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Both links/excerpts come from Eric Barker at the reliably stimulating Barking up the Wrong Tree. First, strong relationships. Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work: In a study appropriately titled “Very Happy ...
Ned Resnikoff picks up on my old post, via a terrific recent one by Daniel Little, on the radicalism of John Rawls' position on economic liberty: If we’ve to fairly evaluated Rawls’ decision to include all of those [political and civil] rights while excluding things like (in Wilkinson’s words ...
Bryan Caplan writes: I'm a libertarian, a natalist, an atheist, a credentialist, an economist, an optimist, a behavioral economist, an elitist, a public choicer, a dualist, a Szaszian, a moral realist, an anti-communist, a pacifist, a hereditarian, a Masonomist, a moral intuitionist, a free ...
Politics makes us stupid. This is one of my recurring themes. This is the principal reason I refuse to be a partisan or ideological team player. People call me libertarian but I don't in part because I'm not one, but mostly because I suspect that accepting any such label dings my IQ about 15 points ...
Matt Steinglass, my colleague at The Economist's Democracy in America blog, notes that a scene in the season premiere of Mad Men widely panned by critics is based closely on historical fact. He then asks: Are the critics right to say that in judging whether this scene in "Mad Men" works ...
Tom Jacobs of Miller-McCune reports on a study from Scott Eidelman, et al, finding that "Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism." Here's Jacobs' summary: A research team led by University of Arkansas psychologist Scott Eidelman argues that conservatism — which the researchers ...
Now that SCOTUS deliberation over the constitutionality of portions of Obamacare is going much worse than most liberals predicted, left-leaning pundits are screaming "judicial activism!" which is cute, though I understand the frustration. As Scott Lemieux reminded David Frum: [C]onservatives ...
On Sunday, Andrew Sullivan offered a passage from Marilynne Robinson's new book, When I Was A Child I Read Books , as excerpted in Guernica: Jefferson says that we are endowed with “certain” rights, and that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are “among these.” He does not claim to ...
I just can't help myself. It's remarkable how little I care about the outcome of the Koch-Cato standoff. Yet, having spent about half my professional life in politics at heavily Koch-influenced institutions, and about half at Cato, I can't stop thinking about this. All apologies to those of you ...
I used to work at Cato, so lot of people have asked me about the ongoing battle for control of the institute. Here's what I think. What I think is that so far the rhetoric around the controversy illustrates Tyler Cowen's dumbifying principle: "Just imagine yourself pressing a button every time you ...
In the car, I listen to country music. Country has an ideology. Not to say country has a position on abortion, exactly. But country music, taken as a whole, has a position on life, taken as a whole. Small towns. Dirt roads. Love at first sight. Hot-blooded kids havin' a good ol' time. Gettin ...
In my last post, I mentioned in passing the eugenic dimensions of tax and immigration policy. The genetic quality of the national stock is a taboo subject, and for familiar, excellent reasons. Nazis! That said, the history of eugenics is fascinating, especially if one is also interested in the ...
Yesterday I griped at length over at The Economist about Rick Santorum's so-called "economic freedom agenda." One point of Santorum's ten-point plan includes tripling the tax-code subsidy for kids. I can't for the life of me see what this has to do with economic freedom. Reihan Salam, for my money ...
This lovely Hanif Kureishi piece on the often misguided drive to tame the wandering mind struck a chord with me. This is familiar: My son, who can skip and sing, found it difficult, for a long time, to read and write at the level of others his age. At primary school he was castigated, even ...
When asked by CNN's John King what he thinks about the Pentagon's recent decision to allow female troops to serve nearer the front lines of battle, Rick Santorum replied that this could be a problem because of the natural protective valor of men-folk: I do have concerns about women in front ...