DISQUS

...Assuming, of course, that the concept of natural rights is meaningful in the first place.

It seems that the only interesting question here is whether or not to consider prosperity a natural right. All of the reasons why the social contract argument won't get very much purchase concerning international claims have already been stated.

The thing that keeps swimming around in my head is how trivial the concept of natural rights becomes once we allow positive liberties into the category. It seems there is an infinite number of positive liberties with low probabilities of access and no responsible party that could fit the profile, prosperity being only one. For instance, why not let in access to immortality? Sounds good to me.

Anyway, I am not saying that access to prosperity shouldn't be considered a natural right, I just feel that allowing for it makes the concept marginally more meaningless.

But "my" proposal would do that. And, yes, it would be very controversial.

"We redistribute out of a desire to fix structural imbalances that unduly harm some.

To rip off Hanson a bit, perhaps "we" redistribute to signal solidarity and concern for the poor. Maybe not, but I buy it.

For instance:

"I can see an argument where it is unfair to have your money taxed away from you. To think that this unfairness is equal or even comparable to the unfairness of being born into poverty and all of its attendant suffering just doesn't compute for me."

So in this scenario being born poor and having your money are both considered unfair, albeit unequally. Taxation is necessary because some people are poor, and some people are poor because they were born poor. It would then follow that both unfairnesses have same root cause: poor people having children. The logical solution would be to require people to have the means to pay for their children before they have them. But, of course, this would send the wrong signal.

First, it is wrong to take a preference for redistribution to say much about liberty at all–even economic liberty

I disagree. Maybe it doesn't matter all that much but who is to say? Thats the problem with determining quantitative values for ambiguous concepts like "economic liberty", preferences differ across individuals.

This is why these indexes tend to be kind of silly, weighted averages of different variables can't be done objectively. If you want to measure a certain variable and compare then do so, but why stuff several variables, with subjective weights into a single average and call it the such-and-such-index? What do I really get from this?

To take an absurd example, what if I come from a region that produces 99% of all global goods and services, yet levies a 100% tariff on all imports, the value received for "trade freedom" in this scenario would be about zero. What weight should I attach to this value? The Heritage index would give it 10%, I would give it zero. I would say I don't feel any less free from this tariff.

In addition, as Andrew Gelman has pointed out,sometimes the variation in some variables across regions may be quite small but relatively large for other ones. So what winds up happening is that the the index becomes a measure of only a couple of the variables yet reports to be a measure of a wider range. I consider this misleading. Although, I should say, this is a a complaint about relative ranking indexes in general, I haven't had the time to go through the Heritage index properly.

As for whether or not Mexican immigration will increase redistribution pressure in the American political system, no one really knows. You don't think it will, I do, I guess only time will tell. Lets say for arguments sake that Mexican immigration does increase redistribution, I see no reason why someone concerned with "economic liberty" couldn't oppose it as a result.

Well, his story is that moral hazard, which varies from one type of insurance to the next, makes insuance impsossible if large enough in any particular market.

Although all insurance creates some moral hazard it is hard to tell a story about how life insurance would increase moral hazard all that much. People don't seem to be in a rush to collect on their policies!

I wouldn't say that government has crowded out auto insurance however, private auto insurance markets opperate perfectly well as far as I know. Mandating liability coverage, for those who choose to drive, isn't the same as government supplied insurance.

Anyway, I too enjoyed that part of the conversation!

will, dude,

i have been waiting for you to take on the front-porch-kibbutz for awhile now. thank you for engagement.

btw. have you checked e.d. kain's post, at ordinary gentlemen, on prosperity yet? please read it, please comment. for me? thanx. the short: because of the boom and bust nature of our false individualist/consumerist culture it is obvious we are better off subsistence farming, or something.

will, this is a great lecture. for the first 30 minutes or so all i could think about was leon kass. i am glad stich brought him up, and then gave him as much time as he deserves. anyway, you should totally get dan kelly on bhtv, for realz.

the trade offs in this poll were so intense. i apparently don't care as much about the size of goobberment as much as i thought!

this changed my life. forever. or, until we get new buttons to push.

by the way, buttons definitely are the most superior of superior ways to actuate stuff.

hear that will? how dare you question the leader! 'cause, like, bush, and cheney, and something or other!

anyway, robert (and history!) are coming for you, and they are armed with google, and a 27 by 40 poster!

dude, what did you put in that straw? that is some good shit!

look, all i know is that the hardest part about being a rollerblader is telling your dad you're gay. especially if he happens to be a skier, those guys are nazis.

what would be totally rad is if you posted a response from this dood. being the sole arbitor rad, in my world, i know this.

http://www.winterspeak.com/2008/12/does-not-und...

"what she's against is ideologically driven theory, be it left or right."

just had to see that again. thats all, carry on.

who is your control group? are they going under too?

our will is an awsome will!

dude, you have been cracking me up for about two weeks now. its like crack.

yeah, whatevs. there is no wrong answer on this one. i only voted so i could say no on some pretty lame local ballot initiatives, and so went the straight "Lib" ticket to simplify the rest. in the end i am too many standard deviations from the mean to ever have a meaningful candidate to vote for, but the local elections actually do matter - kinda.

i dug both, but the B-side was better. 100% will, no ice.

3 more times. its going to take 3 more iterations of history doing the same thing until we realize. ok, maybe 4. but that is as high as i go.

thanks for watching that for me. or us. whatever, thanks, dog.

totally sweet.

ok, ok, now tell us what winston thought of the "Debate!?" and, of course, you must show a picture during transmission.

The funniest part of the whole thing, to me anyway, is the arbitrary nature of “local”. Once upon a time it was “Made in the USA” before that wasn’t good enough. Now you have to buy at the state level, or within a city, which is the ultimate. But why stop there? Why not “buy north side of town”, or “south-east quadrant”? And of course the dude who grows his own tomatoes and his own ipod wins. That’s my goal “localist consumer of all”. To do it, I am going to define “local” as “the Earth”. That way I can rock the lingo and have the largest basket of goods available.

Oh BTW, Will, if you have not seen King of Kong yet you need to. I couldn't stop thinking about your theories on relative status hierarchies while watching it. That's all.

Oh man, now you’re picking on the "empiricism" thing again. What did this dude ever do to you?

It's just not fair - he is a journalist after all. You should cut him some slack.