DISQUS

Wow. It's hard to imagine a bigger waste of over a billion dollars.

Oh please, this was dealt with by Paul over a decade ago. You people are getting desperate.

This is some serious writing about a serious subject. I now know what I will be doing with the first few days of my summer vacation: reading your report!

The only argument of this sort that ever made any sense to me was: "the military integrated and got rid of racism within its ranks, didn't it?" But then an African-American vet explained to me what made this achievement possible. In the military, he said, you live very, very close to people of other races and creeds on a "twenty-four seven" basis. Nasty arguments break out all the time, but they are resolved. The only alternative is that of making your own life miserable. On this view the military's success in dealing with racism is not due to the authoritarian or collectivist features of the military that these writers admire. It is due to a feature of military life that isn't, and can't be, shared by the rest of society -- not unless we literally live like Spartans!

Will - Excellent post! Hard to believe that of the two of you Tyler is the one who is supposed to be the economist. This is proof that philosophy is not such a bad thing to study, after all!