My Recent Reading
Jennifer Burns and Andrew McAfee
Jennifer Burns
Jennifer Burns has written a 500-page biography of Milton Friedman, calling him The Last Conservative. Burns makes a number of attempts to connect Friedman’s intellectual stances to his background and personality, but I do not believe these work very well.
Overall, Friedman comes across as very low in agreeableness, so he has no problem going against the herd. But there are a lot of us like that.
She also makes attempts to put Friedman’s body of research into the context of the issues and controversies that were taking place at the time. I believe she mostly gets this right, which is remarkable given that her background is in history and the disputes took place before she was born (1975).
I am in a better position to offer perspective. Friedman’s professional importance was at its peak when I was an undergraduate (1971-1975) majoring in economics. All of his major contributions—the Friedman-Savage utility function, the permanent-income hypothesis, and the natural-rate hypothesis—were covered in intermediate theory classes.
Given my own background, I cannot say that I took away enough new insight from the book to make it worthwhile. But I think it would be healthy for students of economics today to read Burns’ biography to get a sense of the evolution of economic thought in the middle of the last century. In addition, I can once again mention my macro memoir.
Andrew McAfee
Andrew McAfee’ new book is called The Geek Way. I can give it strong praise.
For one thing, the chapter summaries seem sufficient to convey the ideas in the book. One can perhaps then quibble that it did not need to be a book. But if you don’t need to read the whole book to get its main ideas, count that as a feature relative to the chapter summaries, not a bug relative to the book.
McAfee uses the term “geek way” to describe the management approaches and cultures of companies run by contemporary managers, many of whom have a deep knowledge of software development. This contrasts with the way that large companies were managed in the twentieth century.
There is a huge overlap of interests between McAfee and myself. I have been writing about the contrast between modern companies and what I called The Dilbert Sector for twenty-five years.1 And McAfee also cites many books on what I call human interdependence.
In 1998, I wrote,
Today, we have a situation in which computer hardware is flexible and inexpensive. It is relatively simple to string together processors, storage devices, printers, and so forth. However, computer software continues to be expensive and inflexible. Once software architecture conforms to hardware architecture, the computer systems that support business applications will bear less resemblance to large capital equipment. This in turn has implications for the size and structure of firms.
I see McAfee’s book as a vindication of what I said in the last sentence.
I intend to write longer reviews of both books.
Thank you. These are helpful mini reviews.
In addition to tiny textbooks on human interdependence and Islamo-skepticism, I would be interested in a tiny book on Milton Friedman if it were to focus on an interesting aspect of his life.
For example, in The Three Languages of Politics you encourage open-minded political reasoning. A tiny book on Milton Friedman, or at least one chapter of a tiny book on a larger topic such as Open-Minded Political Communicators, might examine Friedman’s communication style or reasoning style. Is he a good example of the open-minded reasoning you encourage?
It’s interesting to note your observation about Friedman in The Three Languages of Politics. On page 27 you write.
“In the 1950s and the early 1960s, the people who had the right model were the people who were fighting for black Americans to have true voting rights, equal access to housing, and an end to the Jim Crow laws. The civilization-barbarism axis and the liberty-coercion axis did not provide the best insight into the issue. In fact, I would argue that among conservatives and libertarians, leading icons such as Barry Goldwater and Milton Friedman took positions that in retrospect were wrong-headed. In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman supported the rights of individuals to discriminate. His view might have been consistent with opposition to government-enforced discrimination, as produced by the Jim Crow laws. However, Goldwater did not even stand up against the Jim Crow laws. Instead, he supported the rights of states to enact such laws against the authority of the federal government.”
This is disappointing for my tribe. Friedman was the reason I joined the libertarian tribe.
So where’s the open-minded reasoning tribe? Is this Substack it? :)
Excellent, high energy interview a couple weeks ago with Burns on Russ Roberts (EconTalk). I suspect it will make his 2023 top interviews list. Just say’n.