Monetarist induced identity crisis
It’s my boyfriend’s 21st as of midnight, so I’m sharing my feelings to keep myself sane while providing moral support to him as he regurgitates the shots that his bastard, drunkard friends so eagerly shoved down his throat…. I’m pretty sure that’s not how it worked exactly, but that’s the picture he painted for me after his roommate deposited him in my care and wished me luck.
So I haven’t yet started on my expectations reading because I’m still trying to get a better understanding of monetarism. I’m reading the “Conversations with Economists” chapter on monetarism, and so far it’s making enough sense to me. I’m at the part where Brunner is discussing how monetarist thought reassesses the assumptions Keynes makes about politicians. What I get from it so far is that he disagrees with Keynes’ implication that individuals in the government are only concerned with social costs and benefits and have no personal ambitions. Instead he seems to adhere to the method of thought we developed in Humphrey’s comparative class last semester, where politicians are rational and self interested, and seeking to maximize their profits even if it’s at the expense of the public sector.
This logic makes sense to me, and it kind of creates issues with how I perceive my identity. Monetarists advocate limited government intervention in the private sector and therefore laissez fair policies, which are associated with conservativeness. I have, and still do consider myself a politically liberal-minded person, but my agreement with aspects of monetarist thought seems contrary to this fact. I think the issue has to do largely with the strict dichotomy between liberal and conservative. Politicians have as great a likelihood for exploitation of the public sector as corporations do in the private sector, and therefore both need to be limited. I guess that thought in and of itself is both liberal and conservative and at the same time neither. I don’t really know what that perspective gives me aside from non-idealistic. But there you have it. I’m going to go hunt down some former frat boys now.
