I'm not a big Naomi Klein fan. Nor am I a big Naomi Klein hater. As far as I can tell, her thesis is fairly banal: Political movements use moments of crisis in order to implement long-desired reforms. This has long been understood to apply to the Left, with the New Deal and the Great Depression sitting heavily atop our memories, but it also applies to the Right. What turned Klein's thesis from standard into Important was that her book sold a bajillion copies, and hey, good for her. Better that than more tweens reading Twilight. Plus, it's a good sign for my career when books about economic reforms become mega bestsellers. And sure, like Will WIlkinson, I didn't think Klein came off great in the New Yorker profile. She sounds like a lot of the folks I knew at Santa Cruz whose ideal society took the form of one long anti-war protest, occasionally punctuated by informal meetings. That's less an ideal for governance than it is an ache for a feeling of engaged togetherness mixed with a radical's suspicion of authority, but people can follow their bliss. What I don't understand, though, is why it discomfits Will. I, after all, am something of a statist. I don't have a radical's suspicion of authority. I have a reformer's belief that government is where the public can construct a legitimate authority that's generally reflective of their desires. But Will is a libertarian. And a big fan of fellow libertarian Arnold Kling. Who recently wrote this about the auto bailout:
This is an example where pure libertarianism gets you quickly to the right answer. Lose the "we," and instead ask, would I undertake this policy myself? That is, would I lend money to the auto makers? If the answer is that I wouldn't, then the implication is that "we" shouldn't.The same reasoning applies to giving money to financial firms. I wouldn't, therefore we shouldn't.Picture everyone in Congress who voted for TARP standing on a street corner in a Santa suit, ringing a bell, and asking for donations to pay for the rescues of AIG, Citigroup, and so forth. In a libertarian society, that is what they would have to do in order to fund the bailouts.
A world in which social priorities need to be funded by streetcorner begging is at least as radical as anything Klein envisions. Indeed, as far as I can tell, Klein has a lot more in common with Kling than with me. She seems to think a radical devolution of authority will somehow result in dispersed decision-making that ends up approximating an anti-corporate social democracy. Everyone gets health care, and no one sells billboards. Kling thinks it will create that mystical griffin known as a functioning and free market. I think they're both wrong and it will lead to economic catastrophe that inevitably births an authoritarian strongman. But that's why I'm a modern liberal. It's not perfect, but it's better than the alternatives. Will, however, is a modern libertarian. You'd think he'd be more sympathetic to Klein's radical mistrust of the state, even if he didn't agree with her vision of what a free people would eventually choose. Meanwhile, if you'd like to hear more from Klein in her own words, hear she is talking to another man of the moment, David Frost:
