Yes, it’s true. The Honorable Richard A. Posner, Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, has admitted that, in the past, he made some mistakes, to wit:
“I have succumbed to this second Nirvana fallacy myself in some of my work in economic analysis of law.”
The “second Nirvana fallacy,” for those not up on the learned judge’s shorthand, is the belief that markets are the sole and necessarily valid criterion for determining the value of anything, from babies to barley. Now, this confession may strike some as less than heart-felt, coming as it does in footnote 41 on page 332 of the good judge’s latest and greatest, The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy, published in 2010, particularly since, for the past several years, Dick has been pummeling anyone and everyone associated with the idea that markets are efficient, self-regulating, and inherently reliable—everyone with the exception of himself. And the phrase “in some of my work” certainly merits a derisive chuckle or two, since the judge made a name for himself for several decades by insisting that markets were always reliable, that they answered every question. But, better late than never, Dick, better late than never.
Afterwords
I do seem to make a point of punching on Dick, but The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy isn’t a bad read, though not as good, I think, as last year’s A Failure of Capitalism, and, since I paid for both books with good, hard cash, I’ve earned the right to throw a punch or two. If I have time, I’d like to do a longer piece on the good and the bad of TCoCC. I’ll probably cut back on the snark, but not eliminate it entirely.
