(Artikel door Manu Dierickx Visschers)

Tijdens de eerste week van september 2012 bliezen de libertariërs en klassiek-liberalen van over de hele wereld verzamelen in Praag voor de ‘general meeting’ van de Mont Pelerin Society (MPS). Boudewijn Bouckaert en ikzelf waren de enige Vlamingen daar aanwezig. Deze vereniging werd in 1947 door Friedrich von Hayek opgericht om de groeiende destructieve socialistische invloeden in de politiek en samenleving binnen het westen een halt toe te roepen. Een streefdoel dat nog lang niet voorbijgestreefd is…

Bijzonder interessant aan een MPS-meeting vormt de mogelijkheid om telkens een aantal wereldtoppers binnen het klassiek-liberale en libertarische denken aan het werk te zien. Dit jaar waren dit ondermeer: Kevin Murphy, Robert Barro, Sam Peltzman, Alan Meltzer, Jesus Huerta de Soto, Richard Ebeling, Peter Boettke en, ja, Othmar Issing, vroeger een topfiguur van de Bundesbank en later van de ECB. In deze bijdrage belichten we daarom kort wat een aantal van hen te vertellen hadden.

De focus van deze bijdrage ligt op twee belangrijke thema’s die in Praag aan bod kwamen, namelijk de vraag (1) of we vandaag een revivalvan het socialisme meemaken en (2) hoe we de eurocrisis dienen te interpreteren. We maken hierbij veelvuldig gebruik van citaten uit de bijdragen die zijn op de MPS-sessies hebben voorgesteld, want wellicht is het beter hun inzichten te vertellen in hun woorden dan volledig of uitsluitend te steunen op een interpretatie die ervan gemaakt wordt.

The socialist revival?

Sam Peltzman was de eerste spreker die een antwoord diende te geven op de vraag of er sprake is van een “socialist revival” als antwoord op de huidige financieel-economische crisis. Misschien als gevolg van zijn relatief hoge leeftijd plaatste hij alles in een wat ruimer perspectief, waardoor hij niet zo pessimistisch was. Hij wijst hiervoor op de onderliggende politieke én economische krachten: “The political economy will have to choose between higher taxes on the young to keep these promises, an accelerated shrinkage of the rest of the budget or less generous public health and pension programs. It is not clear yet which way the decision will go. What is clear is that for the first time since the invention of the welfare state the magnitude and generosity of its signature programs is at political risk. This conclusion may seem startling right now, but it will become unavoidable over time.”

Hij merkt terecht op dat er in de feiten nog geen sterke stijging van het aantal socialistische maatregelen vast te stellen is: “Even as the academics, including many economists, were cheering on the Keynesian revival and journalists were heralding the death of capitalism they could not enlist the sensible middle. There has been considerable political change but no discernible Socialist revival. […] Few left parties that moved right during the great restraint have moved back to a full-throated socialism. On the practical level, the spurt in government growth has not been matched by willingness to pay for it, and this ambivalence has led to new crises and unresolved questions about the fiscal future.” Zelfs linkse politici lijken te beseffen dat de economisch kostprijs van socialistisch beleid hoog kan (en zal) zijn.

Volgens de nuchtere analyse van Peltzman bestaan er in de toekomst twee mogelijke ontwikkelingen: “One consists of a validation of the socialist revival. This will entail some combination of increased taxes and increased regulation. The alternative path will involve fiscal restraint that is not offset by substituting regulation for taxation. In describing the framework for these two scenarios I have perhaps given more weight to the second than the first. If so, it is because the constraints on a permanent socialist revival are, I believe, under-appreciated. Of these constraints the most important is demographic. The fiscal stress created by the ambivalent response to the crisis is about to get much worse as the ageing of the population accelerates. […] The other constraint on socialist revival is more speculative. It rests on circumstantial evidence that potentially taxable are increasingly hidden. Any attempt to meaningfully increase tax rates risks accelerating this process.” In essentie kan de politiek de krachtmeting met de economie dus niet winnen, op het risico af de tak af te zagen waarop zij zit.

