That property institutions are socially constructed is so perfectly obvious that it hardly needs arguing. What else are they if not constructed? Did they exist before human beings existed? No surely not. Did they pop into existence as soon as that first creature with human-like DNA was born? Was it at that instant moment that [...]

Michael Bloomberg’s recent attempts to reduce soda sizes and now to prohibit visually displaying cigarettes in stores have generated a great deal of comments on all sides. These are the kinds of basic policies that basically everyone feels comfortable chiming in on, which is fun. One popular view has been that [...]

Michael Lind has an interesting piece in Salon advocating for an “Anti-Rentier movement.” A rentier is someone that derives their income from economic rents. The precise definition of an economic rent is politically contentious, but the easiest — albeit somewhat over-simplified — way to think about is this: rents [...]

In my last post, I said liberals do themselves a disservice by talking about equal opportunity all of the time, instead of raising other grievances they have with our economic institutions. If you listened to the people who talk on television, you’d believe the only thing concerning liberals is that the positions in [...]

Steve Pearlstein has a long piece titled “Is capitalism moral?” in the Washington Post. The piece is a total mess. It seems to misconstrue different moral traditions and hops between them without seemingly realizing it. Nonetheless, it does provide a jumping off point for a point that needs to be emphasized: equal opportunity [...]

Freddie’s going after the identitarians again. At the root of his complaint here is the slipperiness of identitarian deference. Roughly, identitarian deference is the idea that privileged individuals should defer to the opinions and views of oppressed individuals, especially on topics relevant to those individuals’ oppression. It sounds straightforward, but can [...]

This flowchart is basically how I think about putting part two of John Rawls’ difference principle into practice as part of a political project.

In simple terms, cultural hegemony refers to the way in which the powerful shape a society’s norms, values, and other institutions, and how that particular shaping becomes accepted as default, natural, perpetual, and inevitable. That is, people tend to regard the way we currently run things in society as the only way to [...]

A short time ago, I wrote a couple of pieces (I, II) critical of an Evan Soltas’ article about the projected deficits in Social Security and Medicare. In those two pieces, I focused primarily on what I thought was a confused policy position of Soltas. But I also want [...]

I do not usually go for political arguments that talk about rights, but I also do not recoil in anger when people make them. I understand discussion of rights is a common language people have, and it helps many people express their ideas. One of the key questions in that discussion of course is what [...]