Disqus - Latest Comments for Brent Buckner

Re: Moral Philosophy and Economic Growth

Brent Buckner — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 08:22:02 -0000

I don't understand why _The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth_ by Benjamin M. Friedman does not meet your requirements. It does make the case that economic growth promotes democracy, openness, and tolerance.

Re: Moral Philosophy and Economic Growth

Brent Buckner — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:32:20 -0000

If that's what you want, to my mind you were misleading in asking for something that argues "that maintaining a relatively high rate of economic growth is morally mandatory for a good government (or is a necessary condition for justice, or legitimacy, or anything like that)", and for complaining about the lack of materials on "growth as a cardinal social and political value".

In your clarified request are you claiming that you're having difficulty finding writings that link economic growth with individual people having "more money, more freedom, more life-options, better health, longer lives, etc."?

Re: Moral Philosophy and Economic Growth

Brent Buckner — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 10:33:53 -0000

Thank you for the clarification. If Tyler Cowen's forthcoming book addresses that, I'll buy a copy!

Re: Class, Education, and Meaning Manufacture

Brent Buckner — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 09:25:29 -0000

Wayne, there's a distinction between what even the best teachers in the country can do and what the best schools in the country actually do. I suspect that Will would be willing to stipulate that there may well be someone else in the country, possibly presently employed as a teacher, who would outperform him in educating his children in a one-on-one (or close to) home setting. Schools aren't organized that way.

With income tax driving a wedge between cost to an employer and income to an employee, even if one could find such a full-time tutor in whom one had such trust, the cost would be prohibitive for the vast majority.

Re: Happiness and Economic Growth

Brent Buckner — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 09:31:40 -0000

On-going (general) economic growth seems such a wonderful thing in the context of the "hedonic treadmill". Strange that mentions of the latter are so rarely matched with mentions of the former.

Re: IQ, Clusters, and Francisco Gil-White

Brent Buckner — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:24:41 -0000

You may want to consider APA Task Force on Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns before moving your priors very far.

Re: The Kost of Kidz

Brent Buckner — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:10:04 -0000

Why pick only one?

Re: Procrastination Is Not Laziness

Brent Buckner — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:40:12 -0000

"It's not procrastination, it's The Incredible Just-In-Time Workload Management System(tm)!"

Re: Clipping the Hedge

Brent Buckner — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 05:56:40 -0000

Perhaps you should not be looking at "investors" as monolithic.

If hedge funds could generate risk-adjusted excess returns but had limited capacity to do so, regulation that excluded classes of people/entities from hedge fund investment would benefit the classes of people/entities still permitted to invest in hedge funds. Less competition for limited capacity. Perhaps even enough ring-fencing to keep the average risk-adjusted excess returns above zero for the classes still permitted to invest in hedge funds.

If that were the case, such regulation could benefit rich individuals and large institutions.

Re: Stop Screening

Brent Buckner — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:11:08 -0000

Shouldn't that be twice not thrice as conscientious or effective (success in detection rate of 80% versus success in detection rate of 40%)?

Re: Kindle Problem?

Brent Buckner — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:40:08 -0000

Thanks for the newsflash.

Re: Incomes in America

Brent Buckner — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:27:00 -0000

If there's no need for scare quotation marks for "probability distribution", I see no need for scare quotation marks for "income-distribution", your point about market economies notwithstanding.
Brent Buckner, posting as guest