From the monthly archives:

November 2004

Crescat Action

November 18, 2004

I’ve blogged again on the Are libertarians liberal? question over at Crescat. So, there.

Read the full article →

It’s Not the Cities, Stupid

November 17, 2004

I just returned an hour or so ago from the AFF rountable of Bush’s mandate. Interestingly, because it was a highly conservative panel, Bush got absolutely ripped to shreds for his fiscal profligacy and total abandonment of anything resembling a traditional free-market conservative philsophy of governance. (Yet, other than the one Brit, I fear that [...]

Read the full article →

The Functions of Fictions

November 17, 2004

Via Gillespie at Hit n’ Run I found Dennis Dutton’s review of Joseph Carroll’s Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature.
I was most interested in Dutton’s take on Carroll’s criticism of Stephen Pinker’s account of the adaptive function of literature. In his LRB review of Pinker’s How the Mind Works, Jerry Fodor, no friend [...]

Read the full article →

Ack

November 17, 2004

I’m feeling poorly this evening, so please forgive me if my posts are shorter than usual.
If you haven’t been checking at my guest spot, I posted early today over Crescat on the question, Is Libertarianism Liberal?, inspired by this John Phillips post.

Read the full article →

Public Reason. Culture War. Two Great Tastes that Don’t Taste Great Together?

November 16, 2004

Tons of great stuff over at Julian’s today. In this post, he seems to be asking in part (he says a lot more) whether one can be a culture warrior and a good Rawlsian political liberal at the same time. If that’s the question, then I think the answer is: yeah, sort of.
The point of [...]

Read the full article →

The Achievement Gap

November 16, 2004

Andrew Sullivan’s diagnosis of the real problem with the Democrats (TNR Online sub only, I’m afraid) is pretty astute. I think he’s really go it. The Republicans do a better job of tappin into America’s go-get-em-tiger!-ness. Sullivan finds it both in Team America and in Pixars new flick, The Incredibles. This is what Sullivan [...]

Read the full article →

More on Hayek/Rawls Fusionism

November 16, 2004

In a comment below, Julian reminds me of Hayek’s approving mention of Rawls’s method for thinking about principles of justice. This led me to look it up again. It’s in Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice, p. 100:
Before leaving the subject [of 'social' or distributive justice, ideas that Hayek finds [...]

Read the full article →

Anti-Constructivist Constructivism

November 15, 2004

I was reading Hayek’s essay “The Errors of Constructivism” today (in New Studies), and I was struck by, well, by just how great Hayek is, and how his thinking is both well and ill suited for integration with contractarian normative theorizing, which is my favorite kind of normative theorizing. Please allow me to waive any [...]

Read the full article →

Tyler Cowen’s Inevitability Argument

November 15, 2004

I’m intrigued by Tyler Cowen’s line of argument against social security personal accounts. The argument, as far as I can see goes something like this:
(1) Even if you have a program of personal accounts/forced savings, political reality will still lead to a secondary safety net for the elderly.
(2) A program of forced savings plus [...]

Read the full article →

Too Hot for AFF?

November 15, 2004

The link to my review of Checkpoint mysteriously disappeared from the Brainwash front page. And a bit later, mention of the review disappeared from the graphic at the top. I’m puzzled. What’s going on? I’m trying to find out, but no word yet.
[UPDATE: It's now totally gone. Well, it is an Orwell-themed website.]
[UPDATE TO THE [...]

Read the full article →

More Inside-the-Beltway Baseball

November 14, 2004

Jacob Sullum has a good column up at Reason on the DC baseball stadium financing shenanigans. He cites this open letter, which I hadn’t seen, to Mayor Williams from 90 economists on the likely economic impact of a taxpayer -financed stadium.
A vast body of economic research on the impact of baseball stadiums suggests [...]

Read the full article →

New Letter on the Way

November 14, 2004

I’ve begun my third letter to a young Objectivist. This one is about the Objectivist Ethics. It has, however, taken me longer than the hour or so I just gave myself, so stay tuned.

Read the full article →

Horwitz on Opportunity Costs

November 14, 2004

I’m pleased to see that Steven Horwitz, a real live top-notch economist and master of catallactics, has endorsed my interpretation of the opportunity cost puzzle in the comments over at Catallarchy. Steve, who taught at an IHS seminar I ran two summers ago naturally attributes my rightness to his pedagogical prowess. I don’t dispute it.

