I feel dumb for not having thought of the possible alliances you named. Of course you're right, there are some abundance liberals who might agree to vouchers in some cases. It's just that they're so hostile to school vouchers that I didn't think of it. And we all know that liberarians and leftists are aligned on drug and social issues. But your examples pointed at the thorniest differences between us, temporarily blinding me.
I sometimes think there's a great emotional difference between the two positions. But I agree with John Stuart Mill, that one should pursue an answer no matter where it leads you, no matter how uncomfortable the solution. Are abundance liberals (of the garden variety, not the intellectuals you know) more adverse to new ideas than libertarians?
My brother, for example, said he "couldn't read Milton Friedman's Free to Choose" because of the tone. And a close friend had the same reaction to David Henderson's "The Joy of Freedom." What tone, I wondered? To me, both are full of plain common sense. But for these people, asking them to read those books was like asking them to eat a dish with a repugnant smell.
I often feel that abundance liberals are so bound up in emotional reasons for favoring the poor that they can't open their eyes for one second to solutions that would help the poor a lot more. In the 1980s, when I was interviewing my favorite free market economist thinkers over the phone, including David Friedman, Milton Friedman, Judge Posner and about ten others, I often noticed that many had humble roots. I think there's something about being born upper class that tends to make one either rigidly conservative or socialistic to prove that they care.
“Of course you're right, there are some abundance liberals who might agree to vouchers in some cases.”
Respectfully, I don’t think that there actually are. Or at least not very many at all.
Matt Yglesias explicitly would not. And he is more market-accepting than most in the “Abundance liberal” crowd.
Of course, I do agree that there are those on the center-left who might in theory - although given that this particular issue is close to a 3rd rail in the Dem coalition, you might find it difficult indeed to find anyone who is a public commenter who would publicly agree to it.
Now, it is surely true that I am “talking my book” here (I.e. that the center-left is indeed close enough to libertarians/classical liberal ideas, but that very few so-called Abundance Liberals are), so I acknowledge that I might be wrong.
You keep saying this, but Yglesias is clearly trying to push liberals to a more market-accepting position while remaining within the tent. I think the point that David is trying to make is that those interested in moving people in the same direction should recognise directional allies even when they may never get to the same end point.
"Crucially to the politics, meanwhile, teachers at charter schools typically are not unionized, and they operate outside the main collective bargaining agreements that govern public schools.
That’s a perfectly rational reason for teachers unions to oppose them.
But it is not a good reason for elected officials to oppose charters."
I certainly respect your efforts but I don’t believe that your example of vouchers for defense attorneys moved the needle. In the first place your example completely overlooks the actual problem with criminal justice, which is that state and federal prosecutors aren’t motivated by justice; they’re motivated by demonstrating to their constituents a high success rate on the cases they prosecute. To this end both state and federal prosecutors wield their power to “plea bargain” as a weapon to extort confessions. Prosecutors routinely threaten defendants with drastically longer, harsher prison sentences if they exercise their constitutional right to a trial.
The idea that the state should pay for a defendant’s defense in any case is completely absurd. A more helpful idea would be to limit the financial resources made available to prosecutors. In addition, neither state nor federal prosecutors should be protected against civil lawsuits alleging misconduct or worse.
I would like to have you explain that to me. If you mean that a private defense attorney will do a better job than a public defender I am inclined to agree, but only to a degree (my best friend from SCU was a great PD but the system is rigged in favor of the state and it’s ministers of justice).
I have had several ideas on leveling the defense/prosecution field.
* Cut a check to the defense weekly from the prosecutor's budget, matching what the prosecution spent that week. Problem 1 is trying to keep it accurate. Problem 2 is the assumption that their spending needs balance. Problem 3 is a defense, pro se or not, which blows the money on hookers and cocaine because the defendant is so obviously guilty.
* Prohibit either side from spending more than the other. Problems 1 and 2 are the same.
* Prohibit the prosecution from unilaterally dropping any charges; if they overcharge with ludicrous charges the defense knows it can win, the defense can force them to trial. Then deduct acquitted charges from convicted charges, and if the net is negative, pay the defendant from the prosecutor's budget at whatever rate is paid to prisoners exonerated and released from prison. Problem is encouraging the jury to convict on even the dodgy charges.
