If you dismiss the economic consensus on the harms of rent control, price gouging restrictions, etc. but embrace it on the harms of tariffs, you’re likely in the grip of politically motivated reasoning
The key to understanding politics is recognizing that most partisans are more committed to opposing outparty members than adhering to their own policies and principles
It’s easy to dismiss the significance of material abundance when we have it—it’s hard to dismiss its significance when we lose it
A reminder on the anniversary of Stalin’s death
This strikes me as an obvious point, but maybe it isn’t: an unconditional anti-war stance can in fact incentivize war by disregarding deterrence effects
Mail delivery isn’t a public good and there’s no compelling reason not to privatize it
There’s a tension between the progressive view on school choice (if you want the school of your choice, pay for it yourself) and the progressive view on SNAP benefits (recipients should be able to use them to get whatever they want)
A lot of moral confusion arises from thinking of employers as something other than buyers of labor. Just as it’s morally permissible for you to seek out the best deal when shopping for a TV, it’s morally permissible for an employer to seek out the best deal when hiring workers
People who claim that free speech primarily benefits the powerful have an exceedingly impoverished understanding of the history of free speech
I’m seeing tax cuts characterized as “giving money” to those people whose taxes are cut but this wrongly assumes that the state has a stronger claim to that money than those people themselves
When Republicans want to dramatically cut government spending without addressing entitlement programs
The claim that no entrepreneur should earn one billion dollars is just as unpersuasive and arbitrary as claiming that no politician should earn ten million votes
People typically don’t support tariffs because they’re efficient—they support tariffs because (1) doing so expresses and affirms their social identity (“put America first”) or (2) they receive the concentrated benefits while others pay the dispersed costs
In case you missed it - the latest PolPhilPod
Is it ethical to not vote? Is it rational to? & does an existential threat change things? I debate with @chrisfreiman.bsky.social
www.politicalphilosophypodcast.com/ip
From *Why It’s OK to Ignore Politics*
New Political Philosophy Podcast Episode!!
@chrisfreiman.bsky.social argues we need less voters, I argue we need more
www.politicalphilosophypodcast.com/ip
Just recorded a super interesting convo on if you should vote with @chrisfreiman.bsky.social
If we accept Sowell’s view that conservatives endorse a “constrained vision” that should motivate a cautious approach to social and political change, it’s pretty clear that MAGA is not conservative
If you think you’ll enrich Americans by imposing a tax on goods entering the country, you should try enriching your family by imposing a tax on goods entering your household
This is a lukewarm—if not downright cold—take, but the basic mistake made by many socialists is regarding employment decisions as different, in some deep sense, than any other economic transaction that’s entered into voluntarily with the expectation of (mutual) benefit
Milei update
Check out my new post on EconLog: “Why Not Privatize the Post Office?”
www.econlib.org/why-not-priv...
Chart showing the distribution of the world population between different poverty thresholds between 1820 and 2018. The thresholds are below $1.90 a day, $1.90–5 a day, $5–10 a day, $10–30 a day, and above $30 a day. In 1820, the share living on less than $1.90 a day was 80%; by 2018 it had dropped to around 10%. The share at other poverty levels also fell. The data is measured in international-$ at 2011 prices, which means it's adjusted for inflation and differences in the cost of living between countries. It's the equivalent of what $1.90 could buy in the US in 2011.
In 1820, 8 in 10 people worldwide lived on less than $1.90* a day, an extremely low poverty line. 200 years later, it had dropped to 1 in 10 people.
How do we know how many people were in poverty 200 years ago? Where do these numbers come from?
Unfortunately, many of those calling for the Democrats to move left just want the party to adopt some of worst parts of Trump’s economic nationalism
Henry George: “Protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.”