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Meliorism versus Perfectionism
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.”…
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Jonathan Haidt’s Conflation of the Personal and the Partisan
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 identify…
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The Money Illusion Manifesto
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 scandalous…
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Why I am still hopeful for Egypt’s revolution
It is said that revolution is what happens when a police officer is transformed from a legitimate authority into a man with a gun. If that’s true, then what we witnessed in Egypt yesterday is a classic counter-revolution: irregular hoodlums attacking peaceful protesters, whose only defense is the military standing by. To ask for the…
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Left for Dead: Equality of What, Equality for Whom?
There’s a pretty fantastic exchange happening in the blogosphere right now, started by Freddie DeBoer here and followed-up here. The substance of DeBoer’s criticism is that there are no legitimate “far left” bloggers, only center-left “neo-liberals” and the panoply of social conservatives, partisan Republicans, and libertarians. Thus, DeBoer charges, we have a blind spot, an…