Much has been said of Romney’s basic lack of concern about facts in this campaign. All campaigns bend facts, misrepresent things, and occasionally lie, but few do so with the boldness of Romney. After picking Paul Ryan, Romney’s campaign, in a Rove-esque maneuver, blitzed Obama over Medicare. The campaign claimed Obama took money from Medicare… Continue reading Voters do not know very much
Hurricane evacuations and the capability approach
With Hurricane Isaac bearing down on the gulf coast, news outlets are interviewing non-evacuating residents in the path of the storm. Residents do not evacuate for a diversity of reasons, but one prominent reason is that many do not have the means: not enough money and nowhere else to go. We’ve seen this phenomenon before… Continue reading Hurricane evacuations and the capability approach
Dinesh D’Souza’s “2016: Obama’s America”
In his hour-and-a-half long ode to white people, Dinesh D’Souza — Indian immigrant and self-proclaimed “that guy” at parties who takes off-the-cuff conversational remarks about travel aspirations obnoxiously literally — spins a fantasy of filial piety so bizarre, so conspiratorial, so nonsensical that it really requires reflection. D’Souza’s film can be called a documentary, but… Continue reading Dinesh D’Souza’s “2016: Obama’s America”
Corporations are primarily intellectual property rentiers
Gavin Mueller has a great article in the summer issue of Jacobin Magazine about piracy, and at one point drops this jaw-dropping statistic: “Intellectual property makes up 80 percent of the net worth of US corporations and 60 percent of their exports.” I ran the statistic down and found that it apparently originated from an… Continue reading Corporations are primarily intellectual property rentiers
The never-ending libertarian quest to appear clever
I have been following an amusing back-and-forth between Bryan Caplan (I, II, III) and Matt Yglesias about Bastiat’s That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen. Initially, Caplan points out that individuals often support left-leaning economic policies for wrong reasons, and that he likes Bastiat because his tidy little stories (e.g. the parable… Continue reading The never-ending libertarian quest to appear clever