DISQUS

Some of this will depend on the political/legal culture of the country. In some places low regulation and high taxation will largely lead to non-reporting, hiding of assets, off-shoring of wealth, black-market transactions, and so on. The US is more towards this end of things than is Norway but less than Mexico. But, this sort of thing is important to take into account in institution design. Also, there is some strong formal work that shows that, in some range of cases, tax and transfers are no more efficient than legal rules for distribution. The number of cases is fairly limited and it may be that factors about political sociology noted above swamp these results but they are interesting, fairly robust results. See, for example, here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract...

Pretty much any paper by Sanchirico is worth reading, especially his ones on how inefficient norms develop and persist.

What I wonder is, why is he writing this review? Is he qualified in a way that doesn't show from being an editor at some magazines? This is something I don't understand with book reviews- giving reviews to people who don't seem qualified to write them. Does he have a background in philosophy or economics or government or anything? If not, why should we care what he thinks? If he does, that would be worth mentioning since it's useful in assessing his review. NYRB used to be better on this, I think, giving reviews to people who were qualified to judge the work, but to my mind they seem to be getting worse at it, much closer to the generally terrible non-fiction reviews in the NY Times.

I'm fairly skeptical about the emperical claims that are made on this subject. (Kymlicka and Norman have some work on this.) For example, both Australia and Canada have become _significantly_ more racially diverse since the mid 1960s or early 70's when they got rid of explicitly racist immigration policies. My impression, though, is that neither country has significantly cut back welfare-state policies since that time, and in some cases increased them. Now, we might think that they would have increased them _even more_ if they had stayed racially homogenous, but that seems far from obvious to me. So I'm skeptical that this diversity, rather than other features, are what's doing the majority of the work.

I agree that this is pretty terrible behavior and should be shamed. What I wonder, though, after reading the post, is whether, if you had the model of democracy presented originally by Bentham and later by people like Robert Dahl if this sort of behavior can be seen as bad at a very deep level. On that account all democracy is is a device for agregating preferences and letting various interest groups struggle for power in a non-violent way. That seems to be happening here. Of course even on that account it makes sense to use the rhetoric of the common good and the like to try to stop this sort of behavior when it's not to one's own (or one's interest goup's) advantage, but it's just rhetoric. Now, to my mind the Bentham/Dahl account of democracy is a pretty impoverished one, but it's probably still the most popular account for political science types. On that account can anything be said agains this behavior that's not just rhetoric? I'm curious to know.

I don't want to comment on what the paper says until I read it, and I fear that if I comment more now I might be going to much into side issues, but my impression here is that this is mistaking what goes on in the first stage of the four-stage original position with what happens in the real word. That's a common confusion but a confusion nonetheless. But, maybe that's not what's happening. When I have a chance to read the paper I'll let you know what I think. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I'll try to read the paper soon. (Between being behind on my dissertation and being backed up w/ work I shouldn't even read or comment on blogs!) Briefly, as I understand it, the idea of the "strains of commitment" is that an acceptable theory of justice must be one that we can accept no matter where we end up. This is a similar idea to many agreements- if I can just walk away if I don't like the results, no real bargain is made. (Note how in a real contract people can walk away, but only if they pay compensation.) The way this is modeled in the first stage of the original position is via the "closed society" idea- we assume society is such that we enter by birth and leave by death and then figure out what would be just under that situation. By doing that we figure out what we could accept no matter where we end up. (The cynical reading is that this is done just to rule out utilitarianism. It does rule that out, but only on reasonable, independently acceptable grounds, I think.) But, once we move to the later stages of the original position argument this restriction is lifted. Rawls says, after all, in The Law of Peoples, that it's a mark of a despotism to restrict emigration. So, obviously the closed society restriction doesn't apply there. That's how it's supposed to work, I think. And, of course, it does work both ways- if the least well off demanded strict equality they would also be demanding too much (it would also be irrational, but that's another story.) So, this doesn't seem to me to be a real problem w/ Rawls's view at all, though I will have to read the paper to know for sure.

Well, I'll have to read the paper but I must say I'm skeptical already- this aspect of Rawls's view is one of the most consistently misunderstood. The impression I get from the excerpt here seems to suggest a similar misunderstanding, though again I'll have to read it. The "closed society" aspect does one thing for Rawls- it models the "strains of commitment" - the idea that we should pick a theory of justice that we can live with no matter where we end up. That's really _all_ it does. Any account that has it doing more doesn't understand the view. It doesn't have anything to do with anti-cosmopolitanism or nationalism. Once we move beyond the first stage of the 4-stage sequence the condition is dropped. So, my quick impression is that this is another misunderstanding. You might think the idea of the strains of commitment isn't one a theory of justice should have to meet, but if so it's better to just attack that idea directly. (On this topic [and pretty much everything in Rawls] Samuel Freeman's new book [and for the more advanced his _Justice and the Social Contract_] are the places to go.)

