Positive Liberty

I really enjoyed Virginia Postrel’s several posts on thinktanks, but there’s an important point being overlooked: we can’t compare thinktanks to some hypothetical, ideally objective scholarly institution, because the latter don’t exist. We have to compare thinktanks to their real competitors: intellectuals in government institutions, or in overwhelmingly government-supported universities. There are obvious intellectual biases in the work of these scholars, traceable to their funding and other incentives, but unfortunately few people recognize that fact. When Cato produces a report about global warming, that makes pro-free market conclusions, the MSM says “well, they’re just funded by big corporations, so we don’t have to listen to their biased results.” But when NASA, or UC Berkeley, produces a report on global warming that makes pro-government conclusions, the MSM takes it as disinterested, logical thinking.

If privately funded thinktanks cater too much to their donors, so do government funded thinktanks, like the Bureau of this and that or the University of such and so. In fact, on balance, I suspect that we would find thinktanks like Rand Corporation or Brookings Institution, and even in some ways Cato, to be far better at maintaining disinterested objective scholarship, compared to government-run or -supported thinktanks.

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