Against Politics

Toward a depoliticized society

The voodoo science of stimulus

Most social “science”, and macroeconomic modeling in particular, suffers from serious epistemological and methodological problems.  In a recent article for Reason Peter Suderman discusses the questionable models that are used to evaluate the effects of the stimulus: According to the CBO’s estimates, depending on how the money is spent, one dollar of government spending can [...]

Libertarian centralism

“Centralization is ordinarily a sign of social decadence.” Russell Kirk From a “skeptical empiricist” perspective (to use  Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s useful phrase) neither “rationalist”  nor public policy approaches to libertarianism are particularly credible.  But what is quite remarkable about current debates about “libertarian centralism” is that libertarians associated with rationalist schools of thought (Austrian economics, [...]

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 [...]

A conversation with Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb on economic models that we would be better off without: Every time I saw [Federal Reserve Chairman Ben] Bernanke [on television], I would have a fit of rage. He claimed that we were in a period of “great moderation.” He did not understand that Black Swans are preceded by low volatility and [...]