Read the full article →

Guesting at Crescat

November 14, 2004

I am guest-blogging over at Crescat Sententia this week. When I post novel content to Crescat, I will notify you in this space. I will count notifications as applying toward the Super November quota because you may, after all, follow the link and read what I have written over there.

Read the full article →

Checkpoint Review

November 14, 2004

My review of Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint is up over on Brainwash. Enjoy.

Read the full article →

More Libertarian Paternalism

November 13, 2004

I look forward to reading this paper, “Libertarian Paternalism is an Oxymoron,” by Gregory Mitchell of Vanderbilt and FSU.
Abstract:
This essay considers the concept of libertarian paternalism recently advanced by Sunstein and Thaler and argues that, on close inspection, this attempt to reconcile the traditionally opposed concepts of libertarianism and paternalism fails to succeed. Most [...]

Read the full article →

Poltiical Liberalism and Reasonable Epistemic Norms

November 13, 2004

Matt comments on my post on faith-based mental health:
I wrote my honors thesis about a different aspect of this same issue. There are basically two ways you can go here. One would be to radically circumscribe the egalitarianism and not have the state provide for things like mental health services (Will’s example) or public education [...]

Read the full article →

The DC White Elephants?

November 13, 2004

Be sure to check out Sally Jenkins’s nice WaPo piece on DC Baseball, which prominently features Cato and the Coates/Humphrey’s Briefing Paper. Cato Executive VP Daivd Boaz gets in a few zingers”
“Politicians have an edifice complex,” says David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute. “They like to be seen building big things.”
The Mayor [...]

Read the full article →

Faith-Based Mental Health

November 12, 2004

John Tomasi is right (see “Should Political Liberals be Compassionate Conservatives?: Philosophical Foundations of the Faith-Based Initiative” Social Philosophy & Policy 21/1, January 2004″) and Rawlsian political liberalism requires that if the state is going to provide certain services, then the state should also provide funds to non-secular providers of those services, otherwise, they get [...]

Read the full article →

Puce America

November 12, 2004

I once had a girlfriend who, after we parted ways, went through a number of, let us say, transitions in her sexual self-image. She explained it to me like this: “First, I thought I was red. Then, I thought I was blue. Now, I realize that I’m purple.”
We’ve all seen, and have grown weary of, [...]

Read the full article →

What are Philosophers Good For?

November 12, 2004

In a monumental post on Stephen Toulmin, Michael Blowhard writes:
The impression I’ve gotten from a few timid looks into up-to-date philosophy is that it’s a matter of filling in the few remaining (and really tiny) squares — an activity for specialists and tenured-prof-wannabes only. Between you and me, and off-the-record only, my philosophy-prof friends giggle [...]

Read the full article →

Baseball Economics

November 10, 2004

Dennis Coates and Brad R. Humphreys lay waste to the claim that DC baseball will be an economic boon to humanity in their Cato Briefing Paper, “Caught Stealing: Debunking the Economic Case for D.C. Baseball.”
I find wealth transfers to millionaires, well, unjust, don’t you?
Meanshile, in other baseball economics news, Dan Akst pitching in at [...]

Read the full article →

There Can Be Only One

November 10, 2004

Julian discovers my anti-matter Will Wilkinson complement. Yes. I believe we would destroy each other on contact . . . if not for the fact that we both like Chicago deep dish pizza. So, I think, we would in reality give off a dazzling but ultimately harmless shower of sparks.

Read the full article →

Opportunity Costs

November 10, 2004

Don Lloyd at Catallarchy posts what he calls an “Opportunity Cost Puzzle.” What I find puzzling is that so many of the other commenters find it puzzling. I always thought that the opportunity cost of an action is the utility you would have gained from choosing the alternative ranked #2 in your preference ordering. It’s [...]

Read the full article →

Let the Eagle Soar . . . Away

November 10, 2004

From the Washington Post:
John D. Ashcroft, the combative attorney general whose anti-terrorism policies made him the focus of a fierce national debate over civil liberties, resigned yesterday. . .
Can’t say I’ll be sorry to see him go.
Randy Barnett for AG!

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →