourself with the same amount of money–costs me ten dollars worth of effort, and the present also costs ten dollars, then simply giving you twenty dollars will prove the same amount of caring and leave you substantially better off.”
Let’s test this. Guys, this valentines day whip out that 20 dollar bill and get ready for some serious lovin’ … or repeated kicks to the groin area, whatever.
You’re both mistaken. Giving the right gift signals the dornor’s knowledge of the recipient’s wants. It’s a heightened form of recognition, like crossing a room and saying “I remember you. We met at the library two months ago” (people like that) times ten.
I don’t remember people. I am a terrible gift giver. My sisters give me books which I would never have bought for myself and which are better than anything I would have bought for myself with the cash equivalent (__The Pursuit of the Millenium__, __Vouchers and the Provision of Public Services__).
And I have come to regard “libertarians” as a collection of whining misanthropes who wish to have the luxury of moaning about pretty much everything without the tedious necessity of explaining a feasible alternative, and then getting all bolshie when someone points out this trivial omission.
You say I misrepresent the libertarian position. As I have asked many times before, what IS the libertarian position? On anything?
Doubtless. However, a couple of points:
1. The fact that people don’t agree with the libertarian position (whatever it is) does not mean that they necessarily carry around statist assumptions in their heads. That type of rhetoric is very similar in style to the Marxist ideologue ranting about how someone’s class inevitably distorts their view.
2. It may be a useful illustration of a different way of looking at things, but it is hardly the only one and nor does it have any unique value. Interestingly enough, it also flatly contradicts many others who call themselves and their pet theories libertarian. Again we get back to the unanswerable “what is libertarianism” question.
Here’s another way of looking at things, from Hayek: “Nothing has so much harmed the liberal cause as the stubborn insistence on rough rules of thumb, not least the idea of laissez-faire” (quoted from memory, might not be word perfect). Hayek also conceded that the increasing complexity of society inevitably meant that government had to do more, and that it was reasonable and sensible to allow government to do more.
So which one of these guys is the REAL “libertarian,” and why? And why are “libertarians” who disagree with your answer to that question wrong?
EG
Euan, I’ll pick up a couple of points. First, yes, there is no acceptable single, totally agreed definintion of what libertarianism is (just as there is no such definition of socialism, conservatism, or most other isms) but there are enough common features to get us some part of the way, such as:
The right of persons to enter voluntary agreements with their adult fellows, be they commercial or other; support for the idea that people own their own lives and are not subject to the powers of some collective group, state, race or phantom such as a “General Will”; libertarians stress the importance of private property and the ability to freely acquire, transfer and dispose of said without interference by third parties.
Some libertarians believe in natural rights, others support the case for maximal liberty consistent with peaceful order on utilitarian or consequentialist grounds and some even use both foundations for libertarianism (as I do).
BTW, I’ll be sure to re-read D. Friedman again. I enjoyed it the last time.
In which case then, don’t you think, it’s just a little unfair and perhaps petulant to complain about me misrepresenting the “libertarian position” when it would appear clear enough that there is in fact no such thing?
EG
Nothing “petulant”, here, Euan. I distinctly recall you having a pop at various folk, including Perry, for their “utopian” views, without acknowledging that there is no single position. Anyway, I’m done with this.
Life isn’t all about the best logical way to spend money, in business or work and general budget management yes, but not when dealing with the ones you love or deeply care about.
This seems to be a problem with libertarians and free-marketeers, they have a lot of good ideas but then appear to go off the rails and say some things that are almost certainly going to be a turn-off for the wider public.
Libertarianism (= “some strands of libertarianism with which one’s interlocutor may or may not agree depending on whether he can answer the point”) often seems to apply economic theory to non-economic areas of life. This is where it starts to make absolutely no sense whatever. It’s also one of the several things it has in common with communism.
And yes, it is a turn-off for the wider public. Politically, libertarianism is a micro-fringe grouping. See the quote from Hayek above, which probably goes some way to explaining WHY it is a micro-fringe.
EG
Those various folk are often the ones that tell me “but libertarianism doesn’t mean that” although they consistently fail to then say what it DOES mean. If you are told “X doesn’t mean that” you are entitled to assume that X does mean something else, i.e. that it can be more or less defined, unless you are then told it cannot be defined. But if it cannot be defined, it’s rather hard to say “X doesn’t mean that.”
Can’t have it both ways, is my point. It would be reasonable to either define libertarianism in which case I would have a fighting chance of figuring out what it means in a given case, or alternatively to stop castigating people for “misrepresenting” something even they cannot define.
EG
A good article by Brian.
David Friedman seems to have fallen into the “economic man” trap first created (as were so many other mistakes) by J.S. Mill.
Surely the real issue here, from an economic perspective, is the theory of comparative advantage.
Sure, I could give a gift of $20 cash–and that might be the right thing to do for the cash poor (which also happens to be me). What about the cash-rich, time poor (like many of my friends). Giving them the $20 won’t show that I care all that much. In that case it makes sense to give a gift that costs little money but a lot of time, such as an out-of-print book they will like or something else hard to come by, that they would most likely not have taken time to track down.
Imperefect information and search costs have a role to play too, I reckon. A still further possibility (and this is close to David Friedman’s approach) is that I might use whichever specialist knowledge I possess–about books, music, art, food and drink or whatever–to purchase something I think my friend would like, but (lacking my specialist knowledge) would not likely come across.
So once comparative advantage and search costs are factored into the equation, gift-giving does not seem to be irrational at all.