Every now and then, CJR’s Magazinist delivers an opinionated look at the journals of opinion.
Discovering Japan
The cover story in the July 2009 issue of Reason, “Turning Japanese”, examines how the current economic crisis is dangerously similar to the economic crisis in 1990s Japan. After Japan’s economy collapsed, the Japanese government introduced several of its own anti-recession stimulus packages and public-works spending initiatives, which did a very poor job revitalizating the Japanese economy. Well, according to authors Michael Flynn, Anthony Randazzo, and Adam B. Summers:
The United States in 2008–09, unfortunately, has started down the same path. Federal intervention and the expectation of additional government action are removing firms’ incentive to clean up their balance sheets by selling “toxic” assets. Why accept pennies on the dollar if a deep-pocketed new bidder (i.e., the state) looms large on the scene? The Japanese experience shows that when the government is an active participant in the market, many firms would rather accept state support than initiate the inevitable financial reckoning. Such a status quo does not provide a sustainable foundation for the economy. Instead, it restricts economic growth and creates a cycle of stagnation.
While “Turning Japanese” moves beyond conventional thinking about the latest economic downturn—that it’s just like the crash of 1929 and we need government intervention like Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal—and while it features entertaining Japanimation-style visuals of President Obama, the article seems a little flimsy. The major flaw seems to be that the authors are comparing what appears to be a global economic crisis and one country’s response to it with a purely national (if large-scale) economic downturn. The article also suffers because it does not appear to draw much from the work of actual economists. One of the few research pieces quoted in the article apparently comes from a 1996 book written by an Australian historian.
The solution to the current crisis, Reason breezily assures readers, is to reduce taxes for all businesses permanently and cut taxes for all individuals: “Those tax policies are the quickest way to stem a recession.” While this solution is perhaps a little simplistic (Really? Which country stopped a recession using that strategy?) Reason still deserves credit for daring to present an alternative economic model to explain the current state of the economy. And for those anime-style graphics, which really are entertaining.
Come Sail Away
Senior editor Brian Doherty has an odd piece entitled “20,000 Nations Above the Sea“—a profile of Milton Freidman’s grandson Patri Friedman, who advocates extending libertarian principles so far as to leave the world’s nation states altogether. The thirty-three-year old Friedman is a proponent of an idea called seasteading: building cities on platforms in the open sea to avoid government intervention. According to the (apparently earnest) article:
The seasteading project benefits from the fact that many poorer countries are willing to sell their sovereignty to the highest bidder in a flag-of-convenience process that works to the buyer’s advantage. “I definitely think at the start those countries will want a cut [of whatever economic benefit a seastead produces], but keep in mind we’re in a good negotiating position,” Friedman says. “We can talk to every country in the world and only need one to give us the deal we want, and we can have them bid against each other for how low the cut can be.”
From a purely technical perspective, the profile is reasonably successful. And Friedman’s story is interesting—he’s apparently one of the sexiest geeks alive (not, admittedly, a terribly competitive category) and the Friedman family’s growing libertarianism alone is worth an article somewhere. The trouble is that seasteading is so patently ridiculous an idea that the article is actually hard to read without contempt and confusion. (Nobody will come away from this article thinking “Yeah! Seasteading! It’s only a matter of time now!”) The fact that Doherty has a weakness for phrases like “He set his ideas afloat on the sea of the World Wide Web” does not help much, either.
Cities. Built On platforms. In the oceans. I guess it’s more feasible than The Twenty-One Balloons—but not by much.
The Perils of Sexting
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Interesting and tough commentary . . . but I keep asking, where in CJR are those close and critical readings of Mother Jones and The Nation and other 'left' journals, especially in this moment of leftist upswing in our politics? Journalists not so long ago used to offer the excuse that the Republicans were in power, therefore they were justified in heightened scrutiny of pro-Republican or 'conservative' commentaries and assertions. What's the excuse for the imbalance at CJR these days?
'Reason' is not exactly the most influential magazine in America these days, whatever its vices or virtues. Could The Nation, to cite one example, be exempt from criticism because of the Navasky effect? I notice CJR's reality-challenged chairman was the subject of a softball piece in The New York Times a couple of weeks back . . . although CJR sometimes criticizes that paper's staffers, like Alessandra Stanley, albeit for more obvious offenses than those cited against 'Reason'.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Mon 27 Jul 2009 at 12:48 PM
Luzer's last Magazinist column dealt with The American Prospect, which certainly counts as one of the more prominent 'left' journals.
#2 Posted by Justin Peters, CJR on Mon 27 Jul 2009 at 01:01 PM
Fair enough. And the perusal of The American Prospect did bring the appropriate 'show me, I'm a consumer' tone that was brought to the issue of Reason.
Background for my comment is that CJR still (unless I'm proven mistaken) seems to have spent a lot more time trying to debunk NYT columnists Douthat and (before him) Kristol, who speak for the Right, than Krugman, who gets away with a lot because he won the Nobel Prize (well, so did Milton Friedman in his day, you know?), or Herbert, who is simply ignored, possibly as an embarrassment.
#3 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Tue 28 Jul 2009 at 01:09 PM
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#4 Posted by SolomonJannie, CJR on Sat 4 Jun 2011 at 12:29 PM