Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Disingenuous, Special Privilege, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Aug 24th, 2017
This tweet just hit my feed (and signs are popping up in my neighborhood too): I’ve seen it shared by folks from the NYSUT. Now, whether or not the convention is a good idea (more on that later) is not the question, it’s the assertion that “high-paid lobbyists want to shape the state of NY.” […]
Posted in Tribalism, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Aug 23rd, 2017
Via an old friend: it has been the alt-right that has most effectively used postmodern ideas to “deconstruct” what it sees as a distinctly liberal hegemony That was always the major criticism of postmodernism I was familiar with, that there is no reason the very ideas could not be turned on themselves, especially if they […]
Posted in Education, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Aug 16th, 2017
In discussing kidney donations, I’ve encountered the argument that offering compensation to donors would be problematic, not just morally, but because it may reduce incentives to donate due to intrinsic motivation declining with payment. That’s a fine argument, and we’ve seen monetary incentives backfire for sure especially when we try to apply it to non-traditional […]
Posted in Methodology, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Aug 15th, 2017
My faith in humanity is being regularly rocked, but perhaps that is just too much of an overreaction to current events. But for the sake of intellectual consistency, will those folks delighting in the tarring of the entire classical liberal program through dark and nefarious long arcs of the work of James Buchanan now be […]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Aug 9th, 2017
A particularly thorny philosophical problem for limited government classical liberal types is that while they want to see voluntary exchanges and private property governing as many human interactions as is “reasonable”, they typically leave it to the state to defend property rights and handle contracting disputes and third party spillovers. You can see the problem […]
Posted in Environment, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jul 24th, 2017
Upon talking to many farmers and examining the literature, it is pretty clear that one producer advantage of using “organic” production methods to grow crops is that it allows sellers to price discriminate and charge higher prices for these products than more conventionally produced fruits, grains and vegetables. Indeed, a recent meta-study concluded that the […]
Posted in Institutions, Voluntary Society on Mar 29th, 2017
Well worth your time to read.
Posted in ethical foundations, Methodology, Voluntary Society on Mar 4th, 2017
In our measures of welfare in economics, we pay careful attention to the impacts an exchange has not just on those parties who are involved in the exchange, but also to third parties who may be receiving benefits or incurring costs as a result of Person A exchanging with Person B. What economics tends to not do […]
Posted in Disingenuous, Environment, If I Really Hated the Poor ..., You Can't Have it Both Ways on Feb 15th, 2017
A very misunderstood idea is that “organic” foods are grown without pesticides. This is patently untrue. Organic foods are grown with “approved” pesticides – generally those that have a biological origin. Of course, this does not mean that these pesticides are worse, or better, than “unnaturally” produced chemical pesticides (aren’t biological pesticides also chemicals? Oh, […]
Posted in Disingenuous, Education, If I Really Hated the Poor ..., Price Controls, Special Privilege, Voluntary Society, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Feb 8th, 2017
Quite literally almost every single person involved in college athletics/kidney donations gets paid except the very people who are generating the lion’s share of value in the first place. Tell me an argument in favor of banning kidney sales and then insert “college athlete” and see how that sounds. Of course, neither the athlete nor […]