Disqus - Latest Comments for bjk

Re: Why Are There So few Women in Philosophy?

bjk — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:51:53 -0000

pjsw is on target here . . . I suspect there are probably more females in history of philosophy and continental philosophy than in traditional analytic philosophy, which is a male pissing contest.

Lacan for instance tends to be very popular with the ladies . . . try studying Lacan in a North American philosophy department, your application won't get out of the first pile.

Re: Douthat’s Populist Nationalism

bjk — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:16:44 -0000

So these Mexican workers are also going to fight in American wars? They're going to register for the selective service and be eligible for the draft? A nation is composed of all the other people who agree to fight on my side, if necessary. That's why I care more about my fellow citizens than about Mexicans. That's why the universalist baseline doesn't work. Of course, WW lives in the what if world: imagine there were no friction, no wars, no nations, perfect competition. Then what would we do? We don't live in hypothetical worlds, nor do we follow hypothetical moral obligations. Obviously.

Re: Douthat’s Populist Nationalism

bjk — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:15:54 -0000

I consider all of my fellow citizens equally patriotic. If you want to question the loyalty of Hispanic Americans, don't drag me into it.

You asked, why do I value the interests of Mexicans less than those of Americans? Why not look at the sum total of utility, and not just at the American side of the equation? I care about my fellow citizens because they've promised to fight by my side, if it comes to that. There's nothing odious about that. I expect them to do the same.

Some immigration benefits all of us. Plenty of it benefits few and hurts many of us. Maybe it helps the immigrant. So what? That's my bottom line. The burden is on the humanitarians to justify the "deviations."

Re: Douthat’s Populist Nationalism

bjk — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:37:12 -0000

It's so perverse that it's actually the law and practice of every nation on earth, including this one. Man, it's crazy.

Re: Douthat’s Populist Nationalism

bjk — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:26:14 -0000

If you want a simpler argument: economic nationalism is just individual selfishness writ large. It is perfectly consistent.

WW's position makes no sense. It is retail selfishness and wholesale or national humanitarianism. It is incoherent.

Re: Ross on the Moral Baseline

bjk — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:35:58 -0000

Facts? I see no facts. Only moral posturing. But I'll be glad to introduce facts. For instance, employers shift the cost of alien workers to taxpayers, who usually have no idea who they're subsidizing. Many of these jobs Americans won't do are jobs that can't be done profitably in the U.S. *at any wage.* Textiles, for instance. U.S. or alien workers at $0 in the U.S. still cannot compete with Cambodians, without tariffs and subsidies. Even Mexicans can't compete with Cambodians. Illegal alien labor is just another subsidy for businesses that would have closed down long ago. It might be a different story if the employer was obligated to cover every cost of the employee to the taxpayer. Then you would see immigration restricted to skilled workers. But then that wouldn't be humanitarian migration, it would be the wealthy getting wealthier, which is not what Will is talking about.

Re: Ross on the Moral Baseline

bjk — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:11:31 -0000

Actually, as I think about it, most alien labor is probably unproductive makework. The most efficient division of labor would be a) bring in high skill talent to the U.S. and b) ship low skill labor (agriculture, primarily) overseas. Like any sort of unproductive subsidy, subsidizing makework in the U.S. ultimately doesn't benefit anyone.

Re: Ross on the Moral Baseline

bjk — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 19:17:05 -0000

Taxpayers at the bottom are net consumers of government services, and you have to figure those costs in. The Fairfax county budget this year will be $3.3 billion in a county with 1 million people, at a rate of $3,300 per person. Does anyone think that construction workers in Fairfax county pay $3,300 in local taxes? Or that each consumes less than $3,300 in services? There is no such thing as cheap labor. Once you figure those costs in, even aliens in industries protected from foreign competition are probably uneconomic.

