Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Classical Liberalism on Nov 29th, 2010
Can liberty survive the government’s expansion into the economy? What if that expansion is done by thoughtful, enlightened and zealous experts? John Stuart Mill did not think so. If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the […]
Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam, Institutions on Nov 29th, 2010
In the Constitution of Liberty Hayek claims that society would be well served if we randomly selected 1 in 1000 people and endowed them with enough wealth so they could independently pursue any project of their choosing! The random part is important – if we had to decide as a “society” to reward a particular […]
Posted in Paternalism on Nov 29th, 2010
“Libertarian” paternalists (it pains one to write this) make the strong claim that they only hope to improve the lives of people by “nudging” them to make better decisions than their irrational selves allow. Former commissioner of baseball (and evil Ephman) Fay Vincent makes an interesting point in tomorrow’s WSJ: that it is unusual that […]
