From the monthly archives:

March 2008

Unequal Democracy

March 31, 2008

I’m three pages into the first chapter of Larry Bartels’ forthcoming Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age and I have questions:
My examination of the partisan politics of economic in equality, in chapter 2, reveals that Democratic and Republican presidents over the past half-century have presided over dramatically different patterns of income [...]

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Double Evil!

March 31, 2008

From the always lovable Lew Rockwell:
Is everything evil along the DC subway’s Orange Line? Well, no, but they all work for the regime, or are the regime, as Former Beltway Wonk points out. Here’s his list: American Prospect; Andrew Sullivan; BATF, CATO, Homeland Security, Federal Reserve; FDA; IRS; IMF; Marginal Revolution; Matthew Yglesias; Megan McCardle; [...]

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Richard Florida on Free Will

March 31, 2008

Today on Free Will on Bloggingheads TV, I chat with Richard Florida about his new book Who’s Your City: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where You Choose to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.
This is a really fascinating book and I highly recommend it. First of all, it’s really important to [...]

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Balancing Risks

March 30, 2008

I agree with Jim Manzi’s position, as he lays it out in his smart reply to Jonathan Chait:
Carbon dioxide is greenhouse gas, and if you put more of it in the atmosphere, then all else equal the Earth will get warmer. The key unknown, because of the complexities of climate feedbacks, is how much warmer. [...]

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Capitalism: It’s Nice!

March 30, 2008

These findings have been rolling in over the last half-decade or so: democratic market cultures produce a tendency to cooperation.  Here’s more:
Researchers use economic games to investigate how people cooperate in real-life. Now a team led by Benedikt Herrmann, at the University of Nottingham, have identified striking differences in the way university students from different [...]

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The Sound You Hear Is Your Paradigm Shifting

March 30, 2008

Please absorb this extremely important advance in economic methodology and basic intellectual rigor:
Income Per Natural: Measuring Development as if People Mattered More Than Places
by Michael Clemens and Lant Pritchett
It is easy to learn the average income of a resident of El Salvador or Albania. But there is no systematic source of information on the [...]

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Krugman on Immigration and Inequality

March 30, 2008

Because I want to be certain not to argue against a strawman in my inequality paper, I’m arguing against Paul Krugman, for the most part. So I’ve been reading The Conscience of a Liberal for the third time. This is not pleasant work. Reading a John Bates Clark Medal winner shouldn’t feel this much like [...]

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Me Me Media

March 26, 2008

Oh no! I’ve fallen behind in self-promotional blogging! If you missed last week’s episode of Free Will, I talked with Jeremy Lott about his new book The Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice-Presidency. This week, I chat with the estimable Kerry Howley about Obama, patriotism, and prostitution, among other things.
This morning [...]

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For Leaving the Community Behind

March 22, 2008

Richard Chappell says, “communitarianism creeps me out.” That makes two of us. More from his excellent post:
I’m so incredibly grateful to be where I am now, to have the opportunity to dedicate my life to the discipline of philosophy; I can’t even begin to imagine being nearly so happy doing anything else. The academic philosophical [...]

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It’s How You Spend It

March 21, 2008

One thing I’m constantly saying is that whether or not money helps make you feel better depends on what you do with it. This study says that it’s nice to spend money on other people, which is, believe it or not, a way of spending money. But would spending money on other people make us [...]

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Patriotism and Monogamy

March 19, 2008

In the comments below, David Stearns asks:
Is there any room left in the concept of ‘patriotism’ for the deep appreciation of the freedoms and independence of thought that the states are at least supposed to embody, and that they do embody in their finer moments?
I don’t think so. Freedom and independence are general features [...]

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Viciously Darwinian Totalitarian Fascism in One Lesson

March 19, 2008

Jeff of “A Banner Coward” cannot fathom while Obama’s anti-globalization rhetoric bothered Megan and me:
Let’s take, say, an assembly line worker who has just been laid off so the factory he worked in can open up shop in India. Is he expected to look upon the economic immolation of his family and community and say [...]