Re: Prebuttal on Immigration and Poverty

bjk — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 17:01:27 -0000

What's wrong with comparative advantage? Mexicans sell us food and we sell them tractors? Why do we import Mexicans to prop up uneconomic and dead industries like agriculture? Industries which cannot be made viable even with the cheapest labor.

"Farming since he was a teenager, Mr. Scaroni, 50, built a $50 million business growing lettuce and broccoli in the fields of California, relying on the hands of immigrant workers, most of them Mexican and many probably in the United States illegally. But early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented fields here. Now some 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they run no risk of deportation."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/us/05export.h...

Re: Prebuttal on Immigration and Poverty

bjk — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 17:13:38 -0000

Ironically, the practical effect of importing all of that "cheap" labor is the impoverishment of Mexico. Maybe the enforcement of our labor laws will give Mexico a fighting chance.

Re: Prebuttal on Immigration and Poverty

bjk — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 17:51:23 -0000

Actually it does matter. There is no such thing as cheap labor. By employing illegal aliens, the employer is simply shifting the cost of labor (like healthcare, for instance) from his payroll to the taxpayer.

Re: Questions for Particularists

bjk — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 07:51:33 -0000

Libertarianism apparently leads to universal humanitarianism, but so does communism. No matter where you start, you conveniently end up at universal humanitarianism.

Re: Actual Evidence about Immigrant Assimilation

bjk — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 09:44:33 -0000

Immigration's not a problem, but if it is, blame the British. Either way, immigration is not the problem. Problem solved.

Re: Guests in the Machine

bjk — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 11:53:33 -0000

This makes no sense. We have "deeply held mythologies about our relationship to the global poor"? Apart from ignoring the global poor, I'm unaware of any relationship, much less "deeply held mythologies." And guest workers would not undermine a "shared, naive sense of global solidarity" because no such thing exists. If you replace "global" with "American" and argue guest workers would lower the wages of poor Americans and benefit rich Americans, undermining the solidarity between rich and poor Americans, that makes sense.

Re: Guests in the Machine

bjk — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 12:06:47 -0000

It's a funny way to argue, to invent a non-existent mythology and then make the charge that these non-existent beliefs are being hypocritically betrayed. Strange.

Re: Guests in the Machine

bjk — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:32:31 -0000

Thanks for the morality lesson, Doctor X. In my experience, however, most moral standards are applied self-servingly.

Re: Guests in the Machine

bjk — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 13:08:14 -0000

Other than self-congratulation? Nobody is denying anybody's humanity. That's just your self-congratulation speaking. More generally, the argument for guest workers ignores that cheap labor largely serves to prevent the most efficient division of labor. Agriculture is the most obvious example. The best way to increase labor market efficiency is to end subsidies for uneconomic industries, and those subsidies include guest worker programs. Viable industries can pay the going market rate for labor and don't need the subsidy.

Re: Guests in the Machine

bjk — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:32:25 -0000

Who is most in favor of guest workers? Who has the most to gain from blather about those poor migrant workers? Employers, and more specifically, employers of dead and dying industries like US agriculture. Who has the most to lose? Some Brazilian sugar farmer who can't compete with the combination of tariffs, subsidies, and guest worker programs. It seems an awful lot like the part-time champions of the poor, full-time champions of corporate interests, the libertarians, have given up on attacking domestic subsidies and decided to go along with the flow and promote the least worst alternative, guest workers. It still sucks for some African farmer who justs wants to sell his cotton in the US.

Re: Guests in the Machine

bjk — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:29:41 -0000

The sugar farmer and the migrant workers are of course, the same person, except there are alot more of the former. As to second point, I suspect immigration policy went off the rails about the same time the US instituted a volunteer army. We all, of course, live off the subsidy provided by those who serve our country at the risk of their lives. A nation is not a vast and unjust transfer-payment scheme, as some seem to imagine.

Re: Guests in the Machine

bjk — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 07:26:56 -0000

I just pointed out what seemed to me a causal relationship between the draft and immigration policy. When the cost of citizenship is so low for so many, there is less resistance to handing out the benefits of citizenship for free, like amnesty. And one last point, for the second time: self-congratulation is not a basis for social policy.

