From the monthly archives:

February 2008

More Misbehavioral Economics

February 28, 2008

I say, again and again, that it is an embarrassing non-sequitur to argue that people are “irrational” and then leap to the conclusion that they need benevolent paternal guidance from the state. After all, if people are irrational then voters are irrational, politicians are irrational, bureaucrats are irrational, etc. To this, Ezra Klein responds:
I’m not [...]

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Misbehavioral Economics

February 26, 2008

I have unforgivably neglected to link to yesterday’s episode of Free Will featuring a discussion with Dan Ariely, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics, about his new book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. I really enjoyed talking to Dan, who is incredibly creative in experimental design. It is good [...]

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Meditations on Collective Action and Moral Norms

February 26, 2008

All this collective action problem debate is delightful. Here are some not-very-structured musings….
The topic of my unwritten dissertation was how solutions to “the contractarian compliance problem” (the fact that an individual can often do better for herself by ignoring moral constraints on self-interest that, if generally heeded, more than compensate for the short-term sacrifices moral [...]

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More Fun with Collective Action

February 24, 2008

Here’s a question and answer from AskPhilosophers that bears on the question of individual moral obligation in matters where only coordinated collective action can make any meaningful difference.
If I don’t fly from London to my sister’s wedding in New Zealand she will be upset, I will cause her pain and so that’s morally bad.If I [...]

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Happiness in the Sun Papers

February 24, 2008

The Sunday edition of the Baltimore Sun has a feature on happiness by Joe Burris, which contains a number of quotes from your resident happiness wonk. I’m especially delighted to have received the last word:
Those rankings raise the age-old question: Does money buy happiness?
“All the evidence points to the fact that people who have [...]

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Moral Duties in Contexts of Partial Compliance

February 22, 2008

Megan’s debate with Henry Farrell over voluntary taxation is fun to watch. Megan says if you think you are not paying your fair share in taxes, then you can always write a check to the government. She is correct. Henry says that when people say that they want to pay higher taxes, generally they mean [...]

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The Laissez Faire Welfare State

February 22, 2008

Responding to my colleague Dan Mitchell, Matt Yglesias writes:
“Iceland is known as the Nordic Tiger because of rapid economic growth,” writes Cato’s Daniel Mitchell, “much of the nation’s prosperity is the result of free-market policies.” When I visited Iceland it struck me as more a Scandinavian social democracy than a free market paradise. And indeed [...]

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Too Much Consumption? Let Me Decide.

February 20, 2008

This morning’s Marketplace commentary takes on the idea that we’re consuming tons of crap we don’t need.
Update: For those skeptical of the claim that people tend to be happier, healthier, better-educated and longer-lived in countries that consume the most, please see the UN Human Development Index. The top of the list is basically the group [...]

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The Tim Lee Experience

February 18, 2008

Tim Lee and I talk tech this week on Free Will, only at Bloggingheads TV.

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You May Say You Hate It, but You Love It

February 18, 2008

In the comments below, Newburn reminds me of Rhys Southan’s spot-on short from a few years back:

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Destroy Capitalism – $30

February 18, 2008

From a Banksy show.

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Sam Harris on Happiness

February 17, 2008

He focuses on the absence of negative feelings. He’s almost Eastern. And I think this is in fact the largest part of the subjective sense of well-being. The importance of the absence of anxiety and worry is why it is plausible that money has a fairly strong non-relative effect well up the income scale. There [...]

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David Brooks and the Infrastructure of Technocratic Control

February 15, 2008

One thing I wish decent liberals would get a handle on is this: the idea of the state as a benevolent scientific administrator of all aspects of the lives of its citizens is not a liberal idea. There is nothing about this conception of state power that tends, in principle, to promote liberal values. The [...]

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Butter + Knife + Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy = Blood

February 15, 2008

This may be the most ridiculous thing that has ever happened.

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Limited Government and Morality as a Fill-in-the-Blanks Slate

February 14, 2008

So far I have found this month’s Cato Unbound extremely stimulating. It sure helps when you get to invite the discussants, but the problem of how exactly limited-government types think government can realistically be limited really is of the first importance.
I think Anthony de Jasay is right that incentive-compatibility problems plague attempts to keep government [...]

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Climate Debate Daily

February 13, 2008

My one climate post in forever reminds me that I should link to Climate Debate Daily, the new-ish site edited by Denis Dutton (overseer of the famed Arts & Letter’s Daily) and Douglas Campbell.
Here’s the site’s statement of what Denis is up to:
At the University of Canterbury he has recently introduced a new [...]

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Prizes for Amelioration

February 12, 2008

Has anyone seen an extended argument for doing nothing at all about global warming other than offering huge prizes for technological fixes?
Update:
Also… from Warren Meyer I see this: “[Some climate scientists] claim now that man-made sulfate aerosols and black carbon are cooling the earth, and when some day these pollutants are reduced, we will see [...]

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Seriously, Why Are You Freaking Out?

February 11, 2008

My comments are teeming with racists good people who believe in the racial and cultural superiority of Americans of European descent clearly terrified by the prospect of the breakdown of Anglo-European cultural hegemony in America. The worry seems to be that with a slightly liberalized immigration regime the U.S. will swiftly devolve into some kind [...]

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Is Limited Government Possible?

February 11, 2008

Hey, political theory geeks! This month’s Cato Unbound should be pretty sweet. Here’s the editorial summary of Anthony de Jasay’s lead essay, “Government, Bound or Unbound?“:
Reprising the topic of his 1989 essay, “Is Limited Government Possible?” political theorist Anthony de Jasay continues to express limited skepticism. According to de Jasay, the incentive of political actors [...]

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Talking about Happiness

February 11, 2008

This week on Free Will, I chat with Eric Weiner, author of NewYork Times bestseller, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World. I didn’t always agree with Eric’s interpretation of some of the happiness data, but I found this a really fun, though-provoking hybrid of travel and [...]

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Nationalist Moral Chauvinism

February 9, 2008

The argument between the moral chauvinist and the moral universalist is an argument over the standard for moral justification. For the chauvinist, if a rule or policy benefits the group to which the chauvinist happens to be a member, then it is justified. One of the chauvinist’s many problems, besides getting morality fundamentally wrong, [...]

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The Moral Claims of Non-Citizens

February 9, 2008

So…, James Poulos had said:
The big problem with Gerson’s ‘moral internationalism’ is not that it has a big heart or a goofy smile. The big problem is that it’s inimical to citizenship. Gerson and his ilk long for the day that Americans don’t get a better shake in life just because they’re Americans.
I was a [...]

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Communitarian Aestheticism

February 6, 2008

I am not alone:
… I know and do not regret the major role that aesthetic considerations play in human life, even apart from erotic desire, and even though in an often unrecognized manner, it is certainly possible to distinguish between kinds of aestheticism. As Emerson suggests in “The Poet,” bad poetry (so to speak) is [...]

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Be Grateful for Growth

February 6, 2008

In this morning’s Marketplace commentary, I explain why recessions retard moral progress.

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Stupor Tuesday Liveblogging

February 5, 2008

Well, here we are at Reason’s Super Tuesday party. Yes, the bartender is serving cosmotarians.
Here are Reason big chiefs Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie jawbonin’…

Taken from a cell-phone, if you can’t tell.

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