Feb 2 2013
My "What Makes People Think Like Economists?" (Journal of Law and Economics 2001) also analyzes why economists disagree with each other. Key results (footnotes omitted):Overall, the SAEE evidence suggests that disagreements among economists are surprisingly random. There are 10 questions for which nothing in Tabl...
Feb 1 2013
In the last few days, there have been two ominous signs about our future under ObamaCare. Both suggest the term "ObamaCare" is more accurate than the more-often used term "Affordable Care Act," because both suggest that the term "affordable" is strongly out of place. 1. The first is from Merrill Matthews, "The Most ...
Feb 1 2013
In case you missed it: 1. Arnold Kling critiques Michael Huemer's new book. 2. Huemer responds, with a few extra lines from me, and Kling offers his rejoinder.
READER COMMENTS
Eric Hanneken
Feb 1 2013 at 5:49pm
Arnold Kling also has a third post, to which Michael Huemer responded in the comments.
ajb
Feb 1 2013 at 8:31pm
Arnold’s points are very good and I don’t see Huemer coming even close to addressing them (or often merely begging the question). Moreover, saying that we’re not on the verge of collapse misses the point that this may be so because of these conventions that he finds illegitimate. As Arnold says, he has no serious real world examples even close to his ideals so most of us see no reason to take his idealized libertarianism seriously. Hence, he does nothing to assuage us on grounds of logic or empirics.
Reardon
Feb 1 2013 at 9:40pm
True, not just any old person has the right to morally transgress against others like this, but an office does. This is because the office is a social convention, and a lot of people like it and think it’s a good idea. Therefore, that lot of people have the right to transgress against those with whom they disagree.
Tell me you have better critics.
vlad
Feb 2 2013 at 11:41pm
It seems like Arnold Kling is reinventing John Searle’s institutional theory 🙂
Comments are closed.