1. A thread on this very fine @ezraklein profile of Warren - vox.com/policy-and-pol… -, my own piece on Warren and public choice - foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/12/eli… and a nearly forgotten 2011 Internet spat. Short version: Elizabeth Warren is a left neo-liberal with a theory of politics.
2. The part in Ezra's profile that stood out for me was her theory of change: "what separates Warren’s campaign ... is a systemic theory to change the political economy of Washington — to transform the institutional context in which every piece of legislation is considered"
3. This involves not just an anti-corruption package but a broader attack on the structural barriers to getting anything done in Washington DC. The aim is to create fairer markets that have not been captured by those who benefit from status quo.
4. This understanding of the problem is, as per my own piece in Foreign Policy, one that draws on her background in public choice and law and economics: a whole lot of regulation is indeed obfuscation in the interests of powerful narrowly focused private interests.
5. But (and here she shares instincts with Mancur Olson): these private interests don't need government regulation: they can also corrupt markets perfectly well on their own. Olson complained of the "monodiabolism" of public choice and its obsession with state, not private power.
6. So what she wants to do is to combine (a) broad regulatory power to redress the imbalances, with (b) efforts to ensure that this regulatory power is not captured again. Ezra talks about her obsessive concern with choosing personnel carefully as a means of addressing (b).
7. Back in 2011, I accidentally launched a somewhat intemperate debate on "left neoliberalism," arguing that the problem with a lot of market friendly liberals was not so much what they wanted, as that they had no "theory of politics" that would really get them there.
8. The best summary of the debate was Cosma's - bactra.org/weblog/778.html - what left-neoliberalism lacked was a good answer to the question: "What are the processes and mechanisms by which political change happens?" Warren's program is a left neo-liberalism that has an answer.
9. This helps explain why Warren's approach to politics has a genuinely different intellectual DNA than Sanders' (nb: the headline to my FP piece says that Sanders people don't get Warren; my sense is that they get her fine, but disagree while preferring her to other opponents)
10. It also helps explain the unusual mix of intellectuals who support Warren, which combines some people on the left, many left neo-liberals, and some former libertarians, who I suspect are attracted to her commitment to market competition.
11. Actually, expanding that last bit, it helps explain why Warren is cracking libertarian intellectuals apart. Libertarians used to believe both that competitive markets were awesome (although they were best left to manage themselves) and that entrepreneurs played a heroic role
12. Now, that consensus has cracked apart - it is clear that the current phase of capitalism has very strong tendencies to concentration and monopoly power (which are exacerbated by the supine attitude to antitrust). This is leading to fissures that Warren is widening.
13. Some libertarians are attracted to Warren, on the basis that they agree with her end (genuinely competitive markets), and that the means she identifies (even if problematic) are a reasonable practical answer to an obvious problem.
14. Others instead are leaning in on the entrepreneur-as-hero, reviving old Schumpeterian arguments about the benefits of monopoly to justify a continued approach of leaving untouchedconcentrations of power and the entrepreneurs that they empower.
15. Finally, however, Ezra's piece tacitly identifies an important problem that left-neoliberals, Sanders people, and those further to the left are only beginning to grapple with: that complexity is not just a product of obfuscation, but a profound feature of the modern world.
16. The right has a variety of arguments drawing on Hayek that suggest that markets within a very broad set of constitutional constraints are the best means of dealing with complexity, and should be left well alone. Liberals and the left have no compelling alternative.
17. though they are trying to put one together (this is one of the problems underlying the revival of the socialist calculation debate described in this Economist article by @EconoScribe - economist.com/christmas-spec… ).
18. A fully developed theory of politics can't just be 'sweep the stables clean of all the accumulated filth' (although that is obviously an excellent start). It also has to have a positive account of how government/democracy can solve complex problems and of how it can do better
19. That's an enormous challenge, which none of us have any good answers to, and indeed that we are only beginning to start to identify properly. Finis.
