Against Politics

Toward a depoliticized society

Theodore Dalrymple on rights and moral imagination

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels) makes the following observation:

When the supposed right to health care is widely recognized, as in the United Kingdom, it tends to reduce moral imagination. Whenever I deny the existence of a right to health care to a Briton who asserts it, he replies, “So you [...]

Health care as a right?

To understand the background of the recent debates on health care it is instructive to look at how this issue  is being approached in “progressive” states like Oregon. Last year a Constitutional Amendment was discussed  which would declare access to health care in Oregon to be a “fundamental right.” But what is so progressive [...]

Arthur R. Jensen against politics

At one point in the conversations between Frank Miele and Arthur R. Jensen in the book Intelligence, Race, And Genetics: Conversations With Arthur R. Jensen, Jensen becomes impatient with all the questions about his politics and makes the following statement:
You keep harping on politics. Over the years, I have become increasingly disillusioned about politics and [...]

Prophets of doom and recovery

Guy Sorman on Joseph Stiglitz:

As Marx was in his day, Stiglitz has become a prophet of doom: the economic system will inevitably fail. There is no easier job in politics than being a prophet of doom: you just wait for the next downturn and claim that you predicted it. Doomsaying is not a scientific position, [...]

A false choice on the Fed and inflation

Economists publicly press the point that an independent Fed has a better track record in controlling inflation than a politicized Fed but Robert Higgs draws attention to

the undeniable fact that for more than a century before the Fed’s establishment, the purchasing power of the dollar fluctuated around an approximately horizontal trend line—that is, despite inflations [...]

Keynes and the efficient market hypothesis

Over at The Money Illusion, Scott Sumner has posted a number of blog entries about John Maynard Keynes as an investor and how it informs the debate about efficient markets:

Far from refuting the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH), the story of Keynes’ investments actually supports the buy and hold recommendations of those who adhere to the [...]

The drug-war industrial complex

In a recent issue of the Boston Phoenix, Dan Baum, author of Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure, discusses the issue that the war on drugs is not just about the the risks of drug use but involves vested interests as well, and not just those of the drug [...]

Nassim Nicholas Taleb on stimulus and monetary policy

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose writings display a unique combination of common sense and sophisticated epistemological awareness, has co-authored an opinion piece with Mark Spitznagel on the dangers of our culture of debt and misplaced trust in the economic experts of the government and the Fed. One does not need to completely agree with the authors [...]

Liberal and religious creationism

The blog OneSTVD [One Standard Devation] has produced a useful table that outlines the similarities between religious creationists and “blank slate” liberals:

These educated, liberal elitists believe their shallow acceptance of evolution distinguishes them from the ignorant “Jesus freaks”. Yet, it is amusing how closely liberal creationism matches the creationism supported by religious fundamentalists.

This chart reminds [...]

Zinnlandia

A recent blog post by Chip Smith at the Hoover Hog drew my attention to the writer Takuan Seiyo. In the archives of the author at the Brussels Journal I found a 2008 piece on the pathological political culture of the Pacific Northwest, or as the author calls it, Zinnlandia:

Behavioral psychology has names for various [...]

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