Re: Guests in the Machine

bjk — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:51:53 -0000

I agree completely with what some may consider the bilge of MaryJ.

Re: Guest Workers and The Ultimate Liberal Aim

bjk — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:00:36 -0000

Wouldn't the ultimate liberal aim be better served by selling US citizenship rather than through guest workers or immigration? Let's say you auctioned off say citizenship rights equal to 1% of the US each year, so 3 million passports. In turn you got $100000 per passport, which doesn't sound crazy considering all the wealthy people who want to live here. In fact, the cost would probably be much higher. If my math is right, that's $300 billion per year, which buys alot of enchiladas. If you share just 1/3 of that with the displaced immigrants who would have taken those immigration slots, the would-be guest workers or immigrants would be much better off. If libertarians see nations as clubs, why not auction off citizenship like clubs do?

Re: Must… Destroy… Milton Freedman

bjk — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:47:59 -0000

And the problem with most modernist buildings is that nobody could live in them.

Re: Yes, Mies van der Rohe is Antiseptic and Cold and Socialist

bjk — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:06:02 -0000

But all of McCain's wars are in the name of a morally superior state of affairs. Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, his support for intervention in Darfur, Somalia, Rwanda, etc.
McCain's support for amnesty is of a piece with his enthusiasm for invading the world. Both satisfy his considerable appetite for sanctimony. By the way, post-nationalism is the future and always will be.

Re: The Idealism of Jackets and Ties

bjk — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:59:37 -0000

We need to match the sacrifice of the greatest generation. Then we will satisfy Brooks. Only a few hundred thousand corpses to go.

Re: Nationalist Moral Chauvinism

bjk — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 09:54:15 -0000

I detect a certain cultural chauvinism in Wilkinson's argument. Nothing is preventing Nigerians from turning their impoverished and corrupt democracy into a genuine and prosperous democracy, nor are US conservatives standing in their way. Surely they are capable of it -- or does he think otherwise? Or is their situation so hopeless that the only choice left is to move en masse to the US and Europe?

Re: Seriously, Why Are You Freaking Out?

bjk — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:43:51 -0000

If you add the Asian to the white, you get a 56% majority. But the trends are all in the wrong direction, as the demographics would predict, and not just outmigration. For instance, California will soon spend more on its prisons than its universities, $15.4 billion vs. $15.3 billion. That's alot to spend on prisons.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/...

And that's before closing the $15 billion budget deficit.

Re: More Fun with Collective Action

bjk — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:15:16 -0000

No doubt when he commutes between his dual appointment in NY and Australia, he takes a row boat.

Re: Happiness and Personality: Indviduality Matters

bjk — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:13:39 -0000

Extraverts are notorious liars.

Re: Analytical Nationalism vs. What Actually Happens

bjk — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:03:00 -0000

Is it better for Mexico and Mexicans to pick tomatoes in Pennsylvania or pick them in Mexico and ship them to Pennsylvania? What can be achieved by immigration that can't be achieved by trade? And if Bill Gates and Carlos Selim are free to collect rents that come with monopoly businesses, why can't low wage American workers collect the rents that come with American citizenship?

Re: Analytical Nationalism vs. What Actually Happens

bjk — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:36:46 -0000

Productivity is higher in the US because there is more capital in the US. So which is better, bringing the capital to Mexico or the Mexicans to capital? Maybe Mexico is hopelessly corrupt, and the best way to reduce poverty is one Mexican (Nigerian, Filipino, etc) at a time, so much the worse for lazy American workers.

You haven't made that case though. There is a kind of moral blackmail here ("Are you in favor of poverty and inequality?") but the premise is an unstated chauvinism (the third world is hopelessly corrupt, let's perform an boatlift and save who we can). I don't happen to be as pessimistic as you are.