I've not read the paper noted in comment 2 above but I strongly suspect their model must be off. Consider that at the height of the highest level of immigration, at a time when there were few if any barriers to movement from politics, in Italy, the biggest sender country in the world at the the time, in the local regions that had the highest level of out-movement, the total out-flow as only about 4-5%. The difference in wages (and opportunity) was higher then, too. This makes me think that this model, if it really predicts that 27% of the population would move, is deeply unrealistic. (This is even leaving out the fact that there has, consistantly, been about a 30-50% rate of return migration all over the world.) When you look at actual immigration rates it turns out that for many reasons most people don't want to and won't move. The dangers of mass immigration are mostly immaginary.

But you have so few of your books on your library thing page. You should just take a week off and put them all on there. That's more or less what I did, despite not having the time to do that at all.

You could have learned those things about IQ tests from reading Gould's _The Mismeasure of Man_ many years ago. (There's good reason to think the Minnisota Twins studies have more than a bit of book-cooking in them too. At the very least they seriously mis-describe the cases.) Gil-White is a funny guy, and by funny I mean crazy, as in serious conspiracy theory, the jews are out to get me type crazy. I think this was the sourse of his tenure problems at Penn, a place where it's very hard to get tenure anyway. (One grant of tenure in 10+ years in the philosophy dept., for example.) He's crazy, but right in this case.

Will- have you read any of Sidgwick's reviews of Spencer's books? I have to admit that I've read very little Spencer. Between the thrashings given him by Russell and, even more, Sidgwick it didn't seem worth the time. Sidgwick presented him as quite confused and holding very implausible views. Most people who like him (Randy Barnett and others, for example) seem to confirm this when they talk about him. I'm curious if you've read Sidwick's reviews (they have recently been republished in a volume edited, I believe, by Marcus Singer) and what you think of them.

I suppose there's a sense in which libertarianism thinks political power should be equalized since it tends to think there should be very little, if any, political power. But, left alone this just (quite obviously) leads to large inequalities in _private_ power. It's far from clear that that's preferable. It's hard for me to imagine a libertarian society that doesn't quickly end up looking like an area run by the mafia.

I was more or less with you up until the IHOP part. I've been told by someone who has tried both that there's no food difference between a $500 meal and a $1000 meal, that the difference is just the showing off. But there's a _huge_ difference between good food and bad food, and IHOP is bad. Now that I think of it this makes me doubt some of the other examples, too. What about the difference between a cheap suit and a good one (not a super fancy one, just a good one)? It's significant in both the look and the feel, and even if you get used to one or the other, that doesn't mean you'll not instantly notice if you see or try the other.

Will,

Don't let your mom post under the name "Jeff Lilly"- I'm sure she really does love you stuff but that's a bit much. ;)

I might try to argue with some of this, but it's late and I'm tired so instead I'll tell a funny story inspired by your remark, "My very favorite move is assuming your conclusion (this is always useful)"

Some years ago I saw Josh Cohen give a paper. I don't recall exactly what it was on. John Kekes, in the audience, said, in his sinister sounding easter european accent, "yez, I vonder vhat haz made you include a falze premize in your argument?" (I believe he meaned the idea that we are all morally equal) without waiting to hear what else Kekes was going to say Cohen responded, "well, I need it to make my conclusion come out true." That, I thought, was great.

I'd prize anyone who could keep a bird that big in Oxford, too. Maybe caring for it all the time was the reason he only ever taught one term. That said, I'm reading _Methods of Ethics_ now and must highly recommend it if you've not read it. Though the jokes are few it's really enjoyable in the way that very good philosophy can be, and helps make clear how much of what's written on the same topics is really crap.

I hope Schmidtz is joking or making some sort of purely rhetorical point about what impression he gets when he reads the paper, since that would be a pretty dumb impression to get. Maybe the papers in souther arizona are much worse than average, but you'd have to read a lot in to an average paper story, or be an idiot, to get that impression. This makes me wonder if he's being serious, and if not, why I should bother to read his reply in more depth.

Hi Will,

I don't have anything substantial to add to what's above, but in case you've not seen it Joseph Stiglitz has a very interesting review of Friedman's book in the Nov/Dec. 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs. The review touches on some of the issues you mention. I've not read Friedman's book so can't say more on it.

James Rachel's little intro book might also be good. (_The Elements of Moral Philosophy_) as might Peter Singer's _Practical Ethics_. I can't say I very much agree with either author's serious views, but they are useful and clear texts that can provide a solid base to start from.

What is that in the background of the logo? A close up of some sort of big fly eye?