Editor Note: Jack High, retired from a professorship in economics at George Mason University, came to specialize in political economy, particularly business lobbying (rent-seeking) for special government favor. In this regard, he edited Regulation: Economic Theory and History (University of Michigan Press: 1991) and wrote (with Clayton Coppin) The Politics of Purity (University of Michigan Press: 1999). This interview discusses this interest given the resurgence of themes relating to political capitalism , contra-capitalism, and corporate cronyism, important themes at MasterResource.
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Part I: Discovering, Teaching Market-Process Economics
Q. Jack, just to (re)introduce you to readers, tell us a bit about how you became an academic economist and came to embrace Austrian School’ or ‘market process’ economics.
A. In the late 1960s I read two books, Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt and Capitalism the Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand, that piqued my interest in economics.…
“… the historical and geological record suggests recent changes in the climate over the past century are within the bounds of natural variability.” (p. 8)
“Projections of future climate and weather events rely on models demonstrably unfit for the purpose. As a result, rising levels of CO2 do not obviously pose an immediate, let alone imminent, threat to the earth’s climate.” (p. 8)
The CO2 Coalition has posted the amicus curiae brief of Dr. William Happer, President of the CO2 Coalition; Dr. Richard Lindzen, a Coalition Director; and Dr. Steven Koonin concerning lawsuits filed by Oakland, San Francisco, et al. against certain large oil companies. The plaintiffs want to recover costs associated with climate adaptation.
This brief is in response to U.S. District Judge William Alsup’s request for a tutorial on climate change and climate science. …
“Beyond rent-seeking, a corporation can engage in other behaviors long decried by classical liberals, behaviors that might be characterized as contra-capitalism.”
Cronyism … Rent-seeking … Regulatory capture … Special-interest politics … Strategic uses of government intervention … Many terms have described business lobbying within the up-for-grabs socioeconomic system of political capitalism where the political means replaces the economic means. [1] It results in what classical-liberal entrepreneur Charles Koch calls bad profit. [2]
But beyond rent-seeking, a corporation can engage in other behaviors long decried by classical liberals, behaviors that might be characterized as contra-capitalism. Importantly, the corporation might not recognize these behaviors as an explicit strategy (Enron did not; Tesla does not). These separable behaviors are complementary. And now, with a term, what was implicit can become explicit for the public policy and corporate-governance debate.…