Daniel Klein classifies libertarians into challengers and bargainers. (He has a third category, “royalty,” to describe Milton Friedman and Adam Smith, who managed to achieve very high status.) Klein uses as an example of a topic the minimum wage. A challenger is someone who will say that the minimum wage should be abolished, while a bargainer is someone who sill say that the minimum wage should not be raised. Pointer from Tyler Cowen, who Klein pegs as a bargainer (I would agree).
Some comments:
1. I would describe challengers and bargainers in terms of language. Challengers use the language of certainty. “This is what I think, and people who disagree are just wrong.” Bargainers use the language of doubt or compromise. “Here is where my opponents and I agree, and here is where I think they are mistaken.”
2. I am mostly a bargainer. However, when I write posts using challenger language, I get a lot more praise and mention among libertarians. In fact, I have tried to keep myself from being influenced by such reinforcement.
3. You might be able to adapt these linguistic differences to other parts of the political spectrum. For example, I imagine that Paul Krugman evolved into the writer he is because he could not resist the positive reinforcement he received for expressing anger and certainty.
4. I think that Klein’s disctinction explains why I prefer having my own blog. I think it is fair to describe Bryan Caplan as more of a challenger, and when we were both at EconLog our styles clashed.*
5. Klein is never clear on whether the he is drawing an intellectual distinction between bargaining and challenging or whether he is making sociological observations. In fact, most of the talk strikes me as observations about differences between challengers and bargainers in terms of their personalities and social circumstances. For example, he says that the challengers tend to draw cult-like followings. On the other hand, he does say that an individual can make a choice about which stance to adopt, and it may even be possible to adopt different stances in different circumstances. That makes it sound more like an intellectual distinction. Bargainer that I am, I am trying to split the difference between making an intellectual distinction and making a sociological distinction, so that I want to emphasize linguistic differences.
6. I think that one difference, which can be viewed as intellectual but is probably grounded in personality, is that of certainty vs. doubt. The libertarians who Klein classifies as challengers strike me as highly certain. The bargainers have doubts. For example, challengers are quite certain that the world would be a better place with open borders, if drug laws were abolished, and so on. As a bargainer, I think that this is likely to be the case, but I am not so all-fired certain. Since challengers do not give much thought to being wrong, the fact that they are in a minority on an issue never bothers them. When I am in the minority, I question my own position–although I try to question my own position in any event.
7. In terms of what Jeffrey Friedman calls “the libertarian straddle,” challengers rely more on the philosophical a priori case for liberty. Think of Rothbard and the non-aggression principle. Bargainers rely more on the empirical economic case for liberty, which is that societies with more economic liberty tend to be more prosperous.
*This is all hindsight, in that I left EconLog primarily to pursue an ed-tech start-up. That did not go well, although I did learn a lot about how software had changed in the 15 years since I had been out of it.
I think the contrast between you and Bryan Caplan made EconLog far more interesting in the way you both would often put forth similar thoughts, and the tone and presentation made the concepts and ideas easier to understand.
I agree that Caplan is a challenger, not in the way of Paul Krugman, but rather that he has a high level of confidence in his world view. This is both a good and bad thing, but for Bryan, I think it works out quite well.
I could never be so confident, I’m too much of a skeptic.
I like Bryan Caplan, but I didn’t enjoy brash broad-sides when Bryan would post something wildly overstated–often a complete dismissal of some line of work Arnold was exploring–and then go “yeah? yeah? yeah?” to everything Arnold said back. To put it mildly, that kind of rhetoric is not condusive to intelligent conversation.
I enjoyed the combined blog prior to that happening, for what it’s worth.
I am not sure about “challenger” versus “bargainer”. Instead of “challenger”, I tend to think of things like “simplified”, “idealistic” or even just “naive”. It’s good to ask such questions, but it’s also good to be humble about things that hundreds of millions of people are doing. Often there is a reason for the way things are that is not so obvious.
Don’t we know that there is no existing economic theory that supports the single Card and Krueger paper that people like Krugman use to “prove” their views on minimum wage?
OTOH, I would have never claimed that Card and Krueger would find a negative result.
(By “supports” I mean the extrapolation that increased minimum wage increases wages used by the minimum wage increase supporters- the problem is that there is a kind of tragedy of the commons of humility in research, the more obnoxious wins.)
