DISQUS

It won't work without a URL?

Well, I don't think it has even been established that carbon emissions have a net negative external effect, so I don't even buy the argument for the pigouvian tax. In that context, it's hard to see this as anything other than a rent-seeking expedition.

Ashish, I did like it, a great deal even. But I think it has been overrated as high literary art. I think somewhat 2-D characters are often more emotionally engaging, since I think we often identify more strongly with them because our own self-narratives are usually embarassingly 2-D. (Many people really do find illumination in watching Sex and the City and deciding "I'm a Carrie!") I quite identified with Bootie's naively fierce idealism about intellectual standards while at the same time thinking he turned out to be a pretty implausibly silly character.

John, I don't have such stupid views about economics. First, and obviously, for about any good, I prefer not to pay much more than the lowest price on the market (taking into account search costs, etc), because that leaves me with less with which to buy other things. People are not being stupid when they are nonplussed to find the same pants they just bought for half the price at another store. That's a real loss. Second, in the particular case of haggling in Turkey, there is an extreme information asymmetry. There is no assurance about the quality of goods. Most branded goods are counterfeit, so one can't use brand reputation as a proxy for quality. And there is no way of telling if they are just lying to you about the nature of goods. So you don't know what it's worth to you because you don't know what it really is. For example, Kerry found an allegedly silver bracelet she liked, but we didn't know how to tell whether it was really silver, or the quality of silver advertised, etc.

I think it's weird to think you can just look at an item and then magically intuit your reservation price.

Chris, Yes, it's practically inconceivable that one would learn to independently apply one's intellectual and moral judgment instead of slavishly touting pre-selected heroes from a cartoon pantheon.

Thomas Jefferson OWNED people, KNEW it was wrong, and kept doing it anyway. If that doesn't DQ you from the libertarian hall of fame, what does?

Touche, sir!

Maybe a bad analogy. The point is that these people are extremely intellectually an morally vulgar. Liberal market order may not appeal to juvenile taste, but it is functional -- it leads to happy, healthy, wealthy, lives -- and is in that way stirring and beautiful. People on the left and right who worry this is empty or makes no room for excellence or destroys community, or whatever, are just talking out their asses.

Jen, I think the important difference is that in the case of FDA-approved drugs not covered by insurance, it is not against the law to take them. That may be a moot point if you can't otherwise afford them, yes. But at least they are not forbidden.

John, Yes!

Dan, You're welcome!

Matt, Good point about the "ideal man." I suspect Spencer has an essentialist streak in which that makes sense. E.g., there are a number of essential human faculties, and there such a thing as their complete joint perfection. In a modern biological context, this makes no sense. There are no essential faculties. There is a normal distribution of traits across the population. For the ideal man we could substitute the statistically average man, and come up with a good idea of what Spencer-happiness at the limit would look like for a lot of people. But variation in faculties, and variation even in their counterfactual perfection, is a necessary feature of the human (or any) population.

Jim, As I'm sure you agree, the scientific method is among the most important achievements,and one of the most precious aspects of our Enlightenment heritage. Discovery's ID unit has implemented a rhetorically sophisticated attack on the norms of inquiry that underlie all science, technology, and and it's liberatory reality and promise. I think it's important to understand that the ID issue isn't a disagreement that can be settled by rational inquiry, according to its own standards. It is a disagreement about whether rational inquiry and its standards should have cultural primacy over emotionally powerful non-rational commitments. I understand that lots of people at Discovery have nothing whatsoever to do with the ID shop, but vital norms do not survive by argument alone. People who throw in with organizations that explicitly seek to undermine the prestige and authority of culturally precious, but fragile norms of reason must be made to bear some social cost, even if only as small as being excluded from a blog devoted to technology. Hance may be a great guy with truly worthwhile things to say, but that's not really the issue.

"Are you completely unwilling to acknowledge that the proximate wealth, attractiveness, ability of another person may influence your level of contentment?"

No.

"What drives you to earn if not dissatisfaction with your current level of consumption relative to others’ you observe?"

Having goas that require money to achieve.

"Likewise, do you not pity the retarded or the hideous or the poor?"

Of course.

"As a sometimes economist, I am well aware of the positive sum nature of markets and even think that income equality is a neccessary feature of growing economies. And yet I am still bothered by the plight of the less fortunate."

