I am not that interested in arguing about UBI on a day-to-day basis, but I’ve now seen one silly argument against it enough times that I feel compelled to intervene. The argument is this: In fact, workers may not even see much of the benefit of their UBI check: if their new gains are simply… Continue reading Weird UBI Argument About Rents
Land as soil and land as space
The argument that people can appropriate unowned land by mixing their labor with it has a lot of problems. Labor is not a substance, and so it cannot be mixed. Even if it could be mixed, it is not clear why mixing it with something transforms the unowned particles into owned particles. Even if you… Continue reading Land as soil and land as space
The Legal Situation of DNAinfo and Gothamist
A week after DNAinfo and Goathamist unionized, its owner put the two publications out of business entirely. A lot of people have contacted me to ask whether this is legal. I don’t know all the details involved, but it probably is legal. The key case here is Darlington Mfg. In that case, the NLRB had… Continue reading The Legal Situation of DNAinfo and Gothamist
The Boring Story of the 2016 Election
Matt Yglesias is basically right about what happened in the 2016 election. Despite the elaborate theories that have been floated over the past few months, the real story as told by the exit polls is very boring: Donald Trump won because Hillary Clinton was an extremely unpopular candidate. Donald Trump did not win because of… Continue reading The Boring Story of the 2016 Election
On the Difference Between Political and Technical Concerns
One of the frustrating things about the centrist response to single payer proposals is that they cannot seem to determine in their own minds whether a particular objection is political or technical. Indeed, often objections will start off as technical and then, when pushed back against, quickly morph into a political argument. It’s fine of… Continue reading On the Difference Between Political and Technical Concerns