* Include sentence with each charge and don't let the jury or judge change it.
I like many of your ideas. However, I think a more radical approach is needed. I agree with Michael Huemer who advocates for the Primacy of Justice, arguing that all legal agents—prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges—should prioritize justice over the law or client interests.
Current legal ethics expect defense attorneys to try to acquit their clients even when they know the client is guilty and deserves punishment, treating the courtroom like a game of strategy.
Huemer's View: This dogma is fundamentally immoral. He argues that if a defense lawyer is convinced of their client's guilt and believes the client deserves punishment, they have no ethical obligation (or right) to use legal loopholes to secure an acquittal. Both sides should be truth-seekers pursuing justice, not adversaries aiming to win at all costs.
I believe that criminal punishment needs to be fundamentally changed. The widespread reliance on mass incarceration is inherently unconscionable and causes devastating harm to society.
Huemer's View: The penal system should pivot toward alternative punishments. This includes probation, house arrest, and—critically—compulsory restitution, where a criminal is required to directly pay back their victims.
I highly recommend reading Huemer’s book, Justice Before the Law. David Friedman offers similar insights on criminal justice (see The Machinery of Freedom).
I have the book, gave me a lot to think about. But my Chartertopia came to an entirely different process. All disputes are resolved by talking face to face with a neutral mediator to keep them talking. They can use video calls, if all agree. They can have whatever advisors they want, who can talk for them, but the parties themselves are responsible for correcting their advisors and for everything they say. There are NO government judges or lawyers or courts.
I know how idealistic this sounds, but there are safeguards.
Someone who does not try to resolve disputes, or stalls or drags out resolution, is malingering and the other parties can shut them out and write the verdict themselves.
Someone who lies, tampers with evidence, or otherwise tries to distort the proceedings is guilty of perjury, which is treated as the issue at stake -- if you try to frame someone for murder, or forge evidence to look innocent, the verdict treats you as the murderer, regardless of whether you are or not.
All verdicts are for financial restitution. Those who don't pay their verdict debt are outlaws who cannot complain about any disputes whose harm is less than their unpaid outlaw debt. The result is that your victims, bounty hunters, neighbors, and random bystanders can steal from you for lesser amounts and you have no recourse. In the worst case, murderers and rapists and irredeemable criminals can rack up so much outlaw debt that they cannot complain about being kidnapped and locked up.
This is where the enforcement comes in. Verdicts have to be public in order to know who is an outlaw and whether justice was done. If the public thinks the verdict is unfair, such as some halfwit who was railroaded into a sham verdict, they can turn the tables by refusing to steal from him, protecting his house while he is at work, paying the verdict themselves, or appealing the verdict as perjury and reversing the debt.
The same applies to a verdict labeling one party as a malingerer or perjurer. The public has the ultimate say in how well those charges are documented.
As for lockup, it's handled by charities supported by donations which I estimate as $100/year per working adult. Their donations prioritize which outlaws get what kind of lockup -- ankle monitors, overnight and weekend jail, hellholes for the psychopaths. Prisoners also have a large say in their treatment -- behave better, get better conditions, job training, therapy. Act like a thug, get worse treatment. The outlaw debt makes a huge difference.
I believe it would work for the same reason most real criminals surrender peacefully when arrested or turn themselves in or honor bail, even when they know they'll end up in prison. The alternatives of a shootout or always looking over their shoulder while on the run are not appealing.
There's lots more at my handle. I don't claim it's perfect, only that I believe I would be happy in such a system, and I think most people would once it had been in place long enough. But my main goal was to dream up my own system as a baseline with which to compare reality and other fantasies.
Agree with what your saying but honestly a better tweak here, rather that throw the baby out with the bathwater, is rather than whatever the state is willing to pay on defense, change it to whatever the state is willing to pay in total including police, prosecutor, their staff, judge, court staff, etc IN HOURS and then pay that out at the average private criminal defense attorney hourly rates. That way they really can afford a proper defense.
I wonder if the lack of abundance liberals’ interaction is due to their other intellectual commitments. That is, they are leftists first and abundance only as a furtherance to other goals. Making common cause with libertarians or others with deontological commitments different from theirs might be too uncomfortable, or risk excommunication.
Just spitballing. I would jump at the chance to discuss these things with David Friedman, but then I have very different commitments :) it does seem strange to me that none were interested in potential common causes.