Second, low skill immigration may simply subsidize uneconomic industries in high-wage nations. I wouldn't be as opposed to immigration is employers didn't offload their employment costs to the local taxpayer, like meat packing plants in Iowa overload small Iowa towns with high costs but profits are privatized. If employers had to cover every cost of their immigrant employees, then immigration would make more sense. But then immigration probably would not be the kind of low-skill immigration you're in favor of.

Re: Analytical Nationalism vs. What Actually Happens

bjk — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:07:56 -0000

Ok, I will check out Pritchett.

So it helps "Mexicans"? Let's be clear on what the unit of analysis is. The Mexican immigrants, OK, but what about the 110 million Mexicans who aren't immigrants? You say the meat-packing plant would not survive without the immigrants, right? Where would that plant go, if not for the immigrants? Mexico?

Re: Philosophy Is Sexy

bjk — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:19:47 -0000

The most stunning stat in that article is that the 27 professors and 60 graduate students nearly outnumbered the 100 graduating majors.

Re: The Politics of Human Capital

bjk — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:00:42 -0000

What's wrong with poverty again? Why do we have to work so hard to get rid of it? Not saving money is one way that people prefer to avoid thinking about the future, and death. That's real diversity. And if you really want to reduce poverty, stop importing more poor people. That's guaranteed to work, instead of jerry-rigged fantasy schemes.

Re: The Politics of Human Capital

bjk — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:09:51 -0000

Poverty is remarkably stubborn, and one reason is that the poor are very stubborn. That's why all of the schemes have failed so far. The poor have gotten in the way. Wilkinson favors the sociological theories of poverty, but what if the biggest factor turned out to be genetic? Would genetic solutions be appropriate? Once poverty turns into a problem--and this is a relatively recent phenomena--it's arbitrary to put a limit on the solutions. I'd suggest rethinking the idea that it's a problem.

This also suggests the problem with liberaltarianism. Libertarianism is a genuine political doctrine, and freedom is a political concept. Liberaltarianism, I submit, is an engineer's conception of politics, with no guiding political concept. Is poverty a problem? The liberaltarian will engineer a solution, so much the worse for freedom or justice or whatever political concept happens to get in the way.

Re: Kindlenomics

bjk — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:41:02 -0000

Why not auction off passports and then walk down the streets in Bangladesh handing out the proceeds. It would appear to have the same effect and would result in a more advantageous division of labor.

Re: I Heart Adam Smith

bjk — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 21:30:48 -0000

The central chapter treats the imagination, and it's a particularly mechanical imagination, in which happiness is conceived as a life ordered like a well-functioning machine, or like a precision watch. This same preference for order is seen in trinkets of frivilous utility, like watches, but also in the universe, as it must be conceived by the great superintendant. The title Theory of Moral Sentiments is a deliberate paradox because "theory" at that time applied to things like "a theory of the heavens." Smith's book is really the Theory of (the System) of Moral Sentiments, just as The Wealth of Nations treats the system of natural liberty, or capitalism, and Newton's theories explain the "system of the world." The paradox of a "theory of moral sentiments" is central to Smith's approach because the paradoxes can only be explained at the level of the system, where greed turns into charity and the dream of mechanical ease is the motive force of lives of permanent exertion.

Re: Blame It on Gerald Dworkin for Blaming It on Ayn Rand

bjk — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:30:21 -0000

This is embarrassing.

http://static.flickr.com/28/47632485_b01ff05bfc...

