Cure-alls and Remedies
Consider two courses of action: One has a low probability of success but promises to mildly increase welfare (however defined). Call this “meliorism.” Rawlsian liberals, Burkean and Oakshottean conservatives, and Hayekian libertarians frequently identify with this view. Another has an unknown probability of success, but promises to massively increase welfare (however defined). Call this “perfectionism.”…
Square Foot Gardening is a small-scale intensive agricultural method popularized in a book and PBS show starring Mel Bartholomew . It uses raised beds, crop rotation, and a special mix of compost, peat moss, and vermiculite to make urban gardening easier. In retirement, Mel has passed the square foot gardening torch to Patti Moreno , and Youtube…
The war in Libya happened so fast that most of the commentariat seemed to be caught flat-footed. The international community had apparently decided to go to war without properly vetting their decisions with bloggers! As a result, we got more than our fair share of bad arguments. I’ve been trying to formulate a position of…
I’m preparing a version of my review of Anthony Appiah’s The Honor Code for publication, and I was hoping that folks might give me their favorite articles, cites, and quotes on esteem and honor. If any other reviews of Appiah’s book really stood out to you, I’d love to read them, too. In my expanded…
One major defense of status emotions like deference and disdain is that they count as judgments of a person’s character. We defer to experts because they have a history of being right; we disdain scoundrels because they have a history of cheating or misleading us. In this sense, status emotions are akin to other reactive…
There’s been a conflict running through Jonathan Haidt’s work that it’s time for him to address. On the one hand, he asserts that there are characteristic moral intuitions that distinguish partisan liberals from partisan conservatives . He recently argued that these moral intuitions are demonstrated by the fact that the vast majority of social psychologists…
Here’s the gist : I would like to argue that most of the really important public policy issues are not even part of the ongoing debate in the press. Here are some examples: 1. The huge rise in occupational licensing. 2. The huge rise in people incarcerated in the war on drugs, and also the…
Tyler Cowen’s new e-pamphlet ( The Great Stagnation ) takes on the slowing gains to be had from social and technological progress and offers an interesting explanation of some of the trends that many people see as troubling: the flat arc of median incomes since 1973 and the apparently universal surprise that the last decade…
Scu pointed me to this discussion of a Cap and Trade dividend. One issue, which would also apply to a carbon tax + dividend: this would hit exports but miss imports. Contrast that with a plain-old VAT, which hits imports but is refunded on export. This would make our goods less competitive, while encouraging us to…
You know, I may have been looking at the Basic Income + VAT wrong. Instead of using a value-added tax to fund the basic income, perhaps we should use a basic income grant to sell a different policy… the carbon tax! Here’s what I have in mind: the US could adopt a revenue-neutral carbon tax….