Political Entrepreneurs

The Economic Engine of Political Change

On Working Hard: Reflections on Receiving APEE’s Distinguished Scholar Award

April 18th, 2014 by Edward Lopez

As I do each April, this past week I attended the meetings of the Association of Private Enterprise Education. You can find my brief overview here, where I mention that the Association recognized me with this year’s Distinguished Scholar Award.

It’s customary for the recipient to say a few words. My “acceptance” remarks were a brief reflection on APEE’s motto, “Work Hard, Play Hard” (in that order), and afterward several people had supportive things to say and asked if I would write down my remarks. Here goes.

You sometimes hear stories about a person at an advanced age being asked, “what would you have done differently?” You know how these stories go. No one ever says they wish they’d spent more time at the office.

These are foolish stories.

Do you know when people do say they wish they’d worked harder? Athletes at the end of a season when they didn’t win the championship. Students at the end of a semester when they didn’t get their grade. Our greatest preachers on many a Monday morning. Parents after a hard day, or week, or month. And all of us [scholars in the room] after a rejection letter from a peer-reviewed journal, or after a class that wasn’t quite prepped right.

Papers don’t write themselves. Books don’t promote themselves. Conferences don’t organize themselves. And students don’t go to grad school on their own. We have to keep working hard.

I am deeply honored and humbled to receive this recognition. And I owe a great debt of gratitude to my professors, colleagues, co-authors, students, and foundations that have supported my work especially Liberty Fund, Earhart Foundation, and the Charles Koch Foundation.

Thank you very much, APEE.  Work hard, play hard.

NOTE: Photo is by Phil Magness.

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.

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