While lying in bed this morning after having hit the snooze button a few times, I was roused from my state of semi-consciousness by the sound of someone yelling at Scott Finn on West Virginia Public Radio. It’s not often that people yell on public radio; that’s the purview of cable television news. The person Scott Finn had angered was Russell Sobel, an economics professor at West Virginia University who has written a book called Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity Stops at the West Virginia Border and How to Fix It. Sobel was apparently mad that Finn had the audacity to ask him tough questions about the basis of the conclusions reached in his book. “Nobody has ever treated me this way!” he practically screamed.
My favorite part was when Sobel, objecting to the notion that his economic views might be politically biased, said [paraphrasing from memory]: “There’s nothing political in this book! It doesn’t discuss gay marriage or abortion or the war in Iraq — those are political issues.” This prompted Finn to ask whether there are economists who would disagree with him, and Sobel scoffed: “Sure, there might be some Marxist economist somewhere, but most of them are gone now that the Soviet Union has collapsed.” I was nonplussed. How dare you accuse me of being political! Only a Marxist would disagree with me! Too funny.
It seems that Sobel believes economics is above politicization, which is positively stupid, especially coming from someone with a Ph.D. in economics. Issues like tort reform, tax policy, and government regulation of, say, the coal industry are apparently apolitical, which is of course absurd. These are core political issues. Sobel insists that his conclusions are based not on politics, but on sound scientific research, as if nobody could possibly do similar research and come to different conclusions. As one of his critics pointed out, economics isn’t like physics; there isn’t One True Answer. And as the “debate” on global warming illustrates, even when there’s virtually no disagreement within the scientific community an issue can still be highly politicized.
I don’t really understand what Sobel was so upset about, since later on in the interview he said that he wishes lots of other people would write books about how to improve West Virginia’s economy, because we need to have a debate about these issues. Earlier on, he seemed to be saying that there is no room for debate. It’s based on scientific research, it’s not my opinion!
They only played a few minutes of the entire Sobel interview on the radio this morning, but the whole thing is posted on WVPB’s web site. (Click here to listen to the mp3.) I’ll have to wait until this evening to listen to it, then maybe I’ll post an update. I haven’t read the book (it’s available online), but it sounds like Sobel advocates for a return to the Lochner era, questioning whether we need the Americans with Disabilities Act, the minimum wage, or mine safety laws. Go ahead, ask the people of Sago about that last one, and we’ll see if there’s room for debate.
ROFL. This is typical of the academic intelligentsia. The idiots move up in the university hierarchy by sticking to mainstream fashion trend ideas. That what is “cool and hip” to the over credentialed crowd makes no damn sense in real life matters not, so long as they have something to talk about at the next faculty, cocktail party, they are happy…
The scientifically impossible I do right away
The spiritually miraculous takes a bit longer
ROFL. This is typical of the academic intelligentsia. The idiots move up in the university hierarchy by sticking to mainstream fashion trend ideas. That what is “cool and hip” to the over credentialed crowd makes no damn sense in real life matters not, so long as they have something to talk about at the next faculty cocktail party, they are happy…
The scientifically impossible I do right away
The spiritually miraculous takes a bit longer
sorry about the repeat. Lag caught me and i clicked it again and….
Rock on with your bad self, Raging Red! I was the dissenting voice on the radio. He really does seem to believe that abolishing the minimum wage, supporting right to work for less, and ending government regulation in things like mine safety are purely objective scientific truths.
What baffles me about guys like this is that they seem to be totally ignorant of the fact that WE TRIED THIS STUFF BEFORE, and it didn’t work. It was an unmitigated disaster…unless your last name was Carnegie or Rockefeller.
Hippie Killer,
You guys need to check out the book. It’s everything you can imagine and more. And scientific to boot! And it’s gotta be true since it comes from WVU, right? And he does speak for the entire university, doesn’t he?
I also heard it on the radio. Good job of counterbalancing the argument, el cabrero.
Social science is an imperfect and messy conversation that seeks little nuggets of truth and can never find anything “definitive.”
Thanks! Social science especially doesn’t work too well when wedded to an absolute metaphysical worldview. I think that’s the main problem with the book, which actually has some things in it I agree with (like getting rid of corporate welfare). Once you’re wedded to a dogmatic worldview it’s more theology than science.
Hey el cabrero, nice job. I added a link to your blog in my post.
I listened to the whole interview over the weekend, and my conclusion about Sobel is that he’s not a partisan hack, he’s just hopelessly politically naive. He repeated the thing about abortion/gay marriage/the Iraq war four or five times in the 55 minute interview. He said that his personal political views are not in line with the Republican party (e.g., he supports gay marriage). Then he said that he doesn’t even pay attention to political candidates and couldn’t tell you what their positions are and that, in fact, he usually doesn’t even vote. He doesn’t vote! Here’s a guy who says that he wants to do something to help West Virginia’s economy, and he’s completely unengaged in politics and apparently has no idea what his representatives in government are doing. If he truly does care about WV’s economy, he might want to start paying attention.
He did say one thing that I completely agree with — that the Promise scholarship should take financial need into account. Also, when Scott Finn listed all of the policy proposals that are in lockstep with the Republican party’s platform, one of the things he listed was eliminating business subsidies, which, last I checked, wasn’t part of the GOP’s agenda.
Part of me thinks this guy is being played by others who do have a political agenda (i.e., the Public Policy Foundation). I didn’t get the feeling that he wasn’t being honest, I think he’s just completely unsavvy about politics. Toward the end of the interview, he said that it would be a shame if the issues in this book became really political, because then reform won’t happen in WV. Sorry Dr. Sobel — too late.
I’m with you. I think he’s a nice person but a political innocent, a true believer in the market god of libertarianism.
He’s definitely being played and used as a pawn in a bigger political game. His naive views of what is objective “science” and what is political are kind of sad and very limited.
There are some things he says I agree with: ending corporate welfare (or at least having clear job quality standards and clawback provisions for public aid to corporations) and the general idea that market economies, with some safeguards and public investments, work much, much better than command economies. The thing is that I don’t know too many people who advocate command economies these days.
I’m with him (and you) on making Promise more need based, too. I’m also not opposed to all targeted tax cuts for business, as long as these don’t come at the cost of cutting education, infrastructure, and vital services.
The good things he advocates are negated and/or vastly outweighed by the ideological biases and the ideological extremism of the agenda. Maybe that’s the price of being a true believer.
The political reality is that the people who previously accepted Blankenship as their personal/political savior are now placing their hopes in this book to do what B’s millions couldn’t.
Good call on Sobel. He really does seem like a nice guy and I would love to talk shop with him over a pint or two of ale.
The problem is, as I noted in my blog post on the subject, that he didn’t prep himself for a hardball sort of interview from a real journalist (Bray Cary is a brilliant marketing exec with a paleoconservative political agenda, not a journalist, IMHO). He will probably be ready next time.
I’m probably slightly more (but not much more) open to his argument than y’all, but “hard scientific facts,” my ass.
I listened to this whole thing. This man is the most feted professor at WVU. You cannot critique anything he says. I am a graduate student in a social science here, and you can’t really make left arguments here (at least for graduate students).
I had a class to one of Sobel’s close friends in another social science. The man spent most of his time attacking all the “Marxists” on campus. I discovered that none of these people had a clue what Marx said about anything, but they were all knee-jerk against him. It’s almost as if someone said Hitler.
If anything, this knee-jerk dismissal of Marx led me to actually read what Marx actually said about things, and I’ve read several good books on Marxist theory and Marxist history. I’ve found there is a reason why they hate him so much. It’s not because he was wrong (He was wrong about some things, like his historicism and how long it would take capitalism to disappear and where it would disappear first), but because the things he was saying back in the mid 1800’s were very clearly against the dominant paradigm– the one in which they operate so coolly. The basic contours of Marx’s analysis I would say aren’t exactly incorrect; in fact, I would say that they are more accurate now than when he came up them. To tell you the honest truth, I don’t think any of these people have ever read Marx.
I’ve learned that if someone says “that’s Marxist,” I just look up what Marx actually said. I’ve found that Marx and I tend to come up with the same things a great deal of the time. It’s actually kind of bizarre.
The right is trying to repackage itself as not imperialist or religious. It’s now trying to connect to my generation in libertarian way–South Park, Penn and Teller, Reason, Drew Carey, and Ron Paul. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the same exploitive right wing that it always was.
Great post… For the record, Sobel’s views do not represent those of the faculty of WVU, or even of the faculty in the Social Sciences. My colleagues in Sociology, Public Administration, and Social Work put out a book a few years ago that Sobel apparently ignored; it presents a counter viewpoint to letting the magic market solve all our ills.
http://www.wvupress.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=45&products_id=40
Just more “data” for the discussion:
http://www.forbes.com/2007/07/10/washington-virginia-utah-biz-cz_kb_0711bizstates-table.html
Wow! What a blog site!
Even in this age of supposed “enlightenment”, I still find it hard to believe that there are this many mouth-drooling, morons who believe this ultra-left, socialist blarney!