Debate on reserve fractional banking devolves into public squabble
Ron Paul recently showed 聽how he is very open to debate, by having both Professor Joseph Salerno (a 100% reserves advocate) and Professor Larry White (a 鈥渇ree banker鈥�) testify before his sub-committee聽on the subject of fractional reserve banking.聽
However, as he made clear in in his Congressional web site, Ron Paul is very much on Salerno鈥檚 side of the debate.
George Selgin is none too happy about this, and Ron Paul鈥檚 post has elicited from him a quite vituperative comment. 聽Selgin goes so far as to accuse 100% reserves advocates as being a 鈥渕oronic cult.鈥�
Selgin, commenting on his own comment, says:
Although the first priority of every believer in monetary freedom must be to combat bogus arguments for monetary central planning, we cannot do this effectively unless we are just as relentless in exposing the 100-percent reserve movement for the moronic cult that it is, to keep its clownish convictions from giving the entire movement for monetary freedom, if not free market economics more generally, a bad name.
Selgin is obviously endorsing two approaches to advancing fractional-reserve-friendly free banking. 聽There is the 鈥渁rgumentation鈥� approach he leads off with. 聽And then there is the 鈥渆xpose the cult鈥� approach he insists must not be neglected. 聽But what exactly does he mean by that?
Nowhere in Selgin鈥檚 original post does he make any kind of pscyho-sociological case for the anti-fractional reserves set qualifying as a cult, much less a moronic one. 聽He asserts that they鈥檙e in error (and vaguely references economic refutations against them made elsewhere, without giving a hint as to their content). 聽But it is doubtful that he means that refuting them is how he means to expose them as a cult, because then it wouldn鈥檛 really be a separate approach from the first approach he brings up.
When a commenter on his blog called him to task for his incivility, Selgin gave tell as to what he might mean by 鈥渆xposing鈥� his intellectual opponents.
Rest assured, Pedro, I am no more interested in being 鈥渘ice鈥� to 100-percenters than I am interested in being so to central bankers. Nor am I intent on persuading them about anything鈥揑鈥檝e tried that, as have others, to no avail. Ridicule is no more than their just deserts.
So perhaps, what Selgin means is to 鈥渆xpose鈥� his opponents by ridiculing them. 聽Perhaps his aim is to prevent his opponents from achieving what he thinks of as undue influence and notoriety聽by simply calling them names. 聽In other words, he aims to 鈥渆xpose鈥� his opponents as a moronic cult by the mere act of calling them a moronic cult. 聽It鈥檚 not like this approach never works. 聽If, in middle school, one student calls another 鈥渁n idiot鈥� enough times, that will often cause other students (especially the first student鈥檚 followers) to write the second student off as one. 聽What is ironic is this kind of social strategy is itself more typical of cults than anything. 聽Not that I would ever accuse Selgin of being a cultist. 聽I鈥檓 not even an academic, and even I know that would be unbecoming of one.