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Obama’s Patriotism

March 19, 2008

The kerfuffle over Barack Obama’s pastor is in large part about whether the man is patriotic enough. Other data: he doesn’t wear a Stars & Stripes lapel pin; his wife found herself proud of America for the first time a little too recently. This sort of thing may well be deadly to his candidacy. He [...]

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The Cooling Ocean

March 19, 2008

It’s not warming as expected. Story here. Outstanding Jeffrey Tucker comment:
Let’s give the ocean a government grant and see if it changes its mind.

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An Even More Perfect Union

March 18, 2008

I see that Megan’s first impression of the speech was very nearly my own, and she beat me to the punch about the fundamental contradiction at its moral core:
I understand the political logic that forces Barack Obama to spend a fair amount of time hating on trade. But I sort of feel–call me a starry-eyed [...]

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Positive-Sum Within, Zero-Sum Without

March 18, 2008

I was pretty impressed with Barack Obama’s speech. It struck me as unusually direct, realistic, intellectual, and mature. I’m not sure that will keep Fox News from showing Jeremiah Wright 24/7, as Obama himself more or less worried aloud, or that this won’t kill him in the general. (I’m inclined to think McCain would beat [...]

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The Solidarity of Ethnic Homogeneity: Not Liberal, Other Things Work Better

March 18, 2008

Reihan Salam makes an excellent point:
As Ed Glaeser and Alberto Alesina have argued, it seems that ethnoracial fragmentation cuts against redistribution — taxpayers are reluctant to subsidize members of outgroups, a gut instinct that is easily characterized as racist. But perhaps this impulse is a useful corrective, and one of the virtues of diversity — [...]

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Let Me Serve You Up!

March 18, 2008

“Customer” by Raheem DeVaughn may be the greatest song ever written as it is the first to fully grasp, and to deploy for the purposes of seduction, the immense romance of being catered to … like a customer (at an idealized, perfected, phantasmagorical Burger King, one is lead to imagine). The luxury of the commercial [...]

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How to Be Grotesquely Reductionist and Utilitarian about Human Love and Life

March 17, 2008

This post by one “Deep Thought” is a brilliant example:
This isn’t rocket science; men with easy access to prostitution or to promiscuous women have little incentive to marry. Suddenly there is nothing to offset their legal and financial obligations as a husband – so why take on the obligation? Women who are promiscuous face disease, [...]

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How Sex Is (and Isn’t) Different, Part II

March 17, 2008

Everything is what it is. Sex work is different from carpentry and it is different from surgery. It is like carpentry and surgery in that it is a way of renting one’s body. It is like surgery in requiring some hardening and compartmentalization. It is not like surgery in that it involves a different set [...]

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Ouch

March 17, 2008

Tyler Cowen’s take on Jeffrey Sachs’ new book:
Imagine a smart and diligent but not insightful or self-reflective person doing a “color by numbers” version of what a Jeffrey Sachs book should read like.
Shorter: Sachs has become a cartoon of himself.

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How Sex Is Different, Part I

March 16, 2008

I’ve got time to kill while waiting in LAX, so I might as well try to clarify my position on prostitution by saying how I think sex is different from other kinds of human activity. Obviously, sex is central to reproduction, and reproduction is central to natural selection, and natural selection is central to why [...]

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Selling Sex Is OK and Child Abuse Isn’t

March 15, 2008

I wanted to reply to Ross’s post on the so-called Wilkinson-Howley worldview, but I had to go to L.A. for a little political theory conference at UCLA, where I am now. Let’s see if I can clarify a few things. Ross writes:
Given the premises of the pro-prostitution worldview, what’s so abusive and damaging about incest [...]

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Dan Gilbert on Predicting the Future of Your Feelings

March 13, 2008

Great stuff. Note to self: Get Gilbert for Bloggingheads TV.

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Justifying the Prohibition of Markets in Sexual Services

March 13, 2008

I liked Ross Douthat’s first post on prostitution. He identifies the real question at issue, which is the truth or falsity of this claim:
[R]enting out your body to satisfy another person’s sexual needs is a form of self-inflicted violence serious enough to merit legal sanction …
The whole case for banning trade in sexual services stands [...]

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