DISQUS

A well known ad trades on a countervailing intuition.

The rule against riding on the left side of the road isn't about the oncoming traffic: When someone turns right, their last glance before committing will typically be to their left; whereas, if you are riding on the "wrong" side of the street, you will be approaching them from their right -- which makes it easier for them not to see you, and for you thus to be run over by them.

I want to do business with the guy who came up with Option 2. That dude is funny.

"in the more collectivist cultures of Istanbul, Turkey; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Muscat, Oman, the play is a little rougher."

I take it all plausible third variables are accounted for in the paper? (Of the distinctions that could be drawn between Europe and the near Middle-East, "collectivism" doesn't strike me as necessarily the most salient.)

I like this analysis. I'd just add that what you say about the weird transmogrification of Hayek, Friedman and Buchanan is arguably even more true of Adam Smith.

Well where exactly does Obama deny that "every human life counts," or that "[y]ou have a right to live [life] as you choose." Where does Obama insist that pursuing "happiness" is an "self-indulgent"?

Oh, he doesn't.

Boaz is responding to relatively innocuous, trite, pleasing talk on the theme of public spiritedness with counter-formulations that are significantly more misleading than anything Obama said in the referenced speech. Measured skepticism about "collectivist" rhetoric is one thing; casting public spiritedness as somehow incommensurable with individual achievement (or with the "pursuit of happiness") is another.

Sorry - should have read "...that we ought *not* to embrace..."

Some nations persisted well enough for millennia without free markets. But the move from that fact to the suggestion that we ought to embrace free markets is a non sequitur.

The question isn't whether we can get on "well" enough without this or that institution, but whether the institution marginally optimizes human flourishing.

Oh yeah? Well why don't you ask all these people how happy they are when they're burning in the Lake of Fire?

I always like Michael Caine's remark: "I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better." (Sophie Tucker said much the same sort of thing back in the '40s.)

Do Jihadis "give a damn" about explanations?

"Liberal Fascism is a more intellectually evenhanded book, which says more about Krugman than it does about Liberal Fascism, I’m afraid."

Now that feels like reading Ann Coulter! Maybe Krugman made a hash out of the argument, but Goldberg's entire thesis is inherently, transparently frivolous.

Robin, presumably, any nation state could adopt the "American form of government." Doesn't "patriotism" on your analysis entail "loving" every country that does so?

The reason patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels is that it works brilliantly; American jingoism does little but give their ilk aid and comfort.

"Since I have no easy access to women who sell sex, will you share my life so I can use you for sex?"

Is that line from the Church-approved edition of The Game?

"Honest work that we legally and culturally marginalize is degrading. But that’s because we marginalize it."

Cf. Nietzsche's remark: "The Christian resolve to find the world evil and ugly has made the world evil and ugly." (I would substitute the more ecumenical "moralist's" for "Christian.")

On the issue of being soulless, by the way, I've always liked Giulio Giorello's remark: "Yes, we have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots!"

I probably should have said "Wouldn't you agree that at minimum..."

"[A given constraint on self-interest is morally binding if] heeding the constraint will tend to make the person who heeds it better off, conditional on others heeding it, too.."

Should my interpretive "if" be an "only if"? An "if and only if"?

Individual flourishing may be part of what grounds moral imperatives, but it would seem quite insufficient on its own (cf., for example, the problem of sadistic pleasure). Wouldn't you agree that you need a prior theory of good character (such that only the flourishing or persons with such-and-such character traits can ground a moral imperative)?

Will, you're answer is very amusing, and maybe even spot on. One rhetorical feature of your answer, though, cuts both ways. You play on the convenience of Brother's CO2 excuse, as a means of avoiding having to cough up plane fair. ("C'mon, pony up, cheapskate.") But your collective action rationale is just as convenient an excuse for those who simply want to do whatever it is they want to do, no matter the externalities of the underlying activity. And besides which, as between environmental and economic rationales, I think it's clear which more typically serves as a convenient justification for self-regarding behavior...)

"At the time of your choice, all of the relevant chickens have already been killed."

Suppose there were a delicious food product called Soylent Bleen, which is made out of dead people from a defined class -- say, those born between August 23 and September 22.

You enjoy the product, but lament with appropriate intensity that Virgos are being killed to make it. The same collective action problem obtains. Should you only abjure eating SB only, say, if your threshold at Pledgebank is met? Or isn't there some further argument that no matter what others may do, eating SB is just morally wrong (in a way that, say, withholding nontaxed disposable income from the government isn't)?

"so they create their own secret super awesome genius city where no jerks can ever bother them ever again."

Is this another dig at Disneyland?

I don't like your tone. Are you suggesting that Disneyland isn't the Happiest Place on Earth?

"so there’s really no reposting it..."

Yes, as I subsequently discovered. Oh well, glad you liked it. I'd tried to track down the clip on youtube (Sam's performance is much funnier than my transcription); alas, no such luck.

Boy, did I ever leave that comment on the wrong post. Go ahead and delete it; I'll repost it over where it belongs.