Category: Philosophy

After a long break, I have found myself sufficiently annoyed once again at arguments regarding property that make no sense and fail to apprehend even the most basic criticisms that have for centuries been levied against them. So, I have decided once again to clarify how incoherent it is to say your views on taxes… Continue reading Violence, Property, Theft, and Entitlement

Occasionally, I happen upon people who claim that they base their economic justice views on the idea of Pareto Improvements. On this view, economic justice requires that all moves to make individuals better off must not make other individuals worse off. Those who promote this view often seem to have roughly laissez-faire capitalist preferences. In… Continue reading Pareto Fail

In my prior post, I discussed the interesting case of certain right-wingers calling deregulation that they don’t like regulation. Specifically, I point out that when the state backs out of enforcing noncompete agreements, this is not regulation; rather, it is deregulation. It reduces the scope of the government. It imposes no rules on anybody. It… Continue reading The State Does Not Enforce Most Agreements

Adam Ozimek wrote a piece titled “Can Regulation Create Good Jobs?” The jumping off point for the piece is the recent slate of discussion around Jimmy John’s requiring its employees to sign noncompete clauses: The latest of these [stories] involves a sandwich chain that allegedly asked its line workers to sign noncompete agreements. Such stories… Continue reading Regulation and private laws

Via @gojomo, I was directed to this article and video about a property rights dispute at a San Francisco public soccer field. As @gojomo points out, the property rights dispute mirrors some of the points I made many months ago about pick-up basketball and Grab-What-You-Can World. On one side of the dispute are neighborhood kids… Continue reading Wonderful Property Rights Dispute In San Francisco