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EmailKenneth Minogue’s The Liberal Mind at 50
In the New York Review of Books, Cass Sunstein reviews Sarah Conly’s Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism, just out from Cambridge University Press. I haven’t read the book, and I do not intend to do so. I already … Some have questioned or criticized this website over the past few days for posting this short essay by Theodore Dalrymple, where he made, to my mind, an interesting argument about the variety of book shops still evident in small towns … Do bleeding heart libertarians have an argument against statism? My concern is that they do not. Take Mike Rappaport. He writes that “[1] I have always been a Bleeding Heart Libertarian who is concerned about the effects of liberty … When last month during an FA Cup quarter-final, the 23 year old Zaire-born former under-21 England international footballer, Fabrice Muamba, collapsed after a heart attack, a palpable wave of sympathy broke out for him among supporters of both teams at … Behavioral economics is one of the most significant developments in economics over the past 30 years. The field combines economics and psychology to produce a body of evidence that individual choice behavior departs from that predicted by neoclassical economics in a number of decisionmaking situations. These departures from rational-choice behavior are said to be the result of the individual’s “cognitive biases,” that is, systematic failures to act in one’s own interest because of defects in one’s decisionmaking process. The documentation of these cognitive biases in laboratory experiments has been behavioral economics’ primary contribution to microeconomics. In this essay I will begin by disagreeing with the authors on two counts. First, I will argue that defenders of liberty might want to think long and hard about specific issues, such as retirement accounts, where liberty and the … Let me begin by saying that I’m far more unimpressed by the contribution of behavioral economists than even Wright and Ginsburg. The perception that people aren’t hardwired, so to speak, to always act — in their own interests has only … Joshua Wright and Douglas Ginsburg have given us a very good analysis of many of the problems inherent in normative behavioral law and economics (especially in the form of “libertarian” or soft paternalism) from the perspective of liberty. I am … Joshua Wright and Judge Ginsburg offer a powerful critique of the Behavioral Law and Economics (BLE) movement on several fronts, but primarily based on the threat BLE poses to individual liberty. They provide a helpful and straightforward history of the …Fat, Stupid and in Debt
On the matter of Dalrymple and French Book Shops
Bleeding Heart Libertarianism, Utilitarianism, and Statism
Freedom of Speech Wanes in Britain
Free to Err?: Behavioral Law and Economics and its Implications for Liberty
Responses
Nudging for Liberty
Putting Our Bourgeois-Bohemian Rulers in Their Place
The Paternal State and the Police State
Is the Hayekian Response to “Libertarian Paternalism” Sufficient?