From the monthly archives:

August 2006

Note to Deliberative Democrats (and Iowans)

August 31, 2006

Peter Beinart hates you:
The Iowa caucuses undermine a principle that both the Clintonites and the Deaniacs hold dear: democracy. In a primary, you can vote all day; voting takes a couple of minutes; your vote is secret; and if you can’t make it to the polls, you can vote absentee. To participate in the Iowa [...]

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Boudreaux’s Time Machine

August 31, 2006

Over at Cafe Hayek, George Mason economics chair and Cato adjunct scholar Don Boudreaux has come up with a wonderful thought experiment to illustrate just how absurdly inaccurate the government’s methods for calculating real wages are. Don looks at the Census Bureau report (from the depths of which the New York Times editorial page draws [...]

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Whither Productivity Gains?

August 30, 2006

Just in case you unaccountably fail to check Cato@Liberty daily, I had a post yesterday about Monday’s dreadful NYT piece on wages growth.

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Equally Wrong

August 24, 2006

Kevin Drum attempts to answer my question about income inequality. He fails. He tries out a few hypotheses about the mechanism underlying ineuality in income growth and … he is unceremoniously dissected by Russ Roberts, a real economist. After flicking over each of Drum’s ideas, Russ says:
The real problem with these theories of inequality is that they fail [...]

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Mismeasuring Progress

August 24, 2006

It is shocking to discover just how much of the debate over politics and policy rests on semi-arbitrary government standards for measuring things. For example, if you believe the Consumer Price Index speaks with absolute authority, then you will believe obviously absurd things, like the idea that real wages have stagnated. Virginia Postrel has a [...]

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What, Me Worry… about Inequality?

August 23, 2006

Ezra tries to explain to me why “liberal” economists are worried about inequality as opposed to some people’s not having enough to lead a good life. Maybe it’s a good sociological explanation. I don’t know. But I’m afraid Ezra’s explanation vexes me. Here’s Ezra:
What concerns liberal economists is the relative apportionment of income. Inequality is something of a proxy for this. Take [...]

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Questionable Tautologies?

August 22, 2006

From the incomparable, self-satirizing Stirling Newberry:
Even today there are people arguing that Ayn Rand is a major “liberal” theorist, and fighting to preserve her holy memory on the internet. This from a philosophy that starts out from two questionable tautologies and worships getting cancer. No rhapsody anywhere in Rand’s books surpasses her paean to smoking.
I [...]

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Status and Purity: Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together

August 22, 2006

I was delighted to see two of my intellectual fixations—the taste for status and the taste for purity—bundled together in the New York Times.
The urge to achieve social distinction is evident worldwide, even among people for whom prominence is neither accessible nor desirable. In rural Hindu villages in India, for instance, widows are expected to [...]

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Why Do Economists Care About Inequality?

August 21, 2006

The topic du jour on the econ blogs is Krugman’s claim about the effect of politics on income inequality. Before I solve that problem for you in different mindblowing post, let me say that I don’t really understand why economists care about income inequality qua economists. I understand why they care about income: more money buys a [...]

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Why Doing is Better Than Having

August 18, 2006

Bryan Caplan on Gilbert…

“Money itself doesn’t make you happy,” [Harvard psychology professor Daniel] Gilbert says. “What can make you happy is what you do with it. There’s a lot of data that suggests experiences are better than durable goods.”
I’m baffled. Don’t many durables provide a flow of experiences? A nice T.V. is the obvious example; [...]

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What Focusing Illusion?

August 17, 2006

An article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) discusses the emerging, more nuanced, happiness research orthodoxy on money and happiness: money doesn’t make people happier, though people with more money say they’re happier. We say we’re happier when we have more money, because, upon reflection, it seems satisfying to be higher-status. But having more money doesn’t actually [...]

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Should Objectivists Become Mormons?

August 16, 2006

I’ve made this point a number of times, but apparently I’m not tired of making it, because I’m about to make it again. One of the tenets of Objectivism is that adherence to the principles of Objectivism is a necessary condition for true happiness and maximum longevity. I am completely confident that this is false. So [...]

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New at Cato Unbound: Mexicans in America

August 14, 2006

Don’t miss the new Cato Unbound featuring this morning’s lead essay by Richard Rodriguez.
Americans have tended to abrogate to economists the question of the costs and the benefits of illegal immigration. But, surely, beyond how much Betsy Ross is willing to pay for a head of lettuce, there is the question of morality, there [...]

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Russell on Becoming a Man of Genius

August 14, 2006

Amusing little smart-ass essay by Bertrand Russell illuminating the genius of Carlyle, Nietzsche, and Lawrence…
Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.

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Hindsight

August 12, 2006

Aaron Haspel has the best mea culpa I’ve seen about being on the wrong side of the war. I especially liked this bit:
There was also a certain haste to blame America in the anti-war arguments that bothered me. I have no desire to discourage self-criticism, least of all in this post. But even Jim Henley, [...]

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On the Libertarian Vice

August 12, 2006

I find most of the responses to Tyler’s provocative “libertarian vice” post very stimulating, but I find the prevailing defensiveness pretty disappointing. This is 1/2 Tyler’s fault for making it sound like the vice—assuming that government quality is fixed and low—is essential to libertarianism, which it isn’t. Indeed, a quite widespread understanding of Rand-Rothbard-Nozick rights libertarianism doesn’t even require the premise that voluntary [...]

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Easy Now!

August 10, 2006

My first thought upon hearing about the foiled plot to blow up airplanes was: good! My second thought: why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars, massive manpower, and valuable intelligence resources in Iraq when we should be rooting out this crap instead? My third thought was: “mass murder on an unimaginable scale”? Bullshit.
Auschwitz [...]

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I’m Terrified of Going Home Tonight

August 10, 2006

Liquids are piped directly into my home, to my horror. My refrigerator is full of them. Thank God I am miles and miles from the ocean.

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What’s Going On?

August 10, 2006

My recent blogging efforts have been directed to Cato@Liberty. Here’s one from yesterday on the right of exit versus political predation, and here’s one from Tuesday on pluralism and school choice.
And keep eye an out for the new Cato Unbound next Monday. Essayist Richard Rodriguez will kick things off with a meditation on “Mexicans [...]

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Real Men of Genius

August 3, 2006

Willis Carrier, Mr. Air Conditioner Inventor, we salute you!

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Jimbo and Larry in the Atlantic

August 3, 2006

Wow. I sure wouldn’t have predicted back in the days of MDOP that Jimbo and Larry would get profiles in the the Atlantic for their contributions to the cataloguing of human knowledge. Actually, I wouldn’t have predicted when I was involved in the early stages of Nupedia (I have an unfinished article on “the paradox [...]

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Cowen on the Experience Machine

August 2, 2006

Tyler writes of Nozick’s most famous thought experiment:
Is the experience machine example so compelling as a refutation of hedonism? I think it puts pleasure squarely on the map as one value which matters and which is even undervalued in many circumstances. Many of us are too reluctant to step into the machine rather [...]

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