My reader Sergey Soltys was discussing his anarcho-capitalist beliefs with an acquaintance and from time to time referred to Friedman’s Mechanics of Freedom. This ended with the interlocutor taking up reading the book, managing to get through about half of it, and posting a very detailed review, which I am now presenting for your attention because it is quite characteristic.
From this review, it is evident that the book was read sporadically and that the reader clearly did not grasp certain economic terms used in the text. The term “public good” suffered particularly. The reader believes that the key word in the term is “good,” whereas a good is simply some value, regardless of what it is, and the key is the definition of “public,” in opposition to “private good,” which refers to a very specific type of good possessing a set of characteristic properties.
Does this mean that the reader is an idiot and is fighting straw men? No, he is a smart and well-intentioned social democrat who values life’s comfort very highly, is ready to work hard and pay a lot for it, but is unwilling to delve deeply into how the economy works because he is a specialist in another field. Thus, for him, a complete lack of understanding of the theory of the firm, public choice theory, and similar things is forgivable.
The example of a perfectly intelligent person failing to understand Mechanics of Freedom shows the book’s shortcomings. It is long and disjointed; it was not sufficiently revised from edition to edition, and therefore often appeals to outdated facts about the USA from the middle of the last century; it is not rigorous enough in its use of conceptual apparatus.
Perhaps I refer to Friedman too much. That is a matter of taste. I like his language and characteristic humor; it is not that difficult for me to accept his system of definitions, although I often use slightly different terminology for myself. And simply, we both think roughly within the same paradigm of an economic approach to legal issues.
Perhaps I should still write my own work on ancap. Something clearer and more concise. More modern. Based on facts more accessible to the Russian-speaking reader. Svetov threatened to create something like that, but he isn’t in any hurry. I don’t know. I am not sure I have enough talent and perseverance. In any case, first I will finish polishing the Friedman edition. I have enough talent and perseverance for that.
Forgive me that the post came out more in a blog format. It is just that I am on the threshold of significant changes in my life, and that puts me in a very pensive mood.