I expect that different people are Abundance liberals (or libertarians) for different reasons. Once you identify with a group you tend to adopt their views on issues not central to you.
I think you are correct here, but what Doctor Hammer is saying, perhaps better than I have been, is something beyond that.
Let’s say we stipulate that not only Yglesias but Ezra Klein himself (who in practice is to Yglesias’ left on policy) if he got to choose would be amenable to working with libertarians because he saw the benefits you describe.
Since his goal is to persuade a sufficient number of those within his left collation to go along with him, he simply cannot do it because too many of his target audience on the left are opposed to the very idea of such interaction. And without claiming they are unique, the left coalition of the last 7-10 years is particularly strong and successful at removing apostates.
So the issue is not primarily adopting further left views on issues not central to you.
Said one last way, in Ezra Klein’s own terms: the problem he sees is the left’s “everything bagel” approach.
But the nature of the beast he faces is such that the best he can do is to try to get folks to agree to “everything bagel lite”, since a classical liberal plain bagel or libertarian plain English muffin approach is not in the set of possible outcomes in 2026.
I see the world in several different ways at the same time -- pragmatic, as in Trump is preferable to Biden or Harris; real world, as in my vote doesn't matter in this heavily Democratic state; and purist, as in I despise government and people who want to use government to force their policies. All three combine to reject any kind of alliance with the abundance folk: neither of us has any say in real world outcomes. When I commented in your previous post, I didn't say that. I said only why, that government should just butt out, thinking that would automatically provide the answer you asked for. It was as if someone had asked me whether I favored metric or imperial units of measure and I replied I had a 6-foot tape measure in my pocket. I do that a lot and always get confused when someone says I didn't answer the question.
As for *learning* from the Abundance folks, they probably do provide lessons. Most people do, one way or another, even if just as examples of things to not do. I had a surprise one just last week. I am a self-taught near-anarchist for want of a better term. I remember things as a kid which lead me to think I've always been skeptical of government, and know the incompetence of the Vietnam War and post-Apollo NASA soured me even more on the very idea of government competence. It wasn't until probably 15-20 years ago that I actually realized there were libertarian theorists, such as Ayn Rand (no thank you) and Murray Rothbard (wonderful histories and explainers in many ways, but some of his stances confound me (his insistence on the morality of deducting his high NY state and NYC city taxes from his federal taxes because it was his right to live in an expensive city). I probably first encountered you, David D. Friedman, around this time, and I don't think any of your books have ever disappointed me.
Anyways, I had never heard of "In Defense Of Anarchy" by Robert Paul Wolff, and read it last week. I liked most of it, aside from the academic language. State authority vs private autonomy; unanimous direct democracy as the baseline of all democratic schemes. Fun stuff. And then I got to this line ...
"After realizing that such a marketwide price exists, men can begin to understand how it is determined. Only then can they consider the possibility of making that price a direct object of decision, and thus finally free themselves from the tyranny of the market."
... and went back and reread the previous paragraph or two several times. "Tyranny of the market"??? What is their tyranny, and how can you free yourself from it by making prices a direct object of decision, whatever that is? Does he imagine sellers just set prices will-nilly and buyers have no choice but to accept it? Is he one of those who think doubling the minimum wage will suddenly make everybody rich?
Then he did it again, wanting to "subordinate the market to our collective will and decision", and several more times, and I finally googled him and found he died a year ago, and had been a Marxist philosophy professor who switched mid career to be the first "ex-white professor of African-American studies" or some such rot, and had been pretty disgusted when "conservatives" like Rothbard had applauded his book.
How any Marxist could write a book which claims private autonomy has absolute moral supremacy over State authority, I do not know. I was gobsmacked when I first encountered the concept of left anarchy, where the heresy is private property, not government, and some are such purists that they don't even believe in private ownership of underwear or toothbrushes. Was he one of them? I do not know.
But it does show that everyone has good things to learn from, even ex-white Marxist philosophers.
It sounds like you're describing alliances between individuals after all. In your examples the alliances were with well-chosen individuals who possessed some degree of influence in their respective circles, but they were nonetheless between you personally and other individuals personally. Such alliances don't need to be argued for, anyone can freely attempt to forge them.