Een andere interessante opmerking van Peltzman die we hier even willen uitdiepen, gaat over zijn visie op de verhouding tussen belastingen en uitgaven enerzijds en de omvang van regelgeving anderzijds. Hij wijst terecht op het potentieel gevaar: “If government spending is restrained there will be a pressure to use regulation as a substitute for government spending. We cannot rule out a scenario in which government’s economic presence grows via expanded regulation while budgets are kept in check. There is after all nothing like a budget or borrowing constraint on the regulatory state as there is for the fiscal state.” Met andere woorden, regulering als verborgen belastingen.

Vreemd is echter dat hij tegen deze denkwijze de volgende opmerking opwerpt: “We can only say now that such a large scale substitution of regulation fors pending would be historically exceptional. Regulation and spending have tended to be complements rather than substitutes historically.” Hiertegen zouden we evenwel kunnen inbrengen dat Peltzman wellicht geen onderscheid maakt tussen verschillende soorten regelgeving. Enerzijds is er wetgeving die vorm geeft aan het groeiend aantal budgettaire maatregelen, zoals subsidiestelsels, en anderzijds is er dwingende regelgeving met gedragsverplichtingen. De groei in regelgeving in tijden van stijgende uitgaven is wellicht een gevolg van de eerste soort wetgeving. Maar de tweede soort regelgeving is veel nadeliger voor een samenleving. Het is goed te verwijzen naar empirisch materiaal (een eigenschap van de Chicago school), maar de analyse van deze feiten moet dan wel grondig gebeuren.

Allan Meltzer heeft dan weer een meer sombere visie op de ontwikkelingen en vreest dat allerlei belangengroepen de noodzakelijke hervormingen van en binnen de westerse economieën zullen afblokken: “James Madison warned that ‘factions’, now called ‘interest groups’, are a threat to democratic governance. His fears are now reality. The social welfare state has become the prisoner of interest groups that demand ever increased benefits and resist any changes that lower their benefits. That puts the social welfare on an unsustainable path leading to its eventual collapse. Experience in the European Union and the United States shows these political unions are headed for a crisis. But it will not end the welfare state. Political pressure for redistribution carried out in the name of equality is always present. The most we can expect is enough less spending to maintain democratic capitalist governance.” Zuivere ‘damage control’ dus, en hoop op betere tijden…

Peter Boettke, aanhanger van de Oostenrijkse School wijst in zijn bijdrage “It is the culture, stupid!” op een ander groot onderliggend politiek probleem, namelijk de ‘cultuur’ of mentaliteit van overheidsuitgaven en ‘economics of illusion’ die gegroeid zijn binnen de academische wereld en de samenleving zelf. Zijn vertrekpunt is als volgt: “I have argued on several occasions that transitional political economy itself was transformed by the experience to shift the loci of explanation from ‘getting the prices right’ to ‘getting the institutions right’ to ‘getting the culture right’. In the process the discipline of economics moved from a technical one emphasizing optimality and stabilization, to one stressing the alignment of incentives and the mobilization of information, to one stressing trust, reciprocity, and values.”

De fundamentele crisis die de westerse economieën momenteel treft kan volgens Boettke enkel overwonnen worden wanneer we het onderliggende verwachtingspatroon ten opzichte van de overheid drastisch wijzigen: “Government obligations have simply outstripped the fiscal ability of the economies to generate the revenue which is ensuring long run economic growth. […] It is not so much of the scale of government getting out of control, but of scope. Yes, government spending is bloated, but this is a symptom, not the cause. The cause is the expansion of the scope of government controls in the economy. […] The debate over austerity misses the essential point that must be discussed. It is not about starving the state of resources as much as starving the state of responsibility.”

Samengevat gaat de redenering van Boettke als volgt: “My argument can be summed up as follows: the fiscal difficulties faced by the countries in Europe and the US did not emerge overnight, but are the consequences of decades of public policy; the reason why these policies were chosen is because Keynesian economics as a tool for public policy and as an intellectual justification for the existing proclivities of politicians effectively relaxed if not eliminated any of the pre-existing constraints on fiscal policy; the decades of profligate and irresponsible spending have adversely impacted not only public sector but also private sector behaviour.”

Wie gelijk heeft, zal in elk geval vrij spoedig blijken, want zoals Peltzman het verwoordt: “We cannot yet know whether we shall veer from the path described in the opening quote [namelijk dit van Milton en Rose Friendman in Free to choose van 1980: “We are again recognizing the dangers of an overgoverned society, coming to understand that good objectives can be perverted by bad means, that reliance on the freedom of people to control their own lives in accordance with their own values is the surest way to achieve the full potential of a great society.”] or whether we shall return to it. We cannot know whether the answer will unfold gradually or in the midst of crisis. But the forces that will produce the answers are here and now, so we will probably not have to wait a long time to find out.” Of korter gezegd, Time will tell…, soon.

De Euro, vloek of zegen voor Europa?

Bijzonder verrijkend en zelfs enigszins verrassend was de fervente verdediging door de Spaanse ‘Oostenrijkse’ econoom Jesus Huerta de Soto van de Euro. Hij ziet in de Euro een soort goudstandaard, ‘a ‘proxy’ of the Gold Standard’ die de eurolanden, eigenlijk hun politici, verplicht micro-economische hervormingen door te voeren, in plaats van terug te vallen op monetair nationalisme, zoals het devalueren van de nationale munt en het opdrijven van de binnenlandse inflatie. Hij zegt het kernachtig als volgt: “Why champions of Free Enterprise and the Free Market should support the Euro while the only alternative is a return to monetary nationalism.”

Huerta de Soto is niet mals voor de tegenstanders van de euro, zowel van links als van rechts: “This Group includes in its ranks such disparate elements as doctrinaires of the far left and rights; nostalgic or unyielding Keynesians like Krugman and Stiglitz, dogmatic monetarists in support of flexible exchange rates, like Barro and others; naive advocates of Mundell’s theory of optimum currency areas; terrified dollar (and pound) chauvinists; and in short, the legion of confused defeatists who ‘in the face of the imminent disappearance of the euro’ propose the ‘solution’ of blowing it up and abolishing it as soon as possible.”

Hoewel Huerta de Soto zich wellicht wat liet meeslepen door zijn Spaans temperament, en een aantal verdachtmakingen en verwijten aan de ‘Anglo-saxons’ beter achterwege had gelaten, heeft hij toch wel een punt. Door een combinatie van de kracht van de Duitse economie en de vaste wisselkoersen als gevolg van de euro, bestaat de kans dat het Duitse model van het ‘ordo-liberalismus’ ingang vindt in de rest van Eurozone. De euro verplicht de Europese politici immers de noodzakelijke micro-economische hervormingen in de producten- en arbeidsmarkt door te voeren, zoals de Duitsers dit ondermeer met hun Hartz-IV-programma hebben gedaan, of zoals Huerta de Soto het verwoordt: “[T]he euro has ended up acting de facto as the gold standard, disciplining citizens, politicians, and authorities, tying the hands of demagogues and exposing pressure groups (headed by the unfailingly privileged unions), and even questioning the sustainability and the very foundations of the welfare state.”

Zijn weerstand tegen het friedmaniaanse monetarisme verwoordt hij helder: “Stranger yet is the stance taken on flexible exchange rates by neoclassical theorists in general, and by monetarists and members of the Chicago school in particular. It appears that this group’s interest in flexible exchange rates and monetary nationalism predominates over their (we presume sincere) desire to encourage economic liberalization reforms. Indeed, their primary goal is to maintain monetary policy autonomy and be able to devalue (or depreciate) the local currency to ‘recover competitiveness’ and absorb unemployment as soon as possible, and only then, eventually, do hey focus on trying to foster flexibility and free market reforms. Their naivite is extreme […]. Mises always saw very clearly that politicians are not likely to take steps in the right direction if they are not literally obligated to do so, and that flexible rates and monetary nationalism remove practically every incentive capable of disciplining politicians and doing away with ‘downward rigidity’ in wages […] and with the privileges enjoyed by unions and all pressure groups.”

