Glorious Amateuring

Amateurism is splendid, part of a full human life, possible in a rich modern world in which such amateur, hobby, unprofessional interests can be pursued so thoroughly.

I complained about amateurs thinking they know enough about the economy to offer their amateur opinions.

But the word “amateur” in both of our languages comes from Latin amare, to love. I have no complaint at all about people loving economics or any other serious study of the economy, such as economic sociology or economic history or political economy. I have since age 19. I was a socialist at that point, and believed that a supervising state was the way to help the poor. As I slowly became a professional, and learned about the economy and about the state, I changed my opinion of how to help the poor. Yet I am a lover.

But like you I have many other subjects and activities, loved but unprofessional. As to subjects, when I was a kid I loved astronomy—until I realized that astronomy is applied physics and physics is applied mathematics. Yet much later I read a college textbook on astronomy and became very interested in the comparison with economic science, which I had by then pretty much mastered. I was a “master” at economics, but merely a ”lover” of astronomy. And recently I’ve taken it up again, watching transfixed the lectures from the Teaching Company about lensing by dark matter and the evolution of the universe.

As for activities, I was during the folk music revival of the 1960s an enthusiastic if utterly incompetent guitarist and singer. My college friend Hal was a brilliant guitarist from New York, personally acquainted with people like the professionals Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. But professionally Hal became a professor of law.

And I was for decades a long distance runner. But I was utterly incompetent, the slowest jogger in world history—unlike my friend in academic life, Gary, who has been a world-ranked long-distance runner at every age from his 20s to his 80s. But even Gary, like Hal in folk guitar, in his beloved running is an amateur, a lover only, being in his paid profession an economist and academic administrator.

We do both. Amateurism is splendid, part of a full human life, possible in a rich modern world in which such amateur, hobby, unprofessional interests can be pursued so thoroughly, if incompetently. My friend the great literary critic Wayne Booth (1922-2005) wrote a book called For the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals (1999). Wayne defended there, for example, his incompetent playing of the cello. He took it up when an adult, too late to become very good at it. Wayne was not being falsely modest. I have another friend who played regularly in a quartet with him, and attested to the incompetence.

Why, Wayne asked, do people engage in amateurism in a world that values professionalism so very much, and even pays a lot for the best of it? His answer, and mine, is his title, “for the love of it.” For the love of the Beautiful Game and the Beautiful Painting, even if we are not Pelé or Tarsila do Amaral, we kick a ball or wield a brush, and watch with love their best, thanks to markets in the age of mechanical reproduction.

To live in such an age is a privilege and a glory.

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Weekly column in Folha de São Paulo, Brazil
Translated into Portuguese for the newspaper.

Since 1776, there has been a 3,000% explosion in the average real income per person in the world.

Nothing earlier came remotely close.

It was caused not by the usual suspects of investment or exploitation, but by liberty inspiring a flowering of human creativity—in the arts and sciences, and in the economy.

Though Brazilians and many other Latin Americans are uneasily aware that their economies lag some, and sometimes a lot, the Great Enrichment is nonetheless evident everywhere from the Border to Tierra del Fuego, from Santiago in Chile to Recife in Brazil.

The Latin Lag can be overcome. Brazil, like much of Latin America, needs essential liberalism to do it.

Check out my new book, Liberdade: 100 Conversation Starters on Liberalism, Latin America, and Brazil