If your point is that more people *should try*, that more people ought to break out of their own tribe's wagon-circles and extend an open hand to members of their outgroups, then maybe the real argument under the surface is to advocate against hosting in one's mind or spirit any tribal identity in the first place. I would certainly endorse this argument.
If by reasoning purely from your own first principles you find that most of your conclusions about how the world ought to be run sound like or align with what would be considered a libertarian position, one option is then to say "Well I'm a libertarian then". But a better option in my opinion is to merely look at that alignment as an intellectual curiosity, a statistical quirk, a funny coincidence, a party trick, etc. and then otherwise carry on as if no such group existed. (Same goes for any other political position/group.)
Doing that will make it much easier for you to forge alliances that happen to cross political lines, because the lines themselves won't matter to you.
I recently attended a talk with a prominent abundance organizer where one of the questions was "Isn't the Abundance agenda just the Cato agenda from 15 years ago?" While it was a bit tongue-in-cheek I think that there is some truth to it, and I think that this could be a very beneficial coalition.
As another example, I recently read "The Captured Economy" by Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles, which practically demonstrate the possibility for libertarians to co-author with progressives. Their substantial focus on counteracting rent-seeking regulations seems like a great example where it should be possible to get both libertarians and Abundance people on board. Consider, for example, Abi Olvera and Alicia Plemming's recent post on occupational licensing: https://abio.substack.com/p/how-to-cut-suicide-rates-healthcare?r=1qvl79&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
“I recently attended a talk with a prominent abundance organizer where one of the questions was "’Isn't the Abundance agenda just the Cato agenda from 15 years ago?’”
It seems to me this question / accusation came up frequently in the immediate aftermath of the book being published.
In response, the leaders of the movement made it very clear that “No, that is not the case”, and have taken pains to distance themselves from that idea.
Such that even if a few might be open to it, it is apostasy to say it, or anything like it, and so it will not be voiced openly.
I have come around to the view that it’s actually the other way around: those of us classical liberals or perhaps on the center-right have this wishful thinking idea that it is, when mostly it really is simply a desire to go back to 2006-2010 Democrat levels of “less insane” economics, better execution of government power.
I am awed by your openness. In my yute I was similarly open.
A big clue to understanding disagreement here is in your first footnote: "In the early years they [education vouchers] were supported by left wing intellectuals such as Sociologist Christopher Jencks, a Harvard progressive, and Ivan Illich, author of Deschooling Society. Those were the days!
Your report of a common interest with a non classical liberal surprises me only by its late date, 1993.
The whole country has moved left since the 1960's to say nothing of the Brahmins. It is not possible to get anyone to one's left to even entertain an idea that would put them outside their tent, never mind agree. I'm with Joy Schwabach here.
ETA: Also with Doctor Hammer: "That is, they are leftists first and abundance only as a furtherance to other goals". I might add that anyone who paints abundance on their flag cannot be taken seriously. I, too, am against scarcity! :-)
In my own words: You can't even lead these horses to water, to say nothing of getting them to drink.
I went to your website to find your recent post about Abundance Liberals to see which Matthew Yglesias piece you were recommending. I couldn't find that post in the "sorted posts" section of your website. Unless I was being stupid, which is possible, that may be feedback you want to have about your website.
Anyway, are you still willing to re-share that pointer to the Matthew Yglesias piece?
To be exact, because why not, 332 words of it are available, including title, subtitle, author’s name, and date. Plus an illustration worth no words.
A few general remarks are included. (China is “authoritarian” and Russia “right wing,” and, no doubt consequently, Communism isn’t so much a threat.) But no argumentation.
There is a link to Ilya Somin’s “Two Cheers for Abundance Liberalism” in Reason. Which was nice, but it’s like trying to guess what someone is saying by listening to the other party in a telephone conversation.
I feel dumb for not having thought of the possible alliances you named. Of course you're right, there are some abundance liberals who might agree to vouchers in some cases. It's just that they're so hostile to school vouchers that I didn't think of it. And we all know that liberarians and leftists are aligned on drug and social issues. But your examples pointed at the thorniest differences between us, temporarily blinding me.
I sometimes think there's a great emotional difference between the two positions. But I agree with John Stuart Mill, that one should pursue an answer no matter where it leads you, no matter how uncomfortable the solution. Are abundance liberals (of the garden variety, not the intellectuals you know) more adverse to new ideas than libertarians?
My brother, for example, said he "couldn't read Milton Friedman's Free to Choose" because of the tone. And a close friend had the same reaction to David Henderson's "The Joy of Freedom." What tone, I wondered? To me, both are full of plain common sense. But for these people, asking them to read those books was like asking them to eat a dish with a repugnant smell.
I often feel that abundance liberals are so bound up in emotional reasons for favoring the poor that they can't open their eyes for one second to solutions that would help the poor a lot more. In the 1980s, when I was interviewing my favorite free market economist thinkers over the phone, including David Friedman, Milton Friedman, Judge Posner and about ten others, I often noticed that many had humble roots. I think there's something about being born upper class that tends to make one either rigidly conservative or socialistic to prove that they care.
“Of course you're right, there are some abundance liberals who might agree to vouchers in some cases.”
Respectfully, I don’t think that there actually are. Or at least not very many at all.
Matt Yglesias explicitly would not. And he is more market-accepting than most in the “Abundance liberal” crowd.
Of course, I do agree that there are those on the center-left who might in theory - although given that this particular issue is close to a 3rd rail in the Dem coalition, you might find it difficult indeed to find anyone who is a public commenter who would publicly agree to it.
Now, it is surely true that I am “talking my book” here (I.e. that the center-left is indeed close enough to libertarians/classical liberal ideas, but that very few so-called Abundance Liberals are), so I acknowledge that I might be wrong.
> Matt Yglesias explicitly would not
You keep saying this, but Yglesias is clearly trying to push liberals to a more market-accepting position while remaining within the tent. I think the point that David is trying to make is that those interested in moving people in the same direction should recognise directional allies even when they may never get to the same end point.
"Crucially to the politics, meanwhile, teachers at charter schools typically are not unionized, and they operate outside the main collective bargaining agreements that govern public schools.
That’s a perfectly rational reason for teachers unions to oppose them.
But it is not a good reason for elected officials to oppose charters."
https://www.twincities.com/2024/02/23/matthew-yglesias-will-democrats-ever-embrace-charter-schools-again/
David,
I certainly respect your efforts but I don’t believe that your example of vouchers for defense attorneys moved the needle. In the first place your example completely overlooks the actual problem with criminal justice, which is that state and federal prosecutors aren’t motivated by justice; they’re motivated by demonstrating to their constituents a high success rate on the cases they prosecute. To this end both state and federal prosecutors wield their power to “plea bargain” as a weapon to extort confessions. Prosecutors routinely threaten defendants with drastically longer, harsher prison sentences if they exercise their constitutional right to a trial.
The idea that the state should pay for a defendant’s defense in any case is completely absurd. A more helpful idea would be to limit the financial resources made available to prosecutors. In addition, neither state nor federal prosecutors should be protected against civil lawsuits alleging misconduct or worse.
That prosecutors are not motivated by justice is an argument for our proposal.
I would like to have you explain that to me. If you mean that a private defense attorney will do a better job than a public defender I am inclined to agree, but only to a degree (my best friend from SCU was a great PD but the system is rigged in favor of the state and it’s ministers of justice).
I have had several ideas on leveling the defense/prosecution field.
* Cut a check to the defense weekly from the prosecutor's budget, matching what the prosecution spent that week. Problem 1 is trying to keep it accurate. Problem 2 is the assumption that their spending needs balance. Problem 3 is a defense, pro se or not, which blows the money on hookers and cocaine because the defendant is so obviously guilty.
* Prohibit either side from spending more than the other. Problems 1 and 2 are the same.
* Prohibit the prosecution from unilaterally dropping any charges; if they overcharge with ludicrous charges the defense knows it can win, the defense can force them to trial. Then deduct acquitted charges from convicted charges, and if the net is negative, pay the defendant from the prosecutor's budget at whatever rate is paid to prisoners exonerated and released from prison. Problem is encouraging the jury to convict on even the dodgy charges.
* Include sentence with each charge and don't let the jury or judge change it.
I like many of your ideas. However, I think a more radical approach is needed. I agree with Michael Huemer who advocates for the Primacy of Justice, arguing that all legal agents—prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges—should prioritize justice over the law or client interests.
Current legal ethics expect defense attorneys to try to acquit their clients even when they know the client is guilty and deserves punishment, treating the courtroom like a game of strategy.
Huemer's View: This dogma is fundamentally immoral. He argues that if a defense lawyer is convinced of their client's guilt and believes the client deserves punishment, they have no ethical obligation (or right) to use legal loopholes to secure an acquittal. Both sides should be truth-seekers pursuing justice, not adversaries aiming to win at all costs.
I believe that criminal punishment needs to be fundamentally changed. The widespread reliance on mass incarceration is inherently unconscionable and causes devastating harm to society.
Huemer's View: The penal system should pivot toward alternative punishments. This includes probation, house arrest, and—critically—compulsory restitution, where a criminal is required to directly pay back their victims.
I highly recommend reading Huemer’s book, Justice Before the Law. David Friedman offers similar insights on criminal justice (see The Machinery of Freedom).
I have the book, gave me a lot to think about. But my Chartertopia came to an entirely different process. All disputes are resolved by talking face to face with a neutral mediator to keep them talking. They can use video calls, if all agree. They can have whatever advisors they want, who can talk for them, but the parties themselves are responsible for correcting their advisors and for everything they say. There are NO government judges or lawyers or courts.
I know how idealistic this sounds, but there are safeguards.
Someone who does not try to resolve disputes, or stalls or drags out resolution, is malingering and the other parties can shut them out and write the verdict themselves.
Someone who lies, tampers with evidence, or otherwise tries to distort the proceedings is guilty of perjury, which is treated as the issue at stake -- if you try to frame someone for murder, or forge evidence to look innocent, the verdict treats you as the murderer, regardless of whether you are or not.
All verdicts are for financial restitution. Those who don't pay their verdict debt are outlaws who cannot complain about any disputes whose harm is less than their unpaid outlaw debt. The result is that your victims, bounty hunters, neighbors, and random bystanders can steal from you for lesser amounts and you have no recourse. In the worst case, murderers and rapists and irredeemable criminals can rack up so much outlaw debt that they cannot complain about being kidnapped and locked up.
This is where the enforcement comes in. Verdicts have to be public in order to know who is an outlaw and whether justice was done. If the public thinks the verdict is unfair, such as some halfwit who was railroaded into a sham verdict, they can turn the tables by refusing to steal from him, protecting his house while he is at work, paying the verdict themselves, or appealing the verdict as perjury and reversing the debt.
The same applies to a verdict labeling one party as a malingerer or perjurer. The public has the ultimate say in how well those charges are documented.
As for lockup, it's handled by charities supported by donations which I estimate as $100/year per working adult. Their donations prioritize which outlaws get what kind of lockup -- ankle monitors, overnight and weekend jail, hellholes for the psychopaths. Prisoners also have a large say in their treatment -- behave better, get better conditions, job training, therapy. Act like a thug, get worse treatment. The outlaw debt makes a huge difference.
I believe it would work for the same reason most real criminals surrender peacefully when arrested or turn themselves in or honor bail, even when they know they'll end up in prison. The alternatives of a shootout or always looking over their shoulder while on the run are not appealing.
There's lots more at my handle. I don't claim it's perfect, only that I believe I would be happy in such a system, and I think most people would once it had been in place long enough. But my main goal was to dream up my own system as a baseline with which to compare reality and other fantasies.
Doesn't Huemer believe that all political authority is illegitimate? What penal system then? Who operates it and by what authority?
Agree with what your saying but honestly a better tweak here, rather that throw the baby out with the bathwater, is rather than whatever the state is willing to pay on defense, change it to whatever the state is willing to pay in total including police, prosecutor, their staff, judge, court staff, etc IN HOURS and then pay that out at the average private criminal defense attorney hourly rates. That way they really can afford a proper defense.
That’s correct. Ideally, the justice system should be private but I think you might know more than you’re willing to admit.
I wonder if the lack of abundance liberals’ interaction is due to their other intellectual commitments. That is, they are leftists first and abundance only as a furtherance to other goals. Making common cause with libertarians or others with deontological commitments different from theirs might be too uncomfortable, or risk excommunication.
Just spitballing. I would jump at the chance to discuss these things with David Friedman, but then I have very different commitments :) it does seem strange to me that none were interested in potential common causes.
I expect that different people are Abundance liberals (or libertarians) for different reasons. Once you identify with a group you tend to adopt their views on issues not central to you.
I think you are correct here, but what Doctor Hammer is saying, perhaps better than I have been, is something beyond that.
Let’s say we stipulate that not only Yglesias but Ezra Klein himself (who in practice is to Yglesias’ left on policy) if he got to choose would be amenable to working with libertarians because he saw the benefits you describe.
Since his goal is to persuade a sufficient number of those within his left collation to go along with him, he simply cannot do it because too many of his target audience on the left are opposed to the very idea of such interaction. And without claiming they are unique, the left coalition of the last 7-10 years is particularly strong and successful at removing apostates.
So the issue is not primarily adopting further left views on issues not central to you.
Said one last way, in Ezra Klein’s own terms: the problem he sees is the left’s “everything bagel” approach.
But the nature of the beast he faces is such that the best he can do is to try to get folks to agree to “everything bagel lite”, since a classical liberal plain bagel or libertarian plain English muffin approach is not in the set of possible outcomes in 2026.
Even if it *might* have been in 2014.
That latter point is under appreciated by political scientists when considering party formation, I have long thought.
Well said.
A better, more concise version of the point I’ve been trying to make.
Where for what remains of the center-left (e.g. Cass Sunstein, perhaps Kelsey Piper) it would not necessarily be the case.
I see the world in several different ways at the same time -- pragmatic, as in Trump is preferable to Biden or Harris; real world, as in my vote doesn't matter in this heavily Democratic state; and purist, as in I despise government and people who want to use government to force their policies. All three combine to reject any kind of alliance with the abundance folk: neither of us has any say in real world outcomes. When I commented in your previous post, I didn't say that. I said only why, that government should just butt out, thinking that would automatically provide the answer you asked for. It was as if someone had asked me whether I favored metric or imperial units of measure and I replied I had a 6-foot tape measure in my pocket. I do that a lot and always get confused when someone says I didn't answer the question.
As for *learning* from the Abundance folks, they probably do provide lessons. Most people do, one way or another, even if just as examples of things to not do. I had a surprise one just last week. I am a self-taught near-anarchist for want of a better term. I remember things as a kid which lead me to think I've always been skeptical of government, and know the incompetence of the Vietnam War and post-Apollo NASA soured me even more on the very idea of government competence. It wasn't until probably 15-20 years ago that I actually realized there were libertarian theorists, such as Ayn Rand (no thank you) and Murray Rothbard (wonderful histories and explainers in many ways, but some of his stances confound me (his insistence on the morality of deducting his high NY state and NYC city taxes from his federal taxes because it was his right to live in an expensive city). I probably first encountered you, David D. Friedman, around this time, and I don't think any of your books have ever disappointed me.
Anyways, I had never heard of "In Defense Of Anarchy" by Robert Paul Wolff, and read it last week. I liked most of it, aside from the academic language. State authority vs private autonomy; unanimous direct democracy as the baseline of all democratic schemes. Fun stuff. And then I got to this line ...
"After realizing that such a marketwide price exists, men can begin to understand how it is determined. Only then can they consider the possibility of making that price a direct object of decision, and thus finally free themselves from the tyranny of the market."
... and went back and reread the previous paragraph or two several times. "Tyranny of the market"??? What is their tyranny, and how can you free yourself from it by making prices a direct object of decision, whatever that is? Does he imagine sellers just set prices will-nilly and buyers have no choice but to accept it? Is he one of those who think doubling the minimum wage will suddenly make everybody rich?
Then he did it again, wanting to "subordinate the market to our collective will and decision", and several more times, and I finally googled him and found he died a year ago, and had been a Marxist philosophy professor who switched mid career to be the first "ex-white professor of African-American studies" or some such rot, and had been pretty disgusted when "conservatives" like Rothbard had applauded his book.
How any Marxist could write a book which claims private autonomy has absolute moral supremacy over State authority, I do not know. I was gobsmacked when I first encountered the concept of left anarchy, where the heresy is private property, not government, and some are such purists that they don't even believe in private ownership of underwear or toothbrushes. Was he one of them? I do not know.
But it does show that everyone has good things to learn from, even ex-white Marxist philosophers.