Ook keert hij zich af van Robert Mundell en zijn theorie van optimale muntzones, die bijvoorbeeld ook door Johan Van Overtveldt, laureaat van de Prijs van de Vrijheid 2012, wordt aangehangen: “This latent contradiction between defending the free market and supporting monetary nationalism and manipulation via ‘flexible’ exchange rates is also evident in many proponents of a very widespread interpretation of Robert A. Mundell’s theory of ‘optimum currency areas’. Such areas would be those in which, to begin with, all productive factors were highly mobile, because if that is not the case, it would be better to compartmentalize them with currencies of a smaller scope, to permit the use of an autonomous monetary policy in the event of any ‘external shock’. However, we should ask ourselves: is this reasoning sound? Not at all: the main source of rigidity in labour and factor markets actually lies in, and is sanctioned by, intervention and state regulation of the markets, so it is absurd to think states and their governments are going to commit hara-kiri first, this relinquishing their power and betraying their political clientele, in order to adopt a common currency afterwards. Instead, the exact opposite is true: only when politicians have joined a common currency (the euro is our case) have they been forced to implement reform which until very recently it would have been inconceivable for them to adopt.”

Huerta de Soto steekt Keynesianen, Monetaristen en Mundellianen veelbetekend in hetzelfde hokje wanneer hij schrijft: “We must not fail to stress that Keynesians, monetarists and ‘Mundellians’ are all mistaken because they reason exclusively in terms of macroeconomic aggregates, and hence they propose, with slight differences, the same sort of adjustment via monetary and fiscal manipulation, ‘fine tuning’, and flexible exchange rates. They believe that all of the effort it takes to overcome the crisis should therefore be guided by macroeconomic models and social engineering. Thus, they completely disregard the profound microeconomic distortion that monetary (and fiscal) manipulation generates in the structure of relative process and in the capital-goods structure. ​A forced devaluation (or depreciation) is ‘one size fits all’, i.e. it entails a sudden linear percentage drop in the price of consumer goods and services and productive factors, a drop which is the same for everyone. Although in the short term this gives the impression of an intense recovery of economic activity and of a rapid absorption of unemployment, it actually completely distorts the structure of relative prices (since without monetary manipulation, some prices would have fallen more, others less, and others would not have fallen at all and might even have risen), leads to a widespread poor allocation of productive resources, and causes a major trauma which any economy would take years to process and recover from. This is the microeconomic analysis centred on relative prices and the productive structure which Austrian theorists have characteristically developed and which, in contrast, is entirely missing from the analytical toolbox of the assortment of economic theorists who oppose the euro.”

Voorlopig lijken de feiten Huerta de Soto gelijk te geven. Grote besparingen, sociaal-economische hervormingen en forse afslankingen van de welvaartsstaat zijn vandaag schering en inslag, vooral dan in de vroeger spilzieke en soms als hopeloze gevallen bestempelde zuiderse PIGS-landen. Door de grote politieke toezeggingen van de toppolitici die gemaakt zijn om de eurozone in stand te houden, is het voor die landen bijzonder moeilijk om aan de Duitse druk van bezuinigingen te weerstaan. Met vrijwillige muntzones of nationale munten was men in die landen al veer vroeger over gegaan tot competitieve devaluaties, en waren er geen structurele hervormingen gebeurd. Maar of deze toppolitici en hun hervormingsplannen de druk van de (gemanipuleerde) straat en drukkingsgroepen zullen kunnen (blijven) weerstaan, is een andere vraag.

Een enigszins andere, maar bij nader toezien misschien gelijkaardige invalshoek op de Eurocrisis kregen we van prof. George Selgin in zijn bijdrage ‘Incredible commitments: why the EMU is destroying both Europe and itself’. Daarin maakt hij een correcte beoordeling:
“Most recent proposals for saving the EMU – resort to Eurobonds, the establishment of a ‘European Monetary Fund’, raising the ECB’s inflation target – fail to address the free-rider problem that is the root cause of the current crisis. Indeed, they appear likely to aggravate the problem by formally acknowledging collective responsibilities that were until now formally (though unconvincingly) repudiated.” Gelukkig zijn er tot op heden nog geen beslissingen in die richting genomen, wellicht onder druk van de Bundesbank.

Fundamenteler in zijn volgende analyse: “In truth there are but two ways in which the EMU can be made viable without sacrificing monetary stability. These are (1) the establishment of a genuine European Fiscal Union, that is, outright rejection of the principle of fiscal sovereignty that has thus far tended to undermine both the ECB’s independence and the EU’s ‘no bailout’ commitment or (2) replacement of the present ‘constructed’ monetary union with a ‘spontaneous’ or ‘voluntary’ one based on the principle of free currency competition.” Hoewel Selgins voorkeur naar de tweede muntunievariant uitgaat, maar volgens mij geen muntunie is want gewoon een stelsel van nationale munten in een andere verpakking, gaat hij toch akkoord met keuze voor een grotere fiscale unie. ‘Fiscal Union’ betekent hier geen fiscale of belastingsunie, maar wel een begrotingsunie.

Selgin wijst hiervoor op de drie tegenstrijdige krachten die het de politieke overheden binnen een muntunie moeilijk maken: “[I]n the context of a monetary union it is impossible for authorities to adhere to all three of the following commitments: 1) Monetary Independence, including a commitment on the part of the monetary authority to avoid either excessive inflation or the monetization of sovereign debts; 2) No bailouts, meaning no outright loans or grants to national governments in danger of defaulting; and 3) Fiscal Sovereignty, meaning a commitment to refrain from interfering with member nations’ freedom to resort to debt financing. As we’ve seen, so long as unlimited fiscal sovereignty prevails, member states can find themselves in a position to take the monetary union hostage, forcing the central authorities to renege on one of both of their other commitments. It follows that either the principle of fiscal sovereignty must be abandoned in favour of something like an outright fiscal union, or that the union must abandon its commitment to either independent monetary policy of the no-bailout clause, exposing the union to the consequences of unconstrained fiscal free riding, with all the regrettable consequences that must entail.” De Duitsers kiezen voor het eerste, Guy Verhofstadt en Paul De Grauwe voor het tweede.

Selgin legt immers het fundamentele europrobleem bloot, en dat is simpelweg het gebrek aan politieke geloofwaardigheid: “The euro’s capacity for escaping the Trilemma, and hence for long-run survival, thereby had to depend entirely on meaningful constraints placed upon member states indebtedness. For a time the 1997 Stability and Growth Pact appeared to impose such constraints: the Pact appeared to provide for either the prevention of the timely correction of ‘excessive’ government deficits (that is, deficits exceeding 3% of national GNP) on their rapid correction, thereby ruling-out ‘even the slightest possibility that a fiscal crisis in one country affect the entire Eurozone’ (Mayer 2010, p. 49). But it was not long before the Pact began crumbling. The first fissures appeared in 2003, when France and Germany both exceeded the 3% target, and ECOFIN failed to impose sanctions on either. By the outbreak of the current crisis, the Pact had ceased to be credible. Though fiscal restrictions remained in effect de jure, the de facto situation was one of unlimited fiscal sovereignty. That change meant, in effect, that either the ECB’s independence or the no-bailout commitment or both would have to give way, as both have indeed done. Once any of the commitments essential to a monetary union’s success has lost its credibility, that credibility cannot be easily or quickly restored.” Merkel heeft dus nog een lange weg voor de boeg.

De vraag die tenslotte rijst, is of we de ‘euroboel’ fundamenteel moeten aanpassen, dan wel gewoonweg opblazen. Selgin lijkt te kiezen voor het tweede door zich te beroepen op een andere academicus: “Bagus concludes that, in light of all of these ill consequences, ‘the project of the euro is not worth saving. The sooner it ends, the better.’ In other words, given the other consequences stemming from the euro’s poor design, it is just as well that that design is also causing the euro to self-destruct.” Selgin hoopt dat uit de assen de feniks zal oprijzen: “But the very real prospect of the euro’s disintegration, with all the chaos and damage such a disintegration must entail, will at least supply a new occasion on which to implement the Hayekian alternative. That is perhaps a very meager bit of silver by which to line a very large and dark cloud; but it may nevertheless be the best hope for a sustainable European monetary system.” Misschien, maar persoonlijk kies ik voorlopig meer voor de Duitse aanpak waarbij de duimschroeven op de spilzieke overheden steeds meer worden aangespannen. Politici hervormen enkel maar onder druk, en een vrijwillig muntsysteem kan deze politieke druk niet leveren.

Maar laten we tot slot nog eens luisteren naar het oordeel van één van de ‘éminences grises’ van de Eurozone, Otmar Issing, wiens voordeel is dat hij niet enkel de theoretische concepten kent, maar ook de concrete praktijk. Zo schrijft hij in zijn bijdrage ‘The Euro, it has happened, it is a challenging idea, it will last’: “To conclude: As already mentioned, in the first place the euro was a political project. And, it is misguided politics which has to be blamed for fatal mistakes which are the source of the present crisis. First, political priorities prevailed over strict adoption of the convergence criteria in the decision on entry to EMU. Second, instead of compensating this ‘initial sin’ national politics failed to implement needed structural reforms and deliver on the obligation of solid public finances. The European institutions turned out to be too weak to exert efficient surveillance. There is, however, a certain irony in the fact that is exactly the political commitment to this project that makes dissolution of monetary union very unlikely. Therefore, the euro will last. Depending on the implementation of badly needed reforms the economic benefits of a single currency finally could substantially outweigh the costs.” Hiermee stemt Issing overeen met de analyse van Selgin dat de eurocrisis vooral een politieke crisis is.

Interessant in de analyse van Issing is dat hij niet volledig vertrouwt op de politieke wil of krachten om de broodnodige en te lang uitgestelde hervormingen door te voeren: “Continuity is not only less costly than dissolution, it includes also the chance to exploit much better the advantages coming from a single currency. To achieve this outcome the crisis must be used to implement badly needed structural reforms, to lay the ground for higher growth prospects on the one hand and to provide a strong framework for solid public finances on the national level combined with forceful European control on the other hand. However, it would be unforgivably naïve to rely exclusively on such a political control mechanism. An indispensable element will be sanctions by financial markets via higher interest rates for those countries which do not comply with the principles of sound policies on the macro and micro level. These sanction mechanics must include the option that a country which consistently fails to play by the rules will have to leave the EMU – on its own decision which will become without alternative once financial support from the community is discontinued.” Issing vult in die zin Huerta de Soto aan door de politieke krachten tot hervorming onder Duits leiderschap te combineren met de onderliggende economische krachten van responsabilisering. Met andere woorden, de ‘politiek’, in casu Angela Merkel, kan de (soms wat blinde) economische krachten vertalen in een gericht hervormingsbeleid.

Uitsmijter: “The other Ludwig von Mises”

We eindigen met een leuke knipoog door nog even kort de verrassende bijdrage van Richard Ebeling te behandelen. Ebeling begint met: “Ludwig von Mises was quite possibly the most uncompromising, consistent, and principled defender of classical liberalism and the free-market economy in the 20th century. […] This is certainly the side of Mises’s thought and writings that often carries a timeless quality with continuing relevance and application, because it deals with the general and universal aspects of man, mind, markets, and society.” Dit is de von Mises die we uiteraard allemaal kennen en waarderen.

Daarna gaat Ebeling dieper in op de werkomgeving waarin Mises zijn weg diende te vinden en waarbinnen hij zijn dagdagelijkse analyses diende uit te voeren: “But we should also remember that Ludwig von Mises did not make his living as a grand economic theorist or social philosopher for most of the years before he came to the United States as a refugee from war-ravaged Europe in 1940. […] For almost a quarter of a century, from 1909 to 1934 (except during First World War), Mises worked as an economic-policy analyst and advisor to the Vienna Chamber of Commerce. […] He immersed himself in the factual details and economic policy specifics of, first, the old Austro-Hungarian Empire and, then, the Austrian Republic between the two World Wars. His statistical knowledge of ‘the facts’ relating to Austrian fiscal policy, regulatory legislation, and monetary institutions and policy was precise and minute.” Minstens kan men dus zeggen dat Mises niet wereldvreemd was.

Deze werkomgeving waarin Mises zich staande moest houden, bracht uiteraard met zich mee dat Mises’ analyses hierdoor beïnvloed worden: “In earning a living at the Vienna Chamber of Commerce in the Austria of his time, Mises could not simply propose and advocate a desired vision of what he considered to be the free and prosperous classical-liberal society of tomorrow. Given the ideologies and politics guiding, and the economic policies being implemented by, the Austrian government in the first four decades of the 20th century, Mises had to articulate detailed and specific alternative policy prescriptions that he surely first had to win support for within the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, and then make the case for in the wider arena of Austrian public opinion and policy decision making. Even as that uncompromising and principled proponent of individual liberty and the free market, Mises was called upon in his role as policy analyst and advocate to sometimes devise ‘second-‘ and ‘third-best’ policy proposals in an imperfect world dominated by collectivist and interventionist ideas and practices.”

In concreto betekenen deze ‘second’ of ‘third best’ oplossingen het volgende: “What comes out from reading Mises’s policy writings from this period of his European career is that if you had asked him a fiscal, or monetary, or regulatory-policy question in the context of his role as analyst at the Chamber of Commerce, he would not have said, and did not simply say, ‘laissez-faire’ – abolish the central bank, deregulate the economy, and eliminate taxes. In the give-and-take of everyday Austrian politics and policy decision-making, Mises accepted that there is certain institutional ‘givens’ that must be taken for granted, and in the context of which policy options and decisions must be worked out.” Ideologische zuiverheid kan wel intellectueel leuk zijn, maar uiteindelijk moet je rekening houden met je omgeving om de zaken toch enigszins in beweging te zetten.

Ebeling geeft alvast een paar praktijkvoorbeelden van de compromisbereidheid van Mises:
“In the 1970s, Murray Rothbard once criticized Milton Friedman for advocating ‘indexation’ of prices and wages as a method to reduce some of the negative effects from an ongoing inflation. But in 1922, during the worsening Great Austrian Inflation, Mises actually proposed ‘indexation’ of wages and prices, as well as government revenues and expenditures to reduce deficit fiscal pressures, maintain real standards of living for many in the society, and eliminate some of the inflationary distortions on economic calculation – as a part of a specific policy agenda to bring the inflation to an end. And he explained how the indexation should be implemented and linked to the international value of gold. ​Likewise, Mises did not just say: ‘Cut bureaucracy and its spider’s web of regulatory controls.’ He first explained what was inefficient and unnecessary in the three-tiered Austrian bureaucratic system of federal, provincial, and municipal regulators and taxing authorities. Then he proposed what specific reforms should be introduced, how they could be ‘experimented’ with in some of the smaller regions of Austria to see how they worked before extending them to the rest of the country, and how best to overcome the resistance of those in the bureaucracy fearful of losing their jobs.”

Voor welmenende klassiek-liberale politici die ook dagelijks compromissen dienen te maken, moet dit een ware verademing zijn. Zij kunnen zelfs naar Mises verwijzen om niet langer met pek en veren overladen te worden wanneer zij compromissen (moeten) sluiten. Maar daartegenover staat volgens Ebeling de uiteindelijke uitgangspunten of drijfveren van Mises: “Separate from the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of each of the actual and specific monetary, fiscal, and regulatory policy changes and reforms that he presented during those years, what stands out most clearly is the guiding idea that implicitly runs through all of them. This guiding idea was Mises’s attempt to think about and construct them in a way that if implemented and successful would move the society away from the abyss of socialist and interventionist destruction, and back in the direction of a freer and a more prosperous classical-liberal society.” Wanneer en indien klassiek-liberale politici in eer en geweten kunnen zeggen dat zij in deze geest hebben gehandeld, dan zijn zij, zoals Boudewijn Bouckaert, nog steeds welkom op een MPS-meeting.