Btw, I hear ya’ and my greatest disdain has always been reserved for Krugman’s sycophants, but I suspect his problems began much earlier.
One of the most depressing things I ever read was when I came across a back-and-forth letters to the editor in a (not economics) journal by three research groups I followed and respected. These were people who spend decades honing a craft utterly dismissing each other and the significance of their work. And even more importantly I realized that was what I had to look forward to-and I didn’t even expect to be of their caliber. Then, even worse, it hit me like a diamond bullet, I realized this is probably the personality trait that got them there.
Since it has come up here naturally (and since I worry Arnold doesn’t get much fan mail) let me second Jackson’s comment above that I found Arnold and Bryan’s styles mostly complimentary and econ-centered, leavened with a libertarian view. When Arnold left (some time after David Henderson joined) I rapidly came to think of EconLog as primarily a libertarian blog, leavened with some economics, which I think was the worse for it.
Even now, I think of EconLog as a libertarian blog (despite the economics content) and Arnold’s blog as an economics blog (despite the strong libertarian sentiments). Perhaps this is due to my own inclinations to be a bargainer and not a challenger.
Anyway, thanks Arnold, for doing this blog. I was extremely grateful when you returned. Your voice was sorely missed.
I think most libertarians would agree with Hayek when he said, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
I always find that quote hard to reconcile with the “challenger” position of libertarians. If you believe that quote, how can you possibly be so confident that your prescriptions for society are correct?
Because the other side is so certain!
I think this is a very valuable insight, Arnold.
Of course, I too, am a bargainer, so take that as you will.
A related question, did economics make you a libertarian, or did libertarianism lead you to economics?
The libertarianism came well after the economics. But a lot of it came from observing organizational behavior, which gets one away from a fully rational model of firm behavior, much less government agency behavior.
Do thone needing certainty gravitate toward issues of certainty and the nuanced away from them?
The left and to a lesser extent the right find comfort in telling themselves the other side is evil.
I have also been in a lot of different churches and they are always the most certain about things they areally wrong about other denominations. When you are feeling anxious about yourself, you can at least be sure the other guy is worth hating.
Your 2009 description of certainty as a belief + emotional kicker was/is apt. I strive to be a bargainer.
I remember a smart man once saying: “Given that I view the left as tapped out, I might as well say so. Not because I think it will change someone’s mind, but because I think it is more respectful to be above-board about what I think.” This was from one of your last Econlog posts, in which you criticized Tyler Cowen for being too agreeable to a set of bad ideas. I guess bargaining mode is nice when you’re trying to be respectful to a hostile audience, or when you’re actually in a position to broker a deal. But a basic respect for your listener’s intelligence requires that you state clearly what you actually believe. If your listener has a very poor understanding of how the world actually works, you should probably say so clearly but respectfully and not placate them too much. Being a challenger doesn’t mean being a jerk. It just means you take your own arguments seriously and believe the logical conclusions. Make clear to your listener that while [marginal improvement in policy] is a good idea, [radical policy change] is even better. I think that Arnold is usually quite good about this.
I think very few people stick to only bargaining/challenging every time. But many people have a strong tendency toward one or the other. I think that is what is meant by the term.
What is so amazing is the people who are so certain about things they are also certainly wrong about. On the rightish side, support for torture fits the bill. On the leftish side, support for the right of black kids to walk up and beat down people and threaten to kill them without the consequence of the victim taking defensive actions fits the bill (granted, they do confuse the issue with legit police brutality).
On the torture issue, they seem sure because the terrorists certainly deserve whatever is coming to them and nothing else matters. It doesn’t seem to matter to them that torture doesn’t work, the CIA are just bad people, or that we aren’t actually torturing the people that the firebreathers think deserve everything and more.
On the left, I figure they are just sure we are a racist society, so everything is a result of racism, even pointing out how it isn’t racism just proves you are a closet racist.
Why would I want to bargain with people like this on these issues?
OTOH, If you can find me a left-bargainer on Chapter 12 of Keynes’ General Theory I’d happily seek common ground with them. Are there any?
That “torture doesn’t work” is disputed. Talk about unwarranted certainty. There many things I didn’t like about the previous administration, but its willingness to subject a handful of high-level Islamo-Nazis to waterboarding in an effort to find out what else these vermin had planned does not bother me in the slightest.