May 25, 2012
Memorial Day: Soldiers and Civic Vice
[SEE UPDATE BELOW] Americans tends to hold up soldiers as models of civic virtue. Might they instead be examples of civic vice? Might it be that the average employee at…
Year: 2012
May 23, 2012
The continuing history of bleeding-heart libertarianism
Antoine Claude Destutt de Tracy has a plausible claim to being the first libertarian, if by that word we understand something like the combination of rights theory, consent theory, and…
May 22, 2012
Market Logic vs. Moral Value?
The May issue of Boston Review has a special forum on “How Markets Crowd Out Morals,” with a lead essay by Michael Sandel. Sandel’s essay is, like his recent Atlantic…
May 22, 2012
Oh, but it’s just a petty violation of liberty.
I’m writing a chapter against compulsory voting for a textbook. Prima facie, we should assume compulsory voting is wrong until shown otherwise. Compulsory voting is, after all, compulsory. When a…
May 22, 2012
Hayek Was Not Dumb
In my previous post I tried to figure out how, across Hayek’s writings as a whole, he could simultaneously support institutions that we commonly think of as part of a…
May 18, 2012
Hodgskin vs. Spencer on Land Rights
Those who followed our recent Land Symposium might be interested in Thomas Hodgskin’s critique of Herbert Spencer’s views on land (and possibly also my critique of both Hodgskin and Spencer).