Infant and child mortality has fallen precipitously in the last few centuries, and life expectancy has increased dramatically. We have made a lot of progress in the protection of public health, but we are still wasting staggering amounts of life that gets snuffed out early by disease and war. Consider diarrhea, which is an inconvenience […]
I Read Things: African History for Young Readers
There’s a little “community library” a few blocks away from our house in front of a closed convenience store. We’ve made a few deposits and quite a few withdrawals, and it seems like there’s always something interesting (and always a lot of stuff that isn’t so interesting, like pulp-worthy harlequin romance). One of my more […]
I Watch Things: Movie Night With the Kids
In no particular order, over the last few months. Father Goose. One of my wife’s family’s all-time favorites. I haven’t watched it in years. The kids thought it hilarious, and it’s a very, very good movie. Cary Grant delivers an excellent performance as a crusty and bitter drunkard suddenly surrounded by a very prim and […]
I Read Things: Niall Ferguson to Narnia
Niall Ferguson, Civilization. I think this is the first Ferguson book I’ve read. He writes beautifully and comprehensively. In the book I’m writing with Deirdre McCloskey—it’s based on McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, and Bourgeois Equality—we criticize some of Ferguson’s claims about his “killer apps,” but the book is a pretty solid survey of […]
I Read Things
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law. What if it turned out cities and neighborhoods aren’t segregated because it just happened that way but because segregation was an official aim of government housing policy for a long time? Rothstein explores the ways in which white homeowners and homebuyers received preferential treatment via federal programs and the […]
Tide Pod Challenge Makes Me Even More Skeptical
If corporations *really didn’t care* about whether they’re poisoning their customers or not, Tide wouldn’t be running a commercial on social media in which Rob Gronkowski tells people not to eat Tide pods. Observations: 1. Brand names and reputations matter. 2. The present value of revenue from long-lived and healthy customers is probably a lot […]
Let The Chips Fall Where They May
The supposed relationship between James M. Buchanan and the forces of “Massive Resistance” to school desegregation in Virginia is at the center of Nancy MacLean’s story in Democracy in Chains. As Phil has pointed out on his blog and as we discuss in our paper, MacLean attempts to link Buchanan to Massive Resistance via the […]
Does Hayekian Economics Undermine Hayekian Politics?
I have Bowles’ Moral Economy on my desk awaiting my attention. I’ll inevitably get to it when I have something important and urgent I can put off in order to say, “Hey, I should really read that.” A lot of the themes Bowles discusses are at least touched on in Douglass C. North’s Understanding the Process […]
A Quality YouTube Channel: University of Richmond
The University of Richmond’s Jepson School of Leadership Studies sponsors an annual Summer Institute for the History of Economic Thought with excellent lectures by Deirdre McCloskey and James M. Buchanan (several by Buchanan). Of particular interest are McCloskey’s lecture and Buchanan’s talk “Chicago Thinking: Old and New.” Most students of economic thinking who are familiar […]
A Bit of Recent TV: Omega
I finished “Salvation.” It’s fun brain candy popcorn tv with a sort-of-cliffhanger ending that makes me think a Season 2 is coming. There’s a nice, healthy dose of skepticism that the government will do the right thing, which makes it satisfying. On the exercise bike in the basement, I watched “Omega,” which is a set […]