by Daniel on July 14, 2004
Given the number of irregular verbs in the English language, it’s nice to know that one commonly used phrase is at least well-behaved:
Some might argue that the modern meaning of the phrase “accept responsibility” is irksome in that it has only illocutionary significance; without the announcement that X has “accepted responsibility”, one would have the very devil of a job working out that it had happened. Might I suggest that what we ought to do is to coin a generalised version of Douglas Adams’ useful neologism “dogdyke” from his excellent book, “The Meaning of Liff”:
DOGDYKE (vb.)
Of dog-owners, to adopt the absurd pretence that the animal shitting in the gutter is nothing to do with them.
Onward to hell we all go …
by Henry Farrell on July 14, 2004
We introduced an innovation a few weeks back and completely forgot to announce it. We’re a group blog which frequently has quite lengthy posts. Thus, when one of us does a post of more than a paragraph or two, it’s usually excerpted on the main page, so that the reader needs to click on “read more” in order to finish reading it. As far as we can tell, most readers prefer this ‘radio edit’ – it means that posts don’t disappear rapidly to the bottom of a very long page. However, some don’t. For the latter, we’ve created the Crooked Timber “Extended Play Mix”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/fullposts/, which publishes each post in its entirety to the Crooked Timber main page (you still have to click for comments). If you prefer not to have to click through to read full posts, you should bookmark this version instead (it’s also available in the left sidebar as ‘full post version’).
by John Q on July 14, 2004
Tyler Cowen[1] lists a number of economic propositions which he formerly believed, but has abandoned in the light of contrary evidence. Most of these propositions were elements of the economic orthodoxy of the 1980s and 1990s, variously referred to as Thatcherism, neoliberalism, the Washington consensus and, in Australia, economic rationalism. They include the efficacy of monetary targeting, the beneficence of free capital movements and the desirability of rapid privatisation in transition economies.
Following in the same spirit, I thought I’d list a couple of propositions on which I’ve changed my mind in the face of empirical evidence. These are elements of the Keynesian orthodoxy of the 1950s and 1960s, on which I was trained. Following Cowen, I’ll list them as false claims I used to believe
* There is a long-run trade-off between unemployment and inflation
* Keynesian fiscal policy is a powerful and reliable instrument for stabilising aggregate demand
On both these issues, I’ve come to accept that Milton Friedman was largely right, and his Keynesian opponents largely wrong.
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by Kieran Healy on July 14, 2004
Brayden King notes that the “Wall Street Journal”:https://print.wsj.com/print-registration/docs/6gcaf.html is concerned about ever-rising health care costs in the United States. I’ve been looking at data on national health systems for a paper I’m trying to write. It turns out that there’s a lot less theoretical work done on comparative health systems than you might think, certainly in comparison to the huge literature on welfare state regimes. Here’s a figure showing the relationship between the “Publicness” of the health system and the amount spent on health care per person per year. Data points are each country’s mean score on these measures for the years 1990 to 2001.
*Update*: I’ve relabeled the x-axis to remove a misleading reference to ratios.
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I recently read Emmanuel Carrere’s The Adversary cover-to-cover in one night. It’s the true story of a man named Jean-Claude Roland who takes a terrible path, ending with his murder of his own wife, children, and parents.
Roland missed an important exam at the end of his second year of medical school, but never rescheduled it. Instead, he told everyone he had passed, and pretended to continue his studies. He married and had children, and became a respected member of the community, having convinced everyone that he was a high-ranking official with the World Health Organization. He got by by defrauding his parents, in-laws, and friends. He told them that he was investing their money, or selling them worthless cancer treatments. Eventually, when he realized he was on the verge of being discovered, he killed his family, and made a (strikingly half-hearted) effort to kill himself.
I find his story fascinating for a number of reasons, but I’ll single out one: it was so irrational. He could have just rescheduled the exam he missed. He could have gotten a job
Highly recommended.