Being less fortunate than some: not a plight. Not having enough: plight.

Stuart, Thanks. The von Neumann and Morgenstern passage is great. Of course, it would be a mistake to think that a good moral principle would need to be a strict mathematical function. "Do the best you can for everyone involved" is perfectly intelligible, though no decision rule can ever tell us how to do the balancing when trading one person's welfare against another's. We end up with rules of thumb like "Small losses for big gains are OK," and "Big losses are not OK, no matter how big the gains," and so forth. But no rule for how big big needs to be to force a small loss.

Tim, Great quote!

Bill, If it's a good opportunity, a good chance, then you should be grateful for the opportunity, and try to do it justice. There's a reason people intern for free, and usually its because they think it will be a good opportunity.

If our purpose is just to move resources around in order to equalize holdings, then no.

My argument, in a nutshell, is that the adequate development of everyone's primary capacities is a public good, and that only the state can provide it. Think of it as investment in the infrastructure of the network of productive cooperation. If the state is legitimate at all, then so is reallocation for the purpose of meeting the principle of equal opportunity.

Luka, It's not you... From David Leopold's outstanding SEP entry on Stirner:

-

Modern readers hoping to understand The Ego and Its Own are confronted by several obstacles, not least the form, structure, and argument, of Stirner's book.

Much of Stirner's prose—which is crowded with aphorisms, italicisation, and hyperbole—appears calculated to disconcert. Most striking, perhaps, is the use of word play. Rather than reach a conclusion through the conventional use of argument, Stirner often approaches a claim that he wishes to endorse by exploiting words with related etymologies or formal similarities. For example, he frequently associates words for property (such as ‘Eigentum’) with words connoting distinctive individual characteristics (such as ‘Eigenheit’) in order to promote the claim that property is expressive of selfhood. (Stirner's account of egoistic property—see below—gives this apparently orthodox Hegelian claim a distinctive twist.)

This rejection of conventional forms of intellectual discussion is linked to Stirner's substantive views about language and rationality. His unusual style reflects a conviction that both language and rationality are human products which have come to constrain and oppress their creators. Stirner maintains that accepted meanings and traditional standards of argumentation are underpinned by a conception of truth as a privileged realm beyond individual control. As a result, individuals who accept this conception are abandoning a potential area of creative self-expression in favour of adopting a subordinate role as servants of truth. In stark contrast, Stirner insists that the only legitimate restriction on the form of our language, or on the structure of our arguments, is that they should serve our individual ends. It is the frequent failure of ordinary meanings and standard forms of argument to satisfy his interpretation of this criterion which underpins Stirner's remorselessly idiosyncratic style.

The Ego and Its Own has an intelligible, but scarcely transparent, structure. . .

I'm trusting Loewenstein and Frederick in their paper on "Hedonic Adaptation" in the Kahneman, Diener, & Schwarz Well-Being volume. They say, "Young, Nemecek, and Nemecek (1994) found that reported satisfaction [from cosmetic plastic surgery] remained constant."

Um, Yes. Thanks. Will revise and resubmit. Whoops!

Peter, The Hacker/Shiller/etc. hope that slightly increased income volatility can be sold as "economic insecurity" is crazy. Economic insecurity has historically meant lack of assurance that one will have ENOUGH. Losing a quarter of your income in a swing from 80 to 60K may be extremely inconvenient, but it's just not insecurity.

Naw, Ricky won't do nothing but look for Cheetos.

About harm to the poor. I agree (1)-(3) are all problems and cause harm. Pogge's inference then ought to simply be that we stop doing (1)-(3). And then it's hard to see how redistribution to these countries can be anything other than another instance of (3), exacerbating the prior harm.

If I remember, it's assessments of efficacy in certain kinds of tasks. Depressed people do better in gauging how much their performance had to do with their effort and ability. Happy folk overestimate how much their skill has to do with it. Try this, too:

Alloy, L.B. and Abramson, L.Y. "Judgment of Contingency in Depressed and
Nondepressed Students: Sadder but Wiser?" Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1979,
108: 441-485.

Thanks, Jen! You're awesome. You didn't mean to, but you've just reminded me to call Suz.