Re: We’re Gonna Need a Montage

bjk — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 07:49:49 -0000

Warren Buffett has interesting things to say about corporate philanthropy.

www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1987.html

A recent survey reported that about 50% of major American
companies match charitable contributions made by directors
(sometimes by a factor of three to one). In effect, these
representatives of the owners direct funds to their favorite
charities, and never consult the owners as to their charitable
preferences. (I wonder how they would feel if the process were
reversed and shareholders could invade the directors' pockets for
charities favored by the shareholders.) When A takes money from B
to give to C and A is a legislator, the process is called
taxation. But when A is an officer or director of a corporation,
it is called philanthropy. We continue to believe that
contributions, aside from those with quite clear direct benefits
to the company, should reflect the charitable preferences of
owners rather than those of officers and directors.

www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1993.html

Berkshire's practice in respect to discretionary philanthropy
- as contrasted to its policies regarding contributions that are
clearly related to the company's business activities - differs
significantly from that of other publicly-held corporations.
There, most corporate contributions are made pursuant to the wishes
of the CEO (who often will be responding to social pressures),
employees (through matching gifts), or directors (through matching
gifts or requests they make of the CEO).

At Berkshire, we believe that the company's money is the
owners' money, just as it would be in a closely-held corporation,
partnership, or sole proprietorship. Therefore, if funds are to be
given to causes unrelated to Berkshire's business activities, it is
the charities favored by our owners that should receive them.
We've yet to find a CEO who believes he should personally fund the
charities favored by his shareholders. Why, then, should they foot
the bill for his picks?

Let me add that our program is easy to administer. Last fall,
for two months, we borrowed one person from National Indemnity to
help us implement the instructions that came from our 7,500
registered shareholders. I'd guess that the average corporate
program in which employee gifts are matched incurs far greater
administrative costs. Indeed, our entire corporate overhead is
less than half the size of our charitable contributions. (Charlie,
however, insists that I tell you that $1.4 million of our $4.9 million overhead is
attributable to our corporate jet, The Indefensible.)

Below is a list showing the largest categories to which our
shareholders have steered their contributions.

(a) 347 churches and synagogues received 569 gifts
(b) 283 colleges and universities received 670 gifts
(c) 244 K-12 schools (about two-thirds secular, one-
third religious) received 525 gifts
(d) 288 institutions dedicated to art, culture or the
humanities received 447 gifts
(e) 180 religious social-service organizations (split
about equally between Christian and Jewish) received
411 gifts
(f) 445 secular social-service organizations (about 40%
youth-related) received 759 gifts
(g) 153 hospitals received 261 gifts
(h) 186 health-related organizations (American Heart
Association, American Cancer Society, etc.) received
320 gifts

Three things about this list seem particularly interesting to
me. First, to some degree it indicates what people choose to give
money to when they are acting of their own accord, free of pressure
from solicitors or emotional appeals from charities. Second, the
contributions programs of publicly-held companies almost never
allow gifts to churches and synagogues, yet clearly these
institutions are what many shareholders would like to support.
Third, the gifts made by our shareholders display conflicting
philosophies: 130 gifts were directed to organizations that
believe in making abortions readily available for women and 30
gifts were directed to organizations (other than churches) that
discourage or are opposed to abortion.

Last year I told you that I was thinking of raising the amount
that Berkshire shareholders can give under our designated-
contributions program and asked for your comments. We received a
few well-written letters opposing the entire idea, on the grounds
that it was our job to run the business and not our job to force
shareholders into making charitable gifts. Most of the
shareholders responding, however, noted the tax efficiency of the
plan and urged us to increase the designated amount. Several
shareholders who have given stock to their children or
grandchildren told me that they consider the program a particularly
good way to get youngsters thinking at an early age about the
subject of giving. These people, in other words, perceive the
program to be an educational, as well as philanthropic, tool. The
bottom line is that we did raise the amount in 1993, from $8 per
share to $10.

Re: The “Conservative” Moral Sentiments: Do We Need Them?

bjk — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:51:35 -0000

Isn't the family a little tribe that relies on subordination and moralized disgust?

