James Buchanan was a truly amazing scholar. He taught us that politicians pursue interests just like we do--a basic truth we tend to forget.
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Massimiliano Trovato (@masstrovato) January 09, 2013Today, economics scholars and libertarians took to Twitter to pay condolences to one of the greatest US economists of the 20th century.
One of the greatest Public Choice pioneers. My deepest condolences RT @rizalshidiq: RIP: James Buchanan |—
Pramudya Oktavinanda (@PramOctavy) January 09, 2013
Very sad news, indeed. James Buchanan has just passed away, at the age of 92. A great hero of mine…. goo.gl/pSUZw—
Daniel Bier (@SkepticLiberty) January 09, 2013
RIP Professor James Buchanan telegraph.co.uk/news/obituarie… A true champion of liberty.—
Ryan Bourne (@RyanCPS) January 09, 2013
Un géant intellectuel nous quitte : l'économiste James Buchanan, Prix Nobel en 1968 libreafrique.org/Martin_Buchana…—
Christian Lepira (@KriKri_leps) January 09, 2013
A great free-market thinker has left us today. RIP James Buchanan. buff.ly/WA3aoM | #yal #tlot #tcot @mises @TheIHS—
(@YALiberty) January 09, 2013
Meanwhile, liberal pundit Matthew Yglesias decided today would be a good day to take a potshot:
James Buchanan no longer the most overrated living economist.—
Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 09, 2013
The Nobel Prize committee didn’t consider Buchanan overrated. (Buchanan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic in 1986.)
The hostility from liberals like Yglesias should come as no surprise. As the Cato Institute (where Buchanan was a senior fellow) notes, Buchanan’s work undermined the case for government solutions to market failures:
Before the work of [James] Buchanan and [his colleague Gordon] Tullock, economists and political scientists viewed “market failure” as a litmus test for government action. When the private sector was perceived to produce a sub-optimal outcome, government actors would reconfigure the situation so as to rectify the problem. Buchanan and Tullock’s 1962 book, The Calculus of Consent, aggressively questioned this scenario: why do we assume that because a government acts, it necessarily solves a given problem? Don’t public as well as private actors pursue their self-interest?
A former student, economist Steve Horwitz, says Buchanan “changed the face of economics and politics and advanced the cause of liberty as much as anyone in the second half of the 20th century.” And Yglesias has done … what exactly?
“@mattyglesias: James Buchanan no longer the most overrated living economist.” /from the most overrated blogger—
(@RandomEconomist) January 09, 2013
Bingo.