"Liberals Should Know Better"


A new series written by a libertarian
Arnold Kling stars a new series at TCS Daily called Liberals Should Know Better. He gets it off to a great start.

Most of my friends are liberals. This series is the conversation I wish that I could have with them. I wish they would let me finish my train of thought before interrupting. I wish that they would consider my arguments, rather than try to bury them in rhetorical put-downs.

Chances are, you will look for some errors in my reasoning, so that you can dismiss everything that I have to say. All of us tend to read this way. We overlook flaws in the arguments of sympathetic writers, and we go all-out to find the flaws in arguments of others. In psychology, this double standard is known as confirmation bias. What it means is that we tend to seek support for what we already believe, rather than to seek out information that might undermine our beliefs. Confirmation bias helps to account for the persistence of disagreement.

But Mr. Kling doesn't stop there. After discussing the Wal-Mart law, this is his wrap up.

Liberals see the market as an arena in which evil corporations inflict their greed on innocent victims. I wish you would see that motives matter less than consequences. I wish you could see that greed is at work when laws are passed that regulate markets, because regulations always produce winners and losers. I wish you could see that those winners and losers are often not who you think they are. I wish you could see that competitive behavior and free choice are forces that operate in the market as a check against greed. Finally, I wish you could see that greed is most difficult to restrain when it is exercised through the medium of government.

Great stuff there.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Tue - January 17, 2006 at 05:00 AM  Tag


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