DISQUS

What first, second, third generation Mexican Americans tend to believe has been consistently and predictably different from what Mexicans believe.

yes. that's it! thank you.

Do you want me to bite, webgrrl? Okay. What happened?

It's not okay to voice disagreement with the majority? Most Americans want a society where you are not asked to leave because you disagree with a law. There are plenty of countries where stating disagreement with government policy is outlawed to choose from, so maybe you should leave.

Inflation in libertarianville has been less than 12% since yesterday.

Beyond simply voicing arguments against individual policies, libertarians can certainly advocate certain policies that would move the world in a liberal direction, e.g. increased immigration, perhaps greater federalism, etc.

Happily, as near as most of us can tell, the relationship between liberalism and reasonable social welfare functions seems to be monotonic, so any measure toward liberalism is good whether we can ever establish a libertarian paradise. This is a benefit that Marxism doesn't even have in theory.

Will, you should be a bit more deferential to your guests and not interrupt them.

Most conversations are actually very shallow. Actually, probably 99.9% of all conversations are extremely shallow, whether or not they are New York intellectuals.

crispin,

does it matter to your argument that atomic weaponry has already been developed?

is the title from finnegan's wake?

"they were written with more than the goal of reducing the numbers of poor, fatherless children. No, they are there to protect the future."

For an exploration on the efficacy of anti-prostitution laws on meeting these stated goals see Malthus, Thomas R.

Nice post, but that most certainly was not the best song ever. ;)

Futurarchy. But this is purely utopian. The problem with your suggestions is that the systematic poor judgment of voters is natural, and essentially uncurable unless it becomes worth a persons while to become an expert. This would require changing the way we make collective decisions.

This best thing we can and should do is fight to leave as many decisions as possible to individuals.

Well, first you identify he problem (eg voters could do a much better job), then you think of solutions that are within the principles of justice. Caplan is only doing the first bit.

I think Hanson's futurarchy idea really does get to the heart of the issue. Would anyone not expect the prediction markets to come much closer to the "experts" opinions when it comes to maximizing the voters chosen utility function than does the result of a typical election. If this is the case, than essentially Caplan's is correct, experts>median voter (although still worse than prediction markets) when it comes to actually meeting some predetermined goal.

I agree that this is the obvious conclusion.

Matthew,
I think your response confuses patriotism with a general sort of taking other people into account in your social welfare function. What is the logical basis for valuing one group of people above another? Isn't that the really important distinction of patriotism or nationalism?

Title suggestion: The Marglinal Cost of Thinking Like an Economist

Matt,

I suppose Russianpoets are for Russian people, but probably not for Haitian people. They only get obscure Haitian poets.