Re: The “Conservative” Moral Sentiments: Do We Need Them?

bjk — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:42:55 -0000

Of the five dials, so to speak, the liberal values are digital (harm and reciprocity) and the conservative are analog (purity, authority, and in-group). You either harm or don't harm, and you either reciprocate or don't. It's hard to imagine too little harm or too much reciprocity. Not true of the conservative virtues, and we need both. Let's take the family on the street after a hurricane. Reciprocity won't work (they have no money). Harm won't work (you didn't put them there). Need overlap of harm (weak desire not to see them suffer), reciprocity (this might happen to me) and in group (hurricane victims in Bangladesh aren't at my door).

Re: Shorter Kenneally

bjk — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:34:10 -0000

Kenneally is expounding on a footnote to a passage in Strauss's Natural Right and History, quoting Locke like so:

"nature and the earth furnish only the almost most worthless materials as in themselves"*

* 124. "Locke's statements about the relative importance of the gifts of nature and human labor [are illustrated--sic] with a statement from Ambrose's Hexameron, translated by George Boas, in Essays on Primitivism and Related Ideas in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1948), p. 42."

In the passage cited by Strauss, Boas quotes the Church father Ambrose in this way:

"In the Hexameron he gives us a description of the world and of man as they came from the hands of their creator, before their nature had been changed by sin. This description combines themes from Genesis and pictures of the Golden Age from classical poetry. Its general tone is that of soft primitivism.

Spontaneously earth bore all fruits; though it could not be plowed in the absence of a plowman--no farmer yet existed--nevertheless it abounded in the richest harvests, and, I do not doubt, with an even larger yield, since the slothfulness of the husbandman could not rob the soil of its richness . . . Thus, O Man, while you are asleep and unconscious, the earth still produces its fruits; you sleep and then you rise and marvel to see how the grain has grown through the night."

Re: Virtue and Trust: Insufficient but Necessary

bjk — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:32:00 -0000

The founders were found of this quote from Pope:

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.

Re: Peace and Money

bjk — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:24:48 -0000

CR forgets "saving the third world via mass immigration." Idealism dies hard . . .

Re: APPLYING FOR AN H-1B VISA THIS YEAR? KNOW ANYONE WHO IS?

bjk — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:09:41 -0000

The real injustice with H-1b visas is that the visa holders are tied to one employer. That's bad for the visa holder and for the American coders or nurses who compete with the visa holders. Free the H-1bs.

Re: Healy on the Cult

bjk — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:18:47 -0000

Tumid . . . ?

Re: Support Gay Marriage, Support Religious Freedom

bjk — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:59:34 -0000

"Want to discriminate? Fine. Just don’t take tax money to do it."

Not true . . . landlords that discriminate face substantial fines and penalties, and landlords aren't taking any federal money. Same goes for employers and businesses. Wilkinson really should know this . . .

Re: Support Gay Marriage, Support Religious Freedom

bjk — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:18:54 -0000

If gay couples become a recognized and protected class, then any organization that fails to recognize the couple will be breaking a law, whether it's a religious organization or a business or a landlord. Of course, I support repealing all discrimination laws . . . ""Want to discriminate? Fine" . . . This is definitely a starter . . .

Re: Why Huntington Is Full of It

bjk — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:31:26 -0000

Out of 44 city councillors, 3 are non-white, including 2 Asians and one Hispanic.

http://app.toronto.ca/im/council/councillors.jsp

Isn't the queen still on the currency? Canada is a very conservative country . . . it would never tolerate the kind of open border we have with Mexico, and for good reason.

Re: The Value of Savings

bjk — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:56:42 -0000

How much are people willing to pay for unemployment insurance like Aflac? That's a pretty good measure of what savings is worth.

Re: Life is hard. Here is someone.

bjk — Sat, 16 May 2009 15:30:54 -0000

LIHHIS is now on my regular rotation . . . but I had to disagree about MJ. This makes more sense . . .

http://badadvice.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/...

Re: The Legitimacy of Border Policy

bjk — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:33:42 -0000

What happens when all the lifeboats start to sink after they take in the drowning swimmers? Is everybody better off then? They are equally screwed, hard to deny that.