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by Brian on July 13, 2004
Some philosophers, your humble narrator occasionally included, get irritated when people, especially intro ethics students, focus on what we take to be irrelevant details of what are meant to be serious, if somewhat improbably grisly, examples. But really we’re not upset about the lack of philosophical sophistication our students shown, just about how stylishlessly they complain. If all our intro ethics students were like “Fafnir and Giblets”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_07_11_fafblog_archive.html#108973435683602830 I can’t imagine we’d ever be so irritated.
by John Holbo on July 13, 2004
There has been some discussion – by Matthew Yglesias and Kevin Drum, for example – of the issue of rescheduling elections in the event of a terrorist attack. On the one hand, concern about the administration’s motives in making this proposal; on the other hand, something to be said for laying out clear procedures beforehand. A quick point. The only good such a measure could possibly aim at would be ensuring public confidence and faith in the fairness of an election conducted under extraordinary circumstances. The only thing that could undermine that faith would be concern that extraordinary measures were being taken for partisan political gain. Partisan political appointees can hardly restore faith by fiat. So it isn’t just that a broad bi-partisan commission would be safer for democracy, as Kevin and Matt and others have reasonably remarked. Rather, it’s the case that no other arrangement would hold out any conceivable benefit. You would do just as well muddling through with no procedures in place. So even if you assume Bush and co. will act with the best of wills – an assumption made for argumentative purposes only – there is simply no point to the proposed measure as it stands.
by Harry on July 13, 2004
The tragic aspect of my migration to the US is this. I was born middle-aged, in a country where middle-age was considered something of an achievement. I used to look forward to the time when I’d be able to complain with my peers abut the state of today’s youth, and not be complaining about them. But then, at 22, I moved to a country in which nobody is middle-aged — even old people pretend to be young, until they are so doolally that the game is up. And I only truly settled in this country around the time that my chronological age caught up with my natural inclinations. So here I am, a genuinely middle aged in a culture that doesn’t even recognise, let alone celebrate, the phenomenon.
Here’s a show about what is now regarded as middle-age but used to be old age. I especially recommend it to Ophelia Benson, and invite private emails from anyone, including her, to explain why I particularly recommend it to her. The prize is….
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by John Holbo on July 13, 2004
Bit strange to run across one at this time of year – like Christmas in July – but this is one of the better “I went to the MLA” pieces I’ve read. It deserves a comment box. (Also, I’m sort of curious whether this post will work – sort of like a bat signal – to draw Chun out of retirement.)
There’s a lot here that exercises me tremendously. But if I started I’d never shut-up. You go first. But here’s a polite suggestion. Since the piece is in “The Believer” – and they so stern against snark – let’s try to keep the anti-MLA hatchet-work sub-Peckish, shall we? (Just a suggestion.)
Have you ever read a blog post so aggressively, ferociously wrongheaded that it temporarily sucks all the fun out of political blogging?
Case in point. Glenn Reynolds seems to think that it’s fair to associate the Kerry campaign with a poster for Fahrenheit 9/11 produced by a distributor in the Benelux countries. (I’m still waiting for an explanation from the Kerry/Edwards campaign for White Chicks.) He says that Michael Moore (who is responsible for writing and directing left-wing films of questionable accuracy) is the American version of the Iraqi rebel cleric al-Sadr (who is responsible for killing our soldiers and running a repressive fundamentalist regime in Fallujah). Etc., etc.
I could argue with this nonsense. But wouldn’t all of our time be better spent sharing a genuinely delicious recipe for braised lamb shanks in red wine? I think so.
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by Henry Farrell on July 13, 2004
Spinning off from the general question of the left and third parties – what are the political consequences of the US left’s failure to create a long lasting set of social institutions independent of government? Colin Crouch, my former Ph.D. co-supervisor, gave an address which touched upon this last week, where he claimed that neither classical liberalism nor classical social democracy had much to say about society, the former obsessing about the market, and the latter obsessing about the state. He did, however, have to acknowledge that the left created a vibrant set of alternative social institutions in many European countries, which provided all sorts of social benefits to ordinary people. Usually, these networks of institutions were set up in competition with rather similiar networks that were run by the Catholic Church and Christian Democratic party. Both networks were intended to shore up political support by providing tangible goods in return. When I lived in Italy in the late 1990’s, there were a few remants of the old Leftist alternative civil society around – the _Casa del Popolo_ (People’s Palace) in Fiesole had some of the best pizza in town, and ran a great May Day festival.
