Philip Greenspun comments on the election:#
In Oaxaca, as in most of the places that I've visited in and out of the U.S., it was nearly impossible to find someone who admits to favoring George W. Bush. Yet the guy won 51% of the popular vote. Even here in Massachusetts fully 37 percent of voters supposedly chose Bush. Perhaps voting for Bush is like being a consumer of online porn. Statistics show that it is popular but nobody will admit to doing it.
Don Boudreaux links to a great article on Thomas Babington Macaulay.#
Joi Ito links to Rebecca MacKinnon on how "CNN broke."#
If one believes that the role of the American media should be to inform the citizens of a democracy about the realities of major foreign policy problems so that those citizens can make informed judgments about their government's ability to conduct international relations, then one is likely to conclude that we failed to do our job. But why did we fail? Was it part of some pro-Bush Administration conspiracy by CNN producers and news executives? No. Were producers of CNN USA news shows making some calculation about U.S. "national interest?" As a CNN insider I saw no evidence of any such calculation.
And if one doesn't believe that that is the role of the American media, there's no problem.
Rebecca is an incredibly smart person, I've had the pleasure of talking to her, but I think she fails to understand why most viewers watch news networks.
James Robertson links to an Alan Kay speech.#
Tom G. Palmer writes in Libertarianism in the Crosshairs (PDF) about the growing importance of libertarian ideals.#
It's a sign of success when your ideas and proposals generate lots of detractors. Judged by that criterion, libertarianism is back in the mainstream of political debate, after being intellectually and institutionally eclipsed for much of the 20th century by various forms of statism and collectivism. And the Cato Institute, as a high-profile advocate of libertarian ideas, is a frequent target of those criticisms.
There are, of course, many hundreds of books published every year that make the positive case for expansive state power and are therefore implicitly critical of libertarianism. The core libertarian ideas of individual rights, of order emerging spontaneously from the enjoyment of rights, and of limited government to protect rights and allow order to emerge are rejected in favor of other conceptions of moral and legal relations, the sources of social order, and the role of government. What is striking is the number of recent works that explicitly engage libertarians, realizing that their arguments must be addressed—or denounced.
In the past few months, I've read a large stack of such books, nine of which I've selected to discuss in this short essay. Some of them are popular works, some are journalistic, and some are scholarly and academic. I'm going to start with the silly, to give the reader an idea of how strange academic criticism can be, and proceed to more serious work deserving of careful study and consideration.
Tom G. Palmer in Myths of Individualism writes on a particular critique of libertarianism:#
What distinguishes libertarianism from other views of political morality is principally its theory of enforceable obligations. Some obligations, such as the obligation to write a thank-you note to one's host after a dinner party, are not normally enforceable by force. Others, such as the obligation not to punch a disagreeable critic in the nose or to pay for a pair of shoes before walking out of the store in them, are. Obligations may be universal or particular. Individuals, whoever and wherever they may be (i.e., in abstraction from particular circumstances), have an enforceable obligation to all other persons: not to harm them in their lives, liberties, health, or possessions. In John Locke's terms, "Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." All individuals have the right that others not harm them in their enjoyment of those goods. The rights and the obligations are correlative and, being both universal and "negative" in character, are capable under normal circumstances of being enjoyed by all simultaneously. It is the universality of the human right not to be killed, injured, or robbed that is at the base of the libertarian view, and one need not posit an "abstract individual" to assert the universality of that right. It is his veneration, not his contempt, for the "immortal spark in his fellow men" that leads the libertarian to defend individual rights.
Those obligations are universal, but what about "particular" obligations? As I write this, I am sitting in a coffee house and have just ordered another coffee. I have freely undertaken the particular obligation to pay for the coffee: I have transferred a property right to a certain amount of my money to the owner of the coffee shop, and she has transferred the property right to the cup of coffee to me. Libertarians typically argue that particular obligations, at least under normal circumstances, must be created by consent; they cannot be unilaterally imposed by others. Equality of rights means that some people cannot simply impose obligations on others, for the moral agency and rights of those others would then be violated. Communitarians, on the other hand, argue that we all are born with many particular obligations, such as to give to this body of persons--called a state or, more nebulously, a nation, community, or folk--so much money, so much obedience, or even one's life. And they argue that those particular obligations can be coercively enforced. In fact, according to communitarians such as Taylor and Sandel, I am actually constituted as a person, not only by the facts of my upbringing and my experiences, but by a set of very particular unchosen obligations.
Richard liked Saved! I loved it. Mandy, honestly, call me.#
Alex Tabarrok on social security reform:#
Ida May Fuller was the first social security recipient. She paid in a total of $24.75, retired in 1939, lived to be 100 years old in 1975, and in the process collected $22,888.92 in benefits. Ida May is an extreme example but it is true that for current and past retirees benefit increases, a growing economy and longer life expectancy made social security a real deal. It's today's workers and children for whom social security is a raw deal. Even if the system does not go bankrupt, current workers will receive a very poor return on their "investment."
Proof that obesity must be stopped!!!#
Andrew Moroz posts a very interesting article on hedge funds.#