This Just In: An Excellent New Book on Adam Smith

I just received my advance copy of Ryan Patrick Hanley's excellent new Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue. I know it's excellent because I had an opportunity to read it in manuscript. In fact, the back cover of the dust jacket leads off with a blurb from me, which reads, in part, that Hanley's book is "one of the most important books on Smith in more than a decade."

Believe me, praise like that does not come easily from me. Everyone interested in Smith scholarship should read the book.

This Just In: Climate Change

Here is an interesting discussion of the economics of proposals for "climate change" legislation by economist Robert P. Murphy. It is brief and somewhat technical in a few places, but a good overview.

Free Speech for Me, but Not for Thee

A troubling article in today's WSJ suggests that officials in the EPA are censoring research that might call into question their official position on (alleged) global warming and on its (alleged) man-caused influences. (I say "alleged" because among the claims that the censored research makes are (a) that we are actually in a global cooling trend and (b) that there is little or no reliable evidence that human activities have contributed to (earlier) global warming.)

What is especially galling to the author of the WSJ article is the fact that the Obama administration and the new head of the EPA both have repeatedly derided the previous administration for, as they claimed, putting ideology over science, and have touted their own dedication to science unadulterated by political agenda. Yet here seems a clear case of politics trumping scientific investigation.

I cannot vouch for the facts of this case, of course, but double-standards for allowed speech are rampant in my own field of American higher education. People who dare to stray from the approved circuit of political and moral views--however gingerly, however tentatively, even under cover of anonymity or humor--suffer ad hominem attack, have their characters savaged, are fired from positions of authority, do not get promotions, get passed over for positions for which they are otherwise qualified, are not welcome at the lunch table or in the break room, are ignored in the hallways, are the butt of indecorous jokes, and are otherwise villainized, punished, and pilloried for their independence and impudence.

I do not exaggerate. (See here if you are skeptical.) Political correctness in higher education has become such a cliché that people have become inured to it. Another person persecuted for dissenting from the reigning orthodoxy? Ho-hum, heard that one before. The toll this takes in individuals' careers, and in their personal and family life, is not insignificant, however.

But this is not mere special pleading. The cost to the the academy of driving out or silencing a range of perspectives is a steep one. As Mill argued, it robs us of a clearer and livelier perception of the truth brought about by honest debate and discussion from competing perspectives; moreover, unless we make the unlikely assumption that the current orthodoxy is infallible, silencing or persecuting dissenting views robs us of the opportunity for exchanging error for truth.

That is bad for everyone concerned. Echo chambers are not crucibles of truth. Yet it is even more dangerous when it comes to science. The quality of human life depends in many important ways on the progress of science. Allowing ideology to bend science to its will, rather than the other way around, imperils the scientific enterprise. That is too high a price to pay to flatter our vanities and rationalize our prejudices.

Free Bernie Madoff?

A reader sent me a link to this column, arguing that Bernie Madoff should be freed. Now that is a position not many people, I suspect, are taking. As an employee of Yeshiva University, which, as I've pointed out before, also suffered at the hands of Madoff, I have taken particular interest in the continuing Madoff saga.

I'm not sure I'm convinced by this article, but the author makes a stronger case than I anticipated, so I thought it worth posting. Judge for yourself: here it is.

UPDATE: A reader sent me a link to another take on the Madoff caper, this one also provocative and entertaining. Here it is.

An Opt-Out Option?

Thomas Sowell argued in his book A Conflict of Visions that much contemporary political thought traces to one or another of just two conflicting worldviews. These worldviews he dubbed the "constrained" and "unconstrained" visions (Steven Pinker would later later call them the "tragic" and the "utopian" visions, respectively).

The difference, in brief, centers on what a person believes the limits of human knowledge and goodness are: If you believe humans are inherently flawed and fallen, and that, though they can make marginal improvements, imperfection and evil (even sin) will always be an abiding part of the human experience, then you subscribe to the "constrained" or the "tragic" vision. If, by contrast, you believe that humanity can be indefinitely improved, and that, with the right combination of institutions and leaders in place, most human vice can be eradicated, then you subscribe to the "unconstrained" or "utopian" vision.

I would fall into the "constrained" or "tragic" camp, both on religious and on empirical grounds.

I mention Sowell's argument here, however, because one of its implications is that disagreements between proponents of the two "visions" are intractable. They have different worldviews, and their political and economic positions are implied by those fundamentally different worldviews. That explains both why differences between the two groups can become so acrimonious, and it also predicts, unhappily, that there may be little hope for reconciliation. They will often simply have to agree to disagree.

Which brings me to today. The Obama administration is proposing to nationalize a significant portion of the health care "industry" (as it's called), and many supporters have not hidden their desire eventually to nationalize the whole ball of wax. For many of them this government takeover is required by their conception of justice. Significant numbers of detractors and critics, on the other hand, argue not only that this may increase inefficiencies and costs, but also that it violates their sense of justice to take health care choices out of the hands of individuals.

With President Obama intensifying his pressure for universal health care coverage, the debate is likely to become more heated.

So, drawing on the Sowell argument, here is my proposal for a compromise between the two sides: Pass the legislation, but include in it "opt-out option" for dissenters. Exercizing the opt-out option would mean forsaking any and all right to the care or coverage provided under the government's plan, but it would also mean no requirement to pay into it. Indeed, I would propose allowing an "opt-out option" for other government benefit programs as well, including Social Security, for example. Allow people who wish to be in charge of saving for their own retirement to opt out of the program, giving up any and all benefits, but not paying into the program either.

The biggest worry about my "opt-out option" is that such a number of people would exercise it that the program would not be able to sustain itself--and then the people who are intended to be the primary beneficiaries, the least advantaged among us, would once again be left in the lurch. I recognize and concede that worry. I have two thoughts in response.

First, my own conception of justice, which draws on the British and American liberal tradition, entails giving a tremendous deference to individual consent: if a person does not want to be part of my organization or my program, then I think I need a very strong reason to override his wishes. Imminent danger to national security, for example, might count, but the threshold should be that high.

Second, many people who could monetarily afford to leave the systems would choose not to. I have colleagues, for example, who would prefer to stay in Social Security or a nationalized health care system, if for no other reason than that way they do not have to bother with finding the "best" investment counselor or wading through myriad private health care providers and insurers. I expect many others would be moved by similar considerations.

Many people will also, out of their own sense of justice, wish to be a part of the systems even if they could afford to or would benefit from leaving, just as many people who could send their children to private schools choose for their own reasons to send them to public schools. Hence I think the number of people exercizing the "opt-out option" might not be as great as one might fear.

I confess, however, that even if I am wrong about the number of people who would exercise the option, I find the notion of respecting people's consent to be compelling nonetheless. If someone says "no, thank you, I want no part of your program," we can remonstrate with him, try to convince him otherwise, even beg, plead, or shame him; but if we insists, then I believe we must honor his wishes and let him go.

Obama on Public vs. Private Health Care

A lot of hay was made about ABC News's special on health care reform, "Questions for the President: Prescription for America," which aired last week. Many conservatives and Republicans complained that it seemed more like a partisan "infomercial" than an objective news story, and they claimed it showed ABC News's bias in favor of President Obama (see here, for example).

The contrast between the way the media treated the Bush administration and the way they are treating the Obama administration is certainly stark, but that is not what struck me about this ABC News special. What leapt out at me was the exchange between one Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist at NYU, and the President during the question-and-answer part of the program. According to this account of the exchange, Dr. Devinsky charged that "elites" often propose health care policies that limit the options of the less privileged, while the elites remain comfortable in the knowledge that they will be able to afford to pay for better care if they want or need it.

Dr. Devinsky then asked President Obama if he would be willing to promise that if his wife or children got sick, he would not seek health care outside of whatever is provided by the public health system he is proposing. President Obama would not make that promise. He replied that "if it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care."

Quite a telling response, it seems. It is akin to wealthy politicians who send their children to private schools (as the Obamas do), while opposing education vouchers, credits, or other plans to enable poorer people to have choices as well. I do not begrudge the President wanting "the very best" for his family; I want the same for my family, as I presume you do. But a policy that allows an expanded set of options for wealthy people while restricting the options of everyone else seems, to me, suspicious on the face of it. And that suspicion is only heightened when the elites admit that it would not be good enough for them but that they think it is good enough for everyone else.

This Just In: Pseudonymous Posting

Well, this is not just in, but a student only just now alerted me to it: John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, was revealed a couple years ago to have been posting on competitors' websites under a pseudonym (see article here).

Mackey is an interesting fellow. He calls himself a "free market libertarian," but he believes a company should, as he says, "try to create value for all of its constituencies"; he claims that as CEO of Whole Foods, he "puts customers ahead of investors" and is interested first and foremost in serving customers, not in turning a pofit (see here).

Apparently, a few years ago, when Whole Foods was considering buying rival Wild Oats Markets, a person calling himself "rahodeb" posted on some of Wild Oats Markets's sites various claims, like that its prices were too high, that it was badly managed, that Whole Foods would not buy it until it went into bankruptcy, etc. It turns out that "rahodeb" was Mackey himself, "rahodeb" being an anagram for "Deborah," his wife's name.

According to the article cited above, when it was later revealed who "rahodeb" was, Mackey dismissed the importance of it all, saying that he was posting only for fun, he never wanted or intended anyone to know it was he who was posting those things, many people post anonymously or under pseudonyms on the internet, and in any case he did not mean everything he said--he was often playing "devil's advocate."

I can relate. So too can many people who have written books, articles, blogs, and postings anonymously or pseudonymously. Sometimes people do this for malicious reasons--they want to attack or discredit others and do not want to take responsibility for their attacks. Other motives are nobler: sometimes people are whistle-blowers who do not want to face retribution; sometimes people work in fields where there is strong pressure for ideological conformity and they wish to express independent views, again without fear of retribution; sometimes people are members of a disfavored sex, race, ethnic group, religion, or political worldview who are not allowed by the "tyranny of the majority" to speak their minds.

As James Taranto recently noted in the WSJ, pseudonymous blogging can be dangerous, even if--as in the case of the modern-day "Publius"--one is serving an important function and engaging in (for the most part) serious commentary. Consider, for example, that many of the Leveller pamphlets that played an important role in bringing about the English Civil Wars were published anonymously, or that John Locke never publicly revealed during his lifetime that he was the author of the Two Treatises of Government published in 1690, or that the Federalist Papers were written not by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay but by "Publius," or that Soren Kierkegaard published under probably dozens of pseudonyms, and on and on. (See this site, which lists scores of pseudonymous authors, some who published under many pseudonyms.)

In all these cases, we should evaluate the writing on the merits, not on the identity of the author or on the fact that it is published anonymously. Who knows what motives an author might have for wishing to keep his identity secret? I think we have a further duty, however: if we somehow discover the true identity of an author writing under a psudonym, unless that author is engaging in clear libel or deliberately malicious attack, we should "play along." That is, we should treat the real person based only on our experiences of the real person; we can, if we like, engage the pseudonymous author as an author, but if the person wants to have separate identities, I think we should respect that.

All of us have many circles in which we turn, many lives, as it were, that we lead. Most of these overlap, but some do not, and some we wish to keep strictly separate from others. If a person has one "life" that he wants to keep strictly separate from another, who are we to judge whether his reasons for doing so are good ones, and who are we to take the liberty of betraying his personal decisions? The issue is one of privacy, and respecting others justified expectations of it. Just because one disagrees with what a pseudonymous author says does not entitle one to indulge the base and indeed wicked instinct of desiring to destroy what one does not like, of "outing" someone who wishes not to be outed.

Back to Mackey: One aspect of his story distinguishes it, perhaps, from the others I have mentioned, namely that he was disparaging a direct competitor in an apparent effort to secure for himself a better financial bargain in the process. If one's pseudonymous writings are designed to profit oneself at the direct expense of others in a way that would not be possible if one's identity were revealed, then that, it seems to me, casts things in a different light. Not to put too fine a point on it, that's pretty low.

Aside from such cases, however (which I believe are pretty rare), I say: Long live the pseudonymous writer! May they continue to agitate, spur, lambaste, discuss openly, investigate, and explore--all without fear of punishment for entertaining heretical ideas.

What I Am Reading

I have just come across a new book entitled Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic Humanity by Mohammed A. Bamyeh. I do not know Bamyeh, but he is a professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. I will read the book with interest.

I am also reviewing two books:

1. Alexander Broadie's new A History of Scottish Philosophy for the Journal of Scottish Philosophy. Broadie is a professor of logic and rhetoric in the department of history at the University of Glasglow, and a distinguished scholar of the Scottish Enlightenment as well as medieval Scottish philosophy. This book looks to be a massive, and impressive, accomplishment.

2. Tony Aspromourgos's The Science of Wealth: Adam Smith and the Framing of Political Economy for the Adam Smith Review. I do not know Professor Aspromourgos, but he is a professor of economics and business at the University of Sydney. Since the topic of this book is very close to much of my own work, I look forward to reading it as well.

As always, I welcome suggestions for things I should read. Either post them as comments or send them to me at jimotteson (at) gmail (dot) com.

Worth a Look: My Next Book

Continuum Press has a webpage dedicated to the works I have already published with them, the 5-volume edited collection The Levellers: Overton, Walwyn and Lilburne (now quite a bargain at only $315 for the whole set!), and the work I am about to publish with them, a monograph entitled simply Adam Smith. The latter is part of the series "Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers," edited by John Meadowcroft of King's College London. I am finishing Adam Smith up now, and it should appear in the Spring of 2010.

Wise Words: Smith on Judging One's Own Character

"Common looking-glasses, it is said, are extremely deceitful, and by the glare which they throw over the face, conceal from the partial eyes of the person many deformities which are obvious to every body besides. But there is not in the world such a smoother of wrinkles as is every man's imagination, with regard to the blemishes of his own character." --Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments III.1.5 (1st ed.)

Update on USC

UPDATE on my previous post: USC's basketball coach, Tim Floyd, has suddenly resigned, allegedly because he has "lost enthusiasm" for his job. I wonder whether this means that trouble is brewing, or perhaps that the NCAA investigation is finally getting up a head of steam.

Is the NCAA a Cartel?

As a college football fan, I have been following--for about three years now--the apparent NCAA investigation into the athletic programs at the University of Southern California. First it was allegations of wrongdoing with the football team; now there are allegations against the basketball team as well. (See here and here for status reports; here is a columnist arguing that USC should be stripped of its recent football national championship.)

As the NCAA's investigation drags on, month after month, one wonders what, exactly, is taking so long. Here is a recent story in the Los Angels Times that discusses the investigation.

One passage in it particularly struck me. A former investigator for the NCAA, now an attorney in Oklahoma, explained the delay thus: "The NCAA is under no real sense of urgency to wrap this up, even though justice delayed is justice denied. The NCAA is a de-facto cartel, and its product is big-time college football. USC is a major component of that. The NCAA doesn't want USC to be off television or ineligible for bowls."

If the NCAA is in fact a cartel, de facto or otherwise, then that would seem to explain its dilatory behavior: it is acting in its own interest, and not in the interest of the game, the fans, the players, etc. (except incidentally). Perhaps true, but sad if so. It would among other things make a mockery of the NCAA's touting of "academics and athletics at its best" and its practice of calling the players "student athletes."

Some Quick Hits

1. I guess I grew up after the Glory Days of General Motors, because I have never had the romantic attachment to the company or, as people are putting it now, "what it stood for." I have also never, as a rule, liked any GM cars, and I have never owned one. Why, then, must I be forced to support the company? By what right does the federal government take my tax money and give it to GM even when I don't want their products?

2. Was it not even six months ago when we heard over and over again that GM was "too big to fail"? So the federal government gave it $30 billion in taxpayer money, with most estimating that it will be much more before all is said and done. And yet now it is being allowed to fail?

3. I heard economist Stephen Moore on the news say that by his estimate the federal government is paying $300,000 per job saved at GM. Is that worth it? Why can't we have a national discussion about whether making others bear that enormous cost is justified?

4. A recent Investor's Business Daily editorial claimed that at the end of 2008 every household in America had a debt, courtesy of the federal government, of $546,648. Half a million dollars! And that's not including the household's house, credit cards, cars, etc. The editorial also claims that in just the past year the federal government has saddled each household with an additional $55,000 in debt. In ten years, the federal government debt will be 82% of GDP. How can we continue to allow this massive debt to be heaped upon our children and grandchildren, all so that we can continue to live the good, gadget-filled life? I think it is tantamount to indentured servitude, and it is a moral crime of a high order.

Finally, on a totally different topic:

5. I am re-reading C. S. Lewis's excellent Mere Christianity, and this passage struck me in light of the recent flap about Sotomayor: "The Moral Law does not give us any grounds for thinking that God is 'good' in the sense of being indulgent, or soft, or sympathetic. There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do. If God is like the Moral Law, then He is not Soft."

Wise Words: Mill's On Liberty

This year marks the 150th anniversary of John Stuart Mill's powerful essay On Liberty. Some works do not hold up well after so long a duration; this one does. It is brilliantly argued, and it contains none of the elementary mistakes that people so often attribute to it. It may ultimately still be flawed, as many believe--though, truly, what work of human hands is not flawed?--but if so it errs in sophisticated and compelling ways, with an argument whose depth and freshness (even one hundred and fifty years later) are often underappreciated.

Rereading the essay in preparation for a conference, I was struck by two things in particular: Mill's penetrating insights into human psychology, and a moral injunction the essay makes. I have resolved to write more extensively about both these aspects of the essay in another venue, but I thought I would post a few choice examples of each here.


First, what I call his "moral injunction," beginning in particular with the word "unless" in this passage:

The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow-citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power; and as the power is not declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of moral conviction can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in the present circumstances of the world, to see it increase. (from chap. 1, "Introductory")

In responding to the fourth objection (by my count) to his claim that there should be liberty of thought and discussion, Mill extends the injunction by arguing:

Our merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for their diffusion. With us, heretical opinions do not perceptibly gain, or even lose, ground in each decade or generation; they never blaze out far and wide, but continue to smoulder in the narrow circles of thinking and studious persons among whom they originate, without ever lighting up the general affairs of mankind with either a true or a deceptive light. And thus is kept up a state of things very satisfactory to some minds, because, without the unpleasant process of fining or imprisoning anybody, it maintains all prevailing opinions outwardly undisturbed, while it does not absolutely interdict the exercise of reason by dissentients afflicted with the malady of thought. A convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world, and keeping all things going on therein very much as they do already. But the price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind. A state of things in which a large portion of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep the general principles and grounds of their convictions within their own breasts, and attempt, in what they address to the public, to fit as much as they can of their own conclusions to premises which they have internally renounced, cannot send forth the open, fearless characters, and logical, consistent intellects who once adorned the thinking world. The sort of men who can be looked for under it, are either mere conformers to commonplace, or time-servers for truth, whose arguments on all great subjects are meant for their hearers, and are not those which have convinced themselves. Those who avoid this alternative, do so by narrowing their thoughts and interest to things which can be spoken of without venturing within the region of principles, that is, to small practical matters, which would come right of themselves, if but the minds of mankind were strengthened and enlarged, and which will never be made effectually right until then: while that which would strengthen and enlarge men’s minds, free and daring speculation on the highest subjects, is abandoned. (from chap. 2, "Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion"; italics supplied)

My heart aches as I read that passage. There are several other passages that supply parts of the argument grounding a moral injunction, but here is one more that applies particularly, I believe, to members of the academy:

So essential is this discipline [of subjecting prevailing views to the criticism of those holding opposing views] to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up. (also from chap. 2)

This is one important reason to ensure a wide range of thought within academia. But it is also a personal injunction: if you find yourself in a community of people who share a single view of "moral and human subjects," you do them--and yourself--a favor if you take up the cudgels of the opposite side and begin agitation. What you yourself believe is irrelevant. Mill argues, and I agree, that everyone is better off for the exercise, the more genuinely pursued the better. Applying this principle does not always win one friends, as I can personally attest; but, as Mill rightly claims, the price of an artificially pacific consensus is paid in human vigor and dignity and is thus too dear.

As for insights into human psychology, consider these two passages:

The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale. (from chap. 1)

And:

With regard to what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion, namely invective, sarcasm, personality, and the like, the denunciation of these weapons would deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to interdict them equally to both sides; but it is only desired to restrain the employment of them against the prevailing opinion: against the unprevailing they may not only be used without general disapproval, but will be likely to obtain for him who uses them the praise of honest zeal and righteous indignation. (from chap. 2)

How many of us can attest to the truth of these observations from our own personal experience? Mill anticipated the objection that thought and discussion should be limited to what is "civil" and does not give offense, and his presentation of the objection as well as his response both could have been written today:

[I]f the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is telling and powerful, and that every opponent who pushes them hard, and whom they find it difficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows any strong feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent.

When you hear someone claiming that another person's position, argument, claim, or proposition is "offensive" and therefore should be punished or silenced, consider these passages.

If I were to draw up a list of, say, ten books that all undergraduate students--and faculty--should be required to read, On Liberty would certainly be among them. Today more than ever.

It Was Only a Matter of Time

I suspected this might come to pass: Some of the victims of Bernard Madoff might have been complicit, according to the Wall Street Journal. These were smart people getting supernatural returns on their investments. How could they not have known what was going on?

Worth a Look: Ferguson on the Financial Crisis

Anti-Dismal pulls out the most striking passages from Niall Ferguson's excellent article in Friday's New York Times on the financial crisis. (Here is Ferguson's entire article.)

The two most central claims: first, the financial crisis is not the result of deregulation, but rather of bad regulation; second, what makes us think that the raft of newly proposed regulations and regulators will be any better than what we already had? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Update on Atlas Foundation Talk

The Atlas Foundation has now put online the text, in addition to the audio, of the keynote talk I gave at its March meeting under its "Teach Freedom Initiative." The title of my talk was "The Spirit of American Liberty: Principles and Practice," available here.

Atlas is a fantastic network of international activities. You can keep up with its many activities here.

Worth a Look: Klein on Smith

A now long-standing discussion among Adam Smith scholars is the importance and significance of Smith's most famous phrase, "invisible hand."

Emma Rothschild has called the phrase an "ironic joke," and many others have argued that its importance is less than many have believed. Smith used the phrase only once in the 1000-page Wealth of Nations (here), after all, and the phrase appears in only two other places in his entire extant corpus of writings (once in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and once in an early essay on the history of astronomy; see here and here, respectively).

I am of the school that believes that the concept of the invisible hand, if not the phrase itself, is of central importance to understanding Smith's enduring contribution to social science.

Now economist (and, for full disclosure, friend of mine) Dan Klein has weighed into this conversation with an interesting piece in Econ Journal Watch. Klein is writing in response to Gavin Kennedy's provocative piece in the same journal. Kennedy (whom I have met but don't know well) is rather skeptical about the importance of the invisible hand metaphor, while Klein's position is closer to mine, though with his own twists. It is an interesting exchange, and well worth reading.

Wise Words

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

--John Dryden, "Happy the Man" (1685)


[Hat tip: Arthur Brooks]

Looking for Suggestions

I am teaching a class this summer for the Fund for American Studies. The class is on the ethics of philanthropy, intended for advanced undergraduate students. What books or articles would you recommend including on the syllabus?

Please put your suggestions in the comments section or e-mail them to me at jimotteson (at) gmail (dot) com. I will list some of the suggestions I receive in a future post.

Worth a Look

NYU development economist William Easterly's blog, "Aid Watch." It has the eminently sensible, but surprisingly little heeded, motto, "Just Asking that Aid Benefit the Poor."

Worth a Look

A new series published by Continuum Press: Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers. The general editor is John Meadowcroft, and the list of authors is, if I do say so myself, impressive.

(Here is the Amazon.com link.)

Wise Words

Reading some of John Adams's work reminded me of this passage from John Locke's 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding:

"The candle, that is set up in us, shines bright enough for all our purposes. The discoveries we can make with this, ought to satisfy us; and we shall then use our understandings right, when we entertain all objects in that way and proportion that they are suited to our faculties, and upon those grounds they are capable of being proposed to us, and not peremptorily, or intemperately require demonstration, and demand certainty, where probability only is to be had, and which is sufficient to govern all our concernments" (bk. 1, chap. 1, Introduction, sect. 5).

Obama and Socialism

President Obama spoke at Georgetown University yesterday, April 14th. I entered the lottery to get tickets, but unfortunately my number was not selected. Here is the full text of his speech. The Wall Street Journal has not been particularly happy with the President's speeches recently (here is yesterday's reaction, which includes the picture at left), but they've had nothing to say about this speech in particular.

In other news, because today is April 15th, tax day, the various "Tea Party" tax protests around the country are getting a lot of press. Here is one event not getting much press: This weekend the Party for Socialism and Liberation is holding a panel discussion at Georgetown under the title "Capitalism Is Organized Crime!" Here is a link to the event announcement (and the rather dramatic poster, pictured at right). I will not, again unfortunately, be able to attend this event. Whatever its faults or shortcomings, I do not think capitalism is organized crime; but it would have been interesting to hear what they had to say.

Worth a Look

Updating a previous post, the Atlas Foundation has put up a page on its website for the keynote talk I gave at its conference in New Orleans, this past March 27th. The page hosts a podcast of my talk as well, including Atlas President Alex Chafuen's introduction of me. This link takes you to the site and the podcast.

Note: The text of the talk is not yet available, but it will be shortly.

What I Am Reading

Readers have given me lots of good suggestions of books to read. Here are a few.

I have completed reading Theodore Dalrymple's latest excellent collection of essays, Not with a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline. Dalrymple is one of the greatest living essayists; I highly recommend his work.

Dorron Katzin recommends Marci A. Hamilton's Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect its Children.

One of my best students, who hails from Italy, recommends Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System.

Several readers have recommended Amity Shlaes's The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. I must add here my own recommendation of William Graham Sumner's excellent essay "The Forgotten Man," from which Shlaes gets her book's title. Sumner's essay is contained in On Liberty, Society, and Politics: The Essential Essays of William Graham Sumner.

I have received many more suggestions, too many to list; but I will give one more: Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel's Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations. With a title like that, it must be good!

As always, I welcome other suggestions. Send them to me at jimotteson (at) gmail (dot) com.

This Just In

A reader alerted me to the existence of what looks like an interesting book by one Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen entitled Signs of Logic: Peircean Themes on the Philosophy of Language, Games, and Communication. To my surprise, I am cited in it.

Charles Peirce is one of the great and least appreciated of American philosophers, so I am happy to be mentioned in connection with him. I will take a look at the book and report my findings.

Worth a Look

Peter Berger's article "Predicting the Past" in the April 1, 2009 edition of Education Week. Berger says the new rage of redesigning the educational curriculum to train students in "21st century skills" and prepare them for "21st century competition" is a recursion to the discredited pedagogical follies from thirty years ago. Berger concludes: "If most students today were mastering a rigorous 20th-century education, the 21st century wouldn’t look as bleak as it does."

[Hat tip: Martin Rochester.]

This Just In

I discovered that the introduction I wrote to my 2004 edited volume Adam Smith: Selected Philosophical Writings is reproduced on the Answers.com site under "Adam Smith." View it here (scroll down to "History 1450-1789: Adam Smith"). I presume they received permission to do so . . . .

Wise Words

"It is the interest of every man to live as much at ease as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does, or does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest, at least as it is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit. If he is naturally active and a lover of labour, it is his interest to employ that activity in any way, from which he can derive some advantage, rather than in the performance of his duty, from which he can derive none."--Adam Smith, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776; V.i.f.7)

How's That Again?

Last month, Sir David Omand GCB, former Home Office Permanent Secretary, former security adviser to Tony Blair, and now visiting professor in the department of war studies in King's College, London, presented a report to Gordon Brown entitled "National Security Strategy: Implications for the UK Intelligence Community" (available here).

This passage struck me particularly (emphasis supplied):

The realm of intelligence operations is of course a zone to which the ethical rules that we might hope to govern private conduct as individuals in society cannot fully apply. Finding out other people’s secrets is going to involve breaking everyday moral rules. So public trust in the essential reasonableness of UK police, security and intelligence agency activity will continue to be essential. A significant challenge supporting the National Security Strategy will be how the intelligence community can access the full range of data relating to individuals, their movements, activities and associations in a timely, accurate, proportionate and legal way, and one acceptable in a democratic and free society, including appropriate oversight and means of independent investigation and redress in cases of alleged abuse of power.

[Hat tip: John Adams.]

Worth a Look

If you have not yet heard of John Adams (the risk expert, not the American president), then you should investigate. Among his more controversial claims are that mandatory seat-belt laws do not, in fact, reduce accident fatalities, and they might even raise certain risks--from which he concludes they should be repealed.

See here for a recent summary of his work on seat-belt laws; see also his excellent book Risk; and, finally, see his website, "Risk in a Hypermobile World."

Worth a Look

The dissertation of Fabian Wendt has been published by Mentis Verlag. It is entitled Libertaere politische Philosophie, and, as its accompanying description explains, it examines three different grounds for and conceptions of libertarian political philosophy, developing its own account in defense of a libertarianism that the author calls a "pure philosophy of freedom."

I hope to read the book. If and when I do, I will post my thoughts.

This Just In

I posted a brief thought on the flap that's arisen about President Obama having been invited to give the commencement address at Notre Dame on National Review Online's blog, Phi Beta Cons. View my post here.

Wise Words

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them."--Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, 6 July 1775

Poverty and the Right Update

Following up on my previous post, here is another example of a right-of-center author who is genuinely concerned with the poor: Hernando de Soto. His The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else argues that the reason capitalism has failed in third-world countries is not because the poor are not entrpreneurial, have low IQs, or have anti-capitalistic cultures (as others have alleged). Rather, it is because the substantial and underestimated assets they have is in the form of "dead capital," unable to be used or built upon because it is untitled, buried under layers of bureaucracy, and not protected within a framework of property that allows it to be transparent, traded, divided, used as collateral, etc.

De Soto ends his book with these words: "I am not a die-hard capitalist. I do not view capitalism as a cred. Much more important to me are freedom, compassion for the poor, respect for the social contract, and equal opportunity. But for the moment, to achieve those goals, capitalism is the only game in town. It is the only system we know that provides us with the tools required to create massive surplus value" (p. 228).

I would also add that de Soto makes more sense out of the spirit of the Marxian critique of capitalism than many Marxists do.

This Just In: Poverty and the Right

In light of what I said were "frustrations" I had with Peter Singer's argument (below), I was asked (challenged?) by a reader to provide examples of right-of-center political or economic theorists who are genuinely interested in the poor. There are many, but let me mention one classical source and one contemporary source.

The classical source: Adam Smith in his 1776 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith's concern for the poor there is palpable and undeniable. Now some scholars argue that, partly because of that, Smith would not quite qualify as a right-of-center thinker (Samuel Fleischacker,for example, but there are many others), but I think Smith's defense of free trade, markets, and limited government do qualify him. He is not an anarchist or even a libertarian, and he does not subscribe to a theory of natural rights that, as in Locke or Nozick, give principled restrictions on state activity: Smith is too practical and pragmatic for that. But that makes him what is usually called a "classical liberal," not a progressive liberal.

The contemporary source: Deirdre N. McCloskey's The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. McCloskey's argument is that capitalist institutions are not amoral but are, instead, positively encouraging of virtue. But a large part of her argument in that book is that capitalism has brought substantial and often unappreciated benefits to millions of people, including especially the poor. McCloskey draws explicitly on Smith in making her case.

Worth a Look: Update on Peter Singer

An excellent student alerted me to Peter Singer's recent appearance on the Colbert Report.

This Just In

Reports the Wall Street Journal, "Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty to all 11 charges in one of Wall Street's largest swindles. Prosecutors filed papers Tuesday saying Mr. Madoff's investment company reported a total balance of $64.8 billion in November even though it actually had only a small fraction of that amount."

I fear that this is not the end of this saga, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.

This Just In

Philosopher Peter Singer has a long article in the latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "America's Shame" (hat tip: Aeon Skoble). Although this article is new, and written to coincide with the release of his latest book, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty, the argument the article contains is now nearly four decades old.

I have not read the new book yet, but I have read a lot of Singer's books and articles over the years. What frustrates me about the famine-relief argument he has been making since his famous 1971 article "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" is that, in all that time, he has not given serious consideration to any of the following: (1) what the causes of wealth are, (2) what the causes of poverty are, and (3) what the consequences--both economic and moral--would be if the governments of wealthier nations worldwide actually acted on the recommendations he makes for the redistribution of wealth.

A further frustration is that he does not take seriously the careful and sustained criticisms of his argument that have appeared over the years. Many authors--including, for full disclosure, myself*--have reviewed his arguments, the empirical evidence that bears on the issues, and the economic, political, and moral implications of his position. Singer only occasionally mentions these criticisms, and when he does he typically dismisses them in few sentences or a brief paragraph.

Helping the poor rise out of poverty is a central concern of political and economic thinkers across the political spectrum; the disputes are not over whether it is good to help, but rather over what the best means to help are. It is unfair to consider only those people who end up agreeing with Singer as working in good faith, and it is unproductive to condemn those who disagree as holding a 'shameful' position. Other authors, like Garrett Cullity, do a much better job taking opposing positions seriously and reveiwing them charitably.


*My paper "Limits on Our Obligation to Give" appeared in Public Affairs Quarterly 14, 3 (July 2000): 183-203; the paper is reprinted in Justice: An Anthology edited by Louis Pojman. I also examine Singer's arguments in chapters 4 and 5 of my Actual Ethics.

Worth a Look

A new blog called Front Porch Republic, whose motto is: "Place. Limits. Liberty." (Hat tip: Bradley Birzer.) It has an impressive list of contributing editors and editors-at-large who are interested in exploring "the necessity for those overlapping local and regional groups, communities, and associations that provide a matrix for human flourishing." It also contains interesting lists of books written and recommended by its contributors.

Sign of the Times

Most analysts are not hopeful about the economy in the short- or medium-term. An editorial in today's WSJ is not atypical in claiming that the current administration's "assault on business and investors is delaying a recovery and ensuring that the expansion will be weaker than it should be when it finally does arrive."

So I was pleased to find this article in Forbes, which predicts a "sharp rally in stocks this year." Although this article's authors agree with the Journal that increasing government spending and debt are "negative," nevertheless they argue that are other economic indicators--rising retail sales, stabilizing oil prices and car sales, and rising measures of money--that augur a stock market recovery.

Here's hoping the Forbes guys are right.

This Just In

"Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom," by William P. Ruger and Jason Sorens, published by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University.

(Ruger is an assistant professor of political science at Texas State University-San Marcos, though currently on active duty in Afghanistan; Sorens is an assistant professor of political science at the University at Buffalo. You may know Sorens as the founder and current chairman of the board of the Free State Project.)

"Freedom in the 50 States" aims to provide for the American States approximately what the annual Economic Freedom of the World Index provides for countries around the world. Both are great services to mankind, in addition to being inherently fascinating. If you are interested, as I am, in the economic, political, and cultural institutions that allow or encourage human flourishing, I recommend studying Ruger and Sorens's paper carefully.

P.S. I am saddened to report that I work and live in the worst and in the second-to-worst states in the Union, New York and New Jersey respectively, on the combined ranking of economic and personal freedom. New Hampshire wins on the combined ranking, followed by Colorado, South Dakota, Idaho, and Texas.

Worth a Look

A worthy and timely new project called Philosopher's Digest. Though I can take no credit for the idea for the project, I am pleased to serve on its advisory board. The goal of the Philosopher's Digest is to supply short summaries of a wide range of recent articles in important philosophy journals. Go to its website and look around. And check back often, since it will be updated regularly.

Perhaps you would like to become one of its reviewers? If so, contact one of its founding editors, John Milliken.

Sign of the Times

Holocaust survior and Nobel Prize winner--and, now, one of the victims of Bernard Madoff's fraud--Elie Wiesel has stated publicly that he would not forgive Madoff. Given what Wiesel has undoubtedly seen in his lifetime, for him to call Madoff "one of the greatest scoundrels, thieves, liars, criminals" is quite something.

The article concludes with this comment from Wiesel: "It shows, again, a human being is capable of both very great, good things, and very horrible things." Is that true? Some human beings are certainly capable of very great good things, and some human beings are capable of very horrible things. I hope that it is not true, however, that each human being is capable of horrible things, even if every human being is, as I believe, fallen.

Worth a Look

Victor Claar's new Economics Blog. Professor Claar teaches economics at Hope College in Holland Michigan, and has done a lot of excellent work, including on the connection and compatibility between Christianity and economics. See, for example, his recent book Economics in Christian Perspective.

This Just In

I posted earlier on the dire financial straits in which The New York Times finds itself. Now it appears The San Francisco Chronicle might be headed in the same direction. Some claim that the SFC will survive, but one has to wonder: How long can either paper continue to sustain the massive losses (reportedly $1 million per week for the SFC) and still stay in business?

Wise Words

"English thinkers aspired to know, or dared to doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and to believe." --Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second (1858; available here)

In the News

The sentencing of the "tobacco spit burglar," here. Way to go, Adair County, Oklahoma DA's office!

Worth a Look

The Atlas Foundation's Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Order. I won one of its Hayek Prizes in 2005, and I will be giving the keynote talk at its upcoming "Teach Freedom Initiative Conference," held on March 27th in New Orleans (register for this conference here).

Sign of the Times

This is a truly shocking revelation about the Bernard Madoff scandal: apparently Madoff never made any investments with the money he received. It is unclear whether Yeshiva University in particular will suffer any more because of this revelation, but this epic fraud seems to get more outrageous by the day.

Worth a Look

The Wall Street Journal asked a number of economists how they think we should spend the $8 per week that the "stimulus package" will put into the average citizen's paycheck. The answers are interesting, as are the comments. Read it here.

What I Am Reading

Theodore Dalrymple's latest book, Not with a Bang but a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline. I am a regular, even faithful, reader of Dalrymple's, believing as I do that he is one of the greatest contemporary essayists in English. Intelligence, wisdom, wit, erudition: they are all on spectacular display in his writings. If you have not had the pleasure of reading his work, I highly recommend it to you. You might start with his book Life at the Bottom. You have a treat in store for you.

On My List: I have heard very good things about Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending's The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution.

Sign of the Times

In case you are interested in keeping track, as I am, The Wall Street Journal has published a helpful, interactive map plotting Bernie Madoff and the various ways his fraudulent schemes have affected different people and organizations, here. (The connection to Yeshiva University is in the lower right of the map.)

Wise Words

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." --George Washington, The Rules of Civility (ca. 1748)

Sign of the Times (Update)

UPDATE on a previous post: Here is a link to a Jewish Star article about Yeshiva University's recently announced cuts. The link includes the text of the letter YU President Richard Joel sent to all faculty and staff yesterday.

Sign of the Times

Over last Christmas break, Boston College placed crucifixes in all the classrooms. Some faculty are apparently offended by it, and one presumes at least some students are as well. When I was a student at Notre Dame, I remember crucifixes were in all the classrooms, and at Georgetown University, where I am visiting this year, there are crucifixes in many though not all rooms. At Yeshiva University, my home institution, there are mezuzahs on all of the doorways.

Despite not being raised a Catholic and not being Jewish, I am not and have never been offended by the displays of religious icons at these institutions. Indeed, I am gratified by them, because it means to me that they take their religious identities seriously. I was also required to say Catholic prayers in high school, but that was okay by me too--it was a Catholic high school, after all.

I have no problem with institutions--religious or otherwise--displaying symbols of and signs representing their mission. As long as they are not coercing others, I think they have every right to make public displays of their beliefs. Indeed, if I am offended by anything, it is institutions that do not have the courage of their convictions. If you believe it, then believe it.

Sign of the Times

The Wall Street Journal editorializes today on Mary Schapiro, the new Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, here. They are not happy that she does not wish to address the SEC's failures of the recent past, including in particular those of Bernard Madoff, who swindled many investors, including my home institution of Yeshiva University, out of a lot of money.

The final paragraph of the story is quite interesting:

If Ms. Schapiro seeks to learn from the SEC's recent history, she might start by considering the most basic lesson from the Madoff incident. Private market participants spotted the fraud, while SEC lawyers couldn't seem to grasp it. Rather than giving her staff lawyers still more autonomy, she should instead be supervising them more closely, while trying to harness the intelligence of the marketplace. Meantime, investors should remember that their own skepticism and diversified investing remain their best defenses against fraudsters.

Is the Journal suggesting that "private market participants" are better at policing the market than the state regulatory agencies are?

Sign of the Times

The economy is not good, and my home institution, Yeshiva University, is feeling the pinch. Not only has its endowment suffered like those of other institutions, but it is also reeling from its close former association with Bernard Madoff. One result is that the university announced yesterday that it is laying off some 60 staff members from its various Manhattan campuses.

Yeshiva University recently released a video of its president, Richard Joel, discussing the university's financial plans for next year. See the short video here.

I am currently on leave from Yeshiva University and spending the 2008-'09 academic year at Georgetown University, which is also feeling the pinch. Georgetown recently reported that its endowment is down over 25% from a recent high.

Wise Words

"Universalism and collectivism are by necessity systems of theocratic government. The common characteristic of all their varieties is that they postulate the existence of a superhuman entity which the individuals are bound to obey. What differentiates them from one another is only the appellation they give to this entity and the content of the laws they proclaim in its name." --Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (first published in 1949)

Wise Words

"Successful and happy people are not people who are dealt great hands. They are people who play well the hands they are dealt." --David C. Rose, 27 January 2009

Wise Words

"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing. And that you may be always doing good, my dear, is the ardent prayer of yours affectionately." --Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Martha Jefferson, 5 May 1787

Worth a Look

A brief review of Keith E. Stanovich's new book, What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought. According to the review, Stanovich's claim is that IQ tests, while valid, are narrow; specifically, they do not account for "judicious decision making, efficient behavioral regulation, sensible goal prioritization ... [and] the proper calibration of evidence." That means a person can have a high IQ but still engage in "blatantly irrational acts" and make "dumb decisions."

Hmmm . . . sound like anyone you know?

Wise Words

"You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly everything self-important or malicious. You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, 'What are you thinking about?' you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or that. And it would be obvious at once from your answer that your thoughts were straightforward and considerate ones--the thoughts of an unselfish person, one unconcerned with pleasure and with sensual indulgence generally, with squabbling, with slander and envy, or anything else you'd be ashamed to be caught thinking." --Marcus Aurelius, Meditations III.4

This Just In

Is the New York Times going out of business? The Wall Street Journal, which apparently is not going out of business, predicts it will, despite the $250 million loan that super-rich Carlos Slim gave it. The Times is paying over 14% on that loan, which is not a good sign. The economy is tough on everyone right now, even America's newspaper of record. The passing of the Times would be the end of an era.

Worth a Look

The new website of Professor Bradley Birzer: Avalon Cathedrals. I have also added it to my roster of links, below right. Professor Birzer is a great man, and an inspiration. The future of civilization rests on the shoulders of people like him.

Worth a Look

Here is Stanley Fish's latest column on the state of higher education in America, entitled "The Last Professor," from today's New York Times. Will there be a demand for classically trained humanities professors in the future of American higher education?

(See also Fish's provocative but intriguing defense of the installation of Roland Burris as Illinois's new senator here. Fish marshals an Augustinian conception of the relation between individual human beings and the offices they occupy to counter the claim that Burris is "tainted" by Governor Blagojevich's alleged wrongdoings.)

The Dark Side of the Internet

[Commentary]

As a college football fan and Notre Dame graduate, I read this interview with the new athletic director at Notre Dame, Jack Swarbrick, with interest. Given Notre Dame's recent football woes, he has significant challenges ahead. What struck me in particular, however, was his comments about the damage that anonymous postings on internet sites can do. Here is the relevant exchange:

Q: Coverage of your athletic programs have changed drastically in the past few years, with cutbacks in the newspaper industry, the growth of non-traditional media, blogs, instant messaging, message boards, etc. In terms of your job, does it change the way you have to approach things?

A: "Yes, it's been so dramatic. It's so pervasive, you almost don't think of it as an isolated event. When we talk at our student-athlete advisory council meetings here, that issue is huge with the kids, because there are elements of the Internet that are so grossly unfair to these young student-athletes.

"An enormous problem is anonymous postings, which are often just flat-out lies. Because the student-athletes have the public profiles at the university, they tend to become victims of it much more than anyone else. So you have that dynamic. You also deal with your student-athletes about Facebook and MySpace — how to caution them about those, how to manage that.

"I was not surprised about the level of interest in what we do, and kind of the passion that surrounds it. But I was very surprised as sort of the tone and the degree of misinformation. It's stunningly specific.

"Somebody will report that I was in a hotel in Florida at 2:30 in the afternoon, talking to Urban Meyer. It's just nonsense, but because it is so specific, because that complete fabrication carries that detail, it becomes credible.

"It's very frustrating to have somebody write about some element of our business, saying that the information came from 'a highly placed source in the athletic department.' It'll be a topic that I know only three of us discussed, so it didn't come from us. It's not possible to have come from us, but people sort of cloak themselves in descriptions like that. It's just part of the deal.

"You'd like everyone externally — all the people who care about our program — to be a little more skeptical about the quality of what they're reading. And I don't mean the traditional media. I think more in terms of things that have an online origin."

I fear this is becoming a widespread, even pervasive, problem. Now almost every website, blog, news story--everything--on the internet allows for anonymous commenting and posting. Most of it is innocent enough, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to protect one's identity for personal, professional, or artistic reasons. Indeed, I believe there is an important place for anonymous or pseudonymous writing, as everyone from "Publius" to Kierkegaard to Mark Twain to George Eliot to C. S. Lewis can attest. (See the incomplete lists of famous anonymous or pseudonymous authors and works here, here, here, and here, for example.)

The problem comes because some people use the cloak of anonymity to provide cover to say (write) false, malicious, and mean-spirited things. And, as Aristotle would have predicted, engaging in vicious activity like that becomes easier, and feels more comfortable, each time one does it. So we have seen a rapid escalation of