Of course, none of this really ever got going in the US. The only really active set of alternative social institutions in the US isn’t socialist, or even Christian Democratic – it’s the localized networks associated with evangelical Christianity. The Catholic church also plays a role, especially in education, but isn’t anywhere near as important as far as I can tell (I may be wrong). It seems to me as an outsider that this has shaped the US debate on the proper relationship between state and society in important ways. On the one hand, most left-wingers are virulently hostile to the idea that ‘state’ type social services should be delegated to civil society, because they see civil society as composed of religious zealots who will require that anyone who accepts their services also accept Jesus into their hearts. While this may, or may not be true, it seems to me to be associated with a certain lack of imagination on the left, a failure to think beyond the state. On the other, the enthusiasm of the conservative right for outsourcing social services to civil society is equally a product of the social dominance of religious organizations. How many of them would be keen on this, if, say, there was a thriving set of social democratic third sector institutions that could compete with religious groups to provide services (and perhaps smuggle in a bit of indoctrination along the way?) Not many, I imagine.
by Brian on July 13, 2004
I was looking over the forms I’ll have to fill in to get my latest US Visa, and I was struck by this question on the DS-157 form.
bq. Do You Have Any Specialized Skills or Training, Including Firearms, Explosives, Nuclear, Biological, or Chemical Experience?
Since I’m applying for a specialist skill visa, you’d kinda think I should answer “Yes” just reading the first part of the question. But I think the words after “Including” rather change the meaning of it all. At least I think I think they do. I hope I can’t get brought up on perjury charges for trying to hide my extensive philosophical skills from consular officials.
by Henry Farrell on July 12, 2004
“Megan McArdle”:http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/004824.html responds to my previous post about third parties, suggesting that Barbara Ehrenreich (and I) have “about as tenuous a connection to reality as the folks who brought us Pepsi Clear.” Her counter-argument:
* That ‘first-past-the-post’ voting tends to produce two party systems.
* That presidential systems are much more prone to two-partyism than parliamentary ones.
* That the reason why Ehrenreich’s (or indeed McArdle’s ideas) don’t become policy isn’t because they’re blocked by the system, but because most Americans disagree with them.
* Therefore: third-partyism is an exercise in futility.
These arguments are exactly the sort of thing that we political scientists like to claim that we know something about (I note in passing that Megan’s confident assertion of these empirical relationships sits somewhat awkwardly with her belief that political science “doesn’t have much to do with falsifiable predictions”:http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/004125.html). On the first of these claims, there’s evidence from the literature to suggest that McArdle is sort of right (but not in a way that really helps her overall argument). On the second, there’s evidence to suggest that she’s fundamentally wrong. On the third, she seems to be on thin ice (if she’s making a limited claim) or falling through into the river beneath (if she’s making a strong general argument).
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by John Q on July 12, 2004
Coming in a bit late, I have the opportunity to survey a range of blogospheric discussion of the topic of minimum wages, which largely supports the view (not surprising to anyone but an economist) that minimum wages are good for low-income workers. The traditional view among economists was that minimum wages reduced employment and thereby harmed workers, but this view has been overturned, or heavily qualified, by empirical evidence, beginning with the work of Card and Krueger.
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by Brian on July 12, 2004
Jonathan Ichikawa, who’s been doing an excellent job maintaining the “philosophy papers blog”:http://opp.weatherson.net while I’ve been gallavanting around the world, recently posted the “following comment”:http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/Blog/Archives/cat_ethics.html about _Spider-Man 2_. (Warning mild spoilers ahead)
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