It sounds like you're describing alliances between individuals after all. In your examples the alliances were with well-chosen individuals who possessed some degree of influence in their respective circles, but they were nonetheless between you personally and other individuals personally. Such alliances don't need to be argued for, anyone can freely attempt to forge them.
If your point is that more people *should try*, that more people ought to break out of their own tribe's wagon-circles and extend an open hand to members of their outgroups, then maybe the real argument under the surface is to advocate against hosting in one's mind or spirit any tribal identity in the first place. I would certainly endorse this argument.
If by reasoning purely from your own first principles you find that most of your conclusions about how the world ought to be run sound like or align with what would be considered a libertarian position, one option is then to say "Well I'm a libertarian then". But a better option in my opinion is to merely look at that alignment as an intellectual curiosity, a statistical quirk, a funny coincidence, a party trick, etc. and then otherwise carry on as if no such group existed. (Same goes for any other political position/group.)
Doing that will make it much easier for you to forge alliances that happen to cross political lines, because the lines themselves won't matter to you.
I recently attended a talk with a prominent abundance organizer where one of the questions was "Isn't the Abundance agenda just the Cato agenda from 15 years ago?" While it was a bit tongue-in-cheek I think that there is some truth to it, and I think that this could be a very beneficial coalition.
As another example, I recently read "The Captured Economy" by Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles, which practically demonstrate the possibility for libertarians to co-author with progressives. Their substantial focus on counteracting rent-seeking regulations seems like a great example where it should be possible to get both libertarians and Abundance people on board. Consider, for example, Abi Olvera and Alicia Plemming's recent post on occupational licensing: https://abio.substack.com/p/how-to-cut-suicide-rates-healthcare?r=1qvl79&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
“I recently attended a talk with a prominent abundance organizer where one of the questions was "’Isn't the Abundance agenda just the Cato agenda from 15 years ago?’”
It seems to me this question / accusation came up frequently in the immediate aftermath of the book being published.
In response, the leaders of the movement made it very clear that “No, that is not the case”, and have taken pains to distance themselves from that idea.
Such that even if a few might be open to it, it is apostasy to say it, or anything like it, and so it will not be voiced openly.
I have come around to the view that it’s actually the other way around: those of us classical liberals or perhaps on the center-right have this wishful thinking idea that it is, when mostly it really is simply a desire to go back to 2006-2010 Democrat levels of “less insane” economics, better execution of government power.
I am awed by your openness. In my yute I was similarly open.
A big clue to understanding disagreement here is in your first footnote: "In the early years they [education vouchers] were supported by left wing intellectuals such as Sociologist Christopher Jencks, a Harvard progressive, and Ivan Illich, author of Deschooling Society. Those were the days!
Your report of a common interest with a non classical liberal surprises me only by its late date, 1993.
The whole country has moved left since the 1960's to say nothing of the Brahmins. It is not possible to get anyone to one's left to even entertain an idea that would put them outside their tent, never mind agree. I'm with Joy Schwabach here.
ETA: Also with Doctor Hammer: "That is, they are leftists first and abundance only as a furtherance to other goals". I might add that anyone who paints abundance on their flag cannot be taken seriously. I, too, am against scarcity! :-)
In my own words: You can't even lead these horses to water, to say nothing of getting them to drink.
Okay. I'm persuaded.
I went to your website to find your recent post about Abundance Liberals to see which Matthew Yglesias piece you were recommending. I couldn't find that post in the "sorted posts" section of your website. Unless I was being stupid, which is possible, that may be feedback you want to have about your website.
Anyway, are you still willing to re-share that pointer to the Matthew Yglesias piece?
I don't update the sorted list instantly. There are links to recent posts at https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/
My post responding to Yglesias is https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/contra-yglesias. It has a link to his post, but part of it is only available if you subscribe.
To be exact, because why not, 332 words of it are available, including title, subtitle, author’s name, and date. Plus an illustration worth no words.
A few general remarks are included. (China is “authoritarian” and Russia “right wing,” and, no doubt consequently, Communism isn’t so much a threat.) But no argumentation.
There is a link to Ilya Somin’s “Two Cheers for Abundance Liberalism” in Reason. Which was nice, but it’s like trying to guess what someone is saying by listening to the other party in a telephone conversation.
Damn, I kinda hoped my (quite non-libertarian) answers were useful :D