The Point

Some guy I've never heard of explains in detail why Yglesias et alia are a menace to society, without resort to that sort of heated rhetoric. Inter alia Matt Yglesias replies to the critique:

But one point that I agree with here, is that while I’ll cop to being a “neoliberal” I don’t acknowledge that I have critics to the “left” of me.

He then lists a long list of things that critics to the left of him cannot critique, I guess. Most of the things listed are outcome based, redistribute wealth, improve k-12 education outcomes, etc, without providing his preferred methods.  Others, break the "illegitimate" and anti-competitive licensing regimes, are policy specific.

All are open to left or socialist critiques. The fact that he fails to acknowledge this fact, if I can be factitious for a moment, is all you need know about Yglesias.  Consider that his preferred method of reforming k-12 is to attack unions and insist on market-based solutions even though he has no clue how education operates.  How, one wonders, does he plan on redistributing wealth?  Tax transfer payments?  Wouldn't a more left-leaning solution be the equalization of rates of pay through increased union participation in the nation's economic life?

It would be one thing to say I reject criticism from the left because . . . (One assumes the because would be because he is a Reaganite neo-Liberal convinced of the unique genius of the unfettered market or, put another way, he is totally ignorant of the actual history of markets and modern capitalism.) He might, in fact would, do well to consider the critiques of those to his left on his basic ideological assumptions, and he would do well to engage in the facts and arguments he would find there as a way of shoring up neo-Liberalism's weak empirical underpinnings.