Peter Schiff is an American
economist, investment banker, economic commentator, and is the CEO and chief
global strategist of Pacific Capital Inc.
An adamant follower of the ideas from the Austrian School’s on economics,
Peter Schiff has frequently appeared on financial televisions shows to talk
about how our country is going down the path towards socialism and is against
many of the policies our government is imposing on Wall Street. He has argued many times against government
intervention in our economy and has championed for a more capitalist society
where there are not government institutions that control or regulate Wall
Street. And has written books such as
“Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse” and “How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes,”
which are his takes America’s current economic situation and his capitalist
solutions for America to get out of this crisis. But does that make him an intellectual?
Drawing from the “The Wicked Paradox” we should determine
what is or is not a public intellectual.
Is a public intellectual one that is like or known? Should that person be a scholar or work in
scholarship settings? Is a public intellectual someone who regards the thoughts
of others when writing their ideas? Or in the case of the of the article, can a religious intellectual be a public intellectual
regardless of the certainty that many in the “intellectual community” would not
accept the ideas behind religion? These
questions make more difficult to define who or what a public intellectual is?
In reading “The Role of the Public Intellectual” by Alan Lightman, I started to
realize the definition of a public intellectual, and it clarified for me the
definition of a public intellectual. He
categorized public intellectual as followed:
Let me now define
what I mean by the public intellectual today" Such a person is often a
trained in a particular discipline, such as linguistics, biology, history,
economics, literary criticism, and who is on the faculty of a college or
university. When such a person decides to write and speak to a larger audience
than their professional colleagues, he or she becomes a "public
intellectual."
·
Level I: Speaking and writing for the public
exclusively about your discipline. This kind of discourse is extremely
important, and it involves good, clear, simplified explanations of the national
debt, the how cancer genes work, or whatever your subject is. A recent book
that illustrates this level is Brian Green's excellent book The Elegant
Universe, on the branch of physics called string theory.
·
Level II: Speaking and writing about your
discipline and how it relates to the social, cultural, and political world
around it. A scientist in this Level II category might include a lot of
biographical material, glimpses into the society and anthopology of the culture
of science. For example, James Watson's The Double Helix, or Steven
Weinberg's essays about science and culture or science and religion in The
New York Review of Books. Gerald Early's book, The Culture of Bruising,
with essays on how racial issues are played out in prizefighting, would fit
into this category. Or Steve Pinker's op ed piece in the The New York Times
a year or so ago about the deeper meaning of President Clinton's use of
language in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
·
Level III: By invitation only. The
intellectual has become elevated to a symbol, a person that stands for
something far larger than the discipline from which he or she originated. A
Level III intellectual is asked to write and speak about a large range of
public issues, not necessarily directly connected to their original field of
expertise at all. After he became famous in 1919, Einstein was asked to give
public addresses on religion, education, ethics, philosophy, and world
politics. Einstein had become a symbol of gentle rationality and human
nobility. Gloria Steinheim has become a symbol of modern feminist thought.
Lester Thurow has become a symbol of the global economy.
Some other
contemporary people I would place in this Level III category include: Noam
Chomsky, Carl Sagan, E.O. Wilson, Steven Jay Gould, Susan Sontag, John Updike,
Edward Said, Henry Louis Gates, Camille Paglia. In my opinion, our other two
distinguished panelists, Gerald Early and Steve Pinker, have recently entered,
or are in the process of entering, Level III.
In understanding his classification of a
public intellectual I feel that Peter Schiff is an ‘economic intellectual’
floating around the level I or level II rating of a public intellectual as he
is not as prestigious as his other economist such as Paul Krugman or Jeffers Sachs. But he does make clear and simple
explanations as to why the government policies for Wall Street are bad and that
the government should stay out of our economy.
And goes out into the public sphere through all channels of
communications, from web series and
video blogs, to radio talk shows, and appearances on the major syndicated
financial news shows driving his ideas across to the general American public,
in my opinion makes him a public intellectual.
Though he has cause a lot of controversy when
he went to the occupy Wall Street movement and tried to debate for capitalism
as a way to solve our economic problems. His world view is that governments across the
globe should not meddle in their economies, and that if the business in the
country fail then they should let them fail not bail them out; as that would
share the burden with everyone instead of just the select view. His opinions though bold have been challenged
by others. In his video blog, “Peter Schiff Speaks for 1 Percent at Occupy
Wall Street” he argues that capitalism is a compassionate system, and has charged
that the government should not have imposed their policies in Wall Street, and
should have allowed for the banks to fail when during the 2008 economic crisis.
A
reason.com article Peter Schiff at
Occupy Wall Street: "Walmart Doesn't Hold a Gun to Your Head!" by
columnists Nick Gillespie and Anthony Fisher, categorizes him as a person who:
“… believes that capitalism offers is the
only hope for young, frustrated people to have a vibrant and prosperous future
(get information on his latest book, How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, here). So he went to
Occupy Wall Street to engage and debate the protesters.”
Though Peter Schiff is not a scholar and does
not teach at any institution, I still consider him a public intellectual as he
has written time and time again in his books that our government should not
meddle in our economy as it would cause to crumble as he wrote in his 2007 book
Crash Point. He is an expert in
his field of investment banking and how the markets and the economy works and how
it should be free of government intervention such as bail outs or government
takeover, such as the general motors’ take over by the federal government. He
has clashed with economist on talk shows as to what America should do to overcome
our current predicament and give advice as to how our economy should move
forward into the future.
His books and his appearances on television
give him a general audience as to his ideas but there are many that do not
consider him a public intellectual, but some have classified him as a radical
and that his ideas are too extreme for America today. He challenges those who want to move towards
a socialist economy and is against any and all of the current economic policy
of regulations of the market and wants a more free market capitalist economy
that can see growth beyond the bounds of what we have today. Which scares some and infuriates others, but
as we see the current state of our economy what we need is change. And though
President Obama offered change, what we have seen is more debt and more control
of the economy, which has not benefited the economy in a positive way but made
our fragile economy weaker.
A pubic intellectual from what I understand
is one sets out an idea and challenges those who challenge his ideas, and I
believe that Peter Schiff is one who exemplifies that idea, though he may not
be a well known or even liked intellectual his ideas go farther than what many
believe or want to understand, and that is something an intellectual does in
his writings.
“Peter Schiff Speaks for 1 Percent at Occupy Wall Street”
Occupy Wall Street, ObamaCare, and Bailouts
Uncut version: “Peter Schiff Speaks for 1 Percent at Occupy Wall Street”
