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Again, I sense a strong anachronistic tone to this discussion. 
 
When it comes to IO, some of what Stigler was writing about 35 years ago 
was truly revolutionary.  If it was taken by SOME (or even Stigler) to be 
propaganda for minimalist government (whether one is/was pro or con 
minimalist government) that should not be the focal point. 
 
You are always going to find somewhat lazy or opportunistic "scholars" -- 
they do not understand the underlying points; they "like" what they are 
reading, and so they adopt it.  Stigler cannot be placed in that category. 
But he has certainly been USED by others who fall in that category.  How? 
Which parts were used, and which parts ignored -- and how is your own 
impression of Stigler colored not by what he said or did or meant, but by 
how others used parts of it? 
 
What questions was he trying to answer at different points in time? What 
questions did he think he answered? 
 
Who used those answers?  Who was awakened by the questions? 
 
If those with whom one politically disagrees liked the answers or were 
awakened by the questions, that does not mean that either were illigitimate 
to begin with. 
 
What you have to be able to do is to disentangle them.  Here is where I 
definitely part ways with what (for a joke) I might term the "strong" 
culture-of-knowledge hypothesis -- yes, I believe they can be disentangled. 
 
 
Or more to the point -- you can disentangle the person and the times from 
the ideas and use the ideas.  And then later on someone is going to have to 
disentangle our own perspectives from the WAY we used those ideas. 
 
There is also a difference between an older scholar, perhaps impatient with 
answering questions that no longer interest him or her (which is where 
younger scholars get research ideas ...) and a person who is trying to hide 
the flaws in his or her own theory. 
 
It's not a matter of whether Stigler was "right" or "wrong" so much as what 
his ideas changed -- or what they could still change.  Ideas can also take 
on a life of their own outside the creator. 
 
Economists tend to have a view of "theory" as a thing fixed forever, that 
is either forever right or forever wrong.  Either Stigler was "right" as a 
theorist, or not -- either way, who really CARES whom he was speaking to, 
or what his words really meant?  And either those who have followed him 
have gotten it right, or they have gotten it wrong -- who CARES what it 
means that the concept of "Stigler" itself shifts over time? 
 
But that is important -- by following the concept of "Stigler", so to 
speak, you learn a lot about what your discipline takes for granted. 
 
For that matter -- what IS this THING called the "Chicago" school anyway? 
Is it different than in the '30s, or the '50s, or the '70s? 
 
Did it matter WHOM Coase was talking to when he wrote in the '30s?  Does 
his work have the same meaning in 1996?  Can it? 
 
And if you want to drag politics in here -- you will not find it in terms 
of anyone deliberately squelching theories or evidence or research because 
it goes against their political values.  Rather, MOST economists are NOT 
politically inclined.  (IMHO)  They tend to their own gardens, so to speak 
-- their own research, their own tenure track positions in life. 
 
What makes some economists openly political, and others not?  Does THAT 
have anything to do with which kinds of economics seem to be associateed 
with economic policy prescriptions? 
 
Was Chicago fighting Keynes, or MIT, Princeton, and Penn? Government -- or 
prestige? 
 
Or -- perhaps we could ask -- do economists themselves see SOME types of 
political outlooks as perfectly acceptable normative economics -- and other 
types as rogue?  And if so, why? 
 
We could also ask about the training.  Are the economists "raised", so to 
speak, on Varian different from the ones who learned micro reading 
Henderson and Quandt? 
 
What about the way economics is taught?  It made sense, 40 years ago, to 
have a semester of "macro" and a semester of "micro".  Do you think it 
still makes sense?  Can the subject that is "economics" really be divided 
that way, and does this heuristic device have delayed scholarly effects? 
 
What about the hostility between "pure" and "applied" economics?  What is 
the effect of that upon the discipline?  Why is it so? 
 
Look at the distribution of fields in any economics department.  How many 
"pure" theoreticians are there?  How many scholars mining so-called 
"applied" fields?  Can the theoreticians be said to truly represent what 
goes on in economics departments?  And yet they claim to be the ONLY 
representatives of the whole.  Are they? 
 
Walk through Stigler's life, career, writings -- you'll SEE some of the 
answers to some of these questions.  Why were some things considered 
ridiculous, then considered orthodox? 
 
Ultimately, does any of it tell you about economics TODAY? 
 
Don't try to answer all these at once, guys.  ;-) 
 
Mary Schweitzer 
 
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