November 06, 2012
Civic Enemies
In the market, most of my fellow citizens are my civic friends, part of a great cooperative scheme. One of the vile and repugnant features of democracy is that it…
Author: Jason Brennan
November 05, 2012
Why It’s Rational (for Some of Us) to Vote
Over 132 million people voted in the 2008 US Presidential election. Why did they do that? Are they just plain stupid? There is a nagging worry that voting is a…
October 31, 2012
A Modest Proposal
After every disaster, someone says, “This will be good in the long run for the economy. Think of all the homes and infrastructure that must be rebuilt. Think of all…
October 25, 2012
Links on Voting and Voting Behavior
1. I discuss third party voting (including the myth that Nader cost Gore the election in 2000) on Al Jazeera’s The Stream. At the very end, I blame bad media on bad…
October 17, 2012
On China
Adam Smith devotes book IV of The Wealth of Nations to refuting an economic ideology he labels “mercantilism”. If you watched last night’s debates, you see that even today, mercantilism remains…
October 16, 2012
Is Philosophy Unreliable?
Here’s a link to one of my favorite papers, “Scepticism about Philosophy,” published in Ratio. Here’s the abstract: Suppose a person who is agnostic about most philosophical issues wishes to have…