Political Entrepreneurs

The Economic Engine of Political Change

BARRON’S reviews Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers

December 2nd, 2012 by Wayne Leighton

Check out the latest issue of Barron’s, in which Michael Strong reviews Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers. The book review section is available online here, and the hard copy is on newsstands now.

Money quote:

How and when does political and economic change happen? Does such change require a crisis? What role do ideas play? And how might those who hope to effect change invest their time, money, and effort? Economics professors Wayne Leighton and Edward Lopez, active promoters of free-market ideas, grapple with these urgent questions in this absorbing and inspiring book.

Strong knows a thing or two about the importance of ideas, as well as how to advance them to promote political change. He’s one of the visionaries behind the Free Cities movement. He’s also lead author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems, with John Mackey, CEO Whole Foods Market, Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Hernando de Soto, Co-Chair of the U.N. Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, and others.

Strong’s closing thought, which quotes Madmen, provides a nice little perspective on where this website gets its name:

“There is great opportunity” the authors write, “for the political entrepreneur to either create or destroy value.” They point out that “ideas become powerful not simply because they are conceived by academic scribblers and then filtered into society by intellectuals, but because political entrepreneurs discover ways to implement those ideas into society’s shared institutions.”

Welcome to this discussion about political entrepreneurship!

One thought on “BARRON’S reviews Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers”

Pingback: Barrons lopez | Farestrans

Comments are closed.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.189, ch.7)

The most successful entrepreneurs know what they do well, they know the market and the opportunities within it, and they choose those activities that create the most value. This is true in economic as well as political markets.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.178, ch.7)

[W]hen the right elements come together at the right time and place and overwhelm the status quo, it is because special people make it happen. We call them political entrepreneurs.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.176. ch.7)

While we started this book with Danny Biasone saving basketball, we end it with Norman Borlaug saving a billion lives. These stories are not that different. Both faced vested interests, which were reinforced by popular beliefs that things should be a certain way—that is, until a better idea came along.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.174, ch.6)

Because there was a general belief that homeownership was a good thing, politicians found the public with open arms.... Everybody was winning—except Alfred Marshall, whose supply and demand curves were difficult to see through the haze of excitement at the time, and except Friedrich Hayek, whose competition as a discovery procedure was befuddled... In short, once politicians started getting credit for homeownership rates, the housing market was doomed.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.166, ch.6)

Everyone responded rationally to the incentives before them. In short, the rules that guided homeownership changed over time, which in turn changed the incentives of these actors. And bad things happened.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.153, ch.6)

They understood the economics. The ideas had already won in ... the regulatory agency itself. All that remained to be overcome were some vested interests and a handful of madmen in authority.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.146, ch.6)

If the idea for auctions of spectrum use rights had been part of the public debate since at least 1959, why didn’t the relevant institutions change sooner? What interests stood in the way?

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.121, ch.5)

When an academic scribbler comes up with a new idea, it has to resonate well with widely shared beliefs, which in turn must overcome the vested interests at the table. Many forces come together to explain political change, even though it may seem like coincidence of time and place.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.120, ch.5)

It’s the rules of the political game that deserve our focus, not politicians’ personalities or party affiliations.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.119, ch.5)

In short, ideas are a type of higher-order capital in society. Like a society that is poor in capital and therefore produces little consumer value, a society that is poor in ideas and institutions will have bad incentives and therefore few of the desirable outcomes that people want.

©2024 Wayne A Leighton & Edward López • Web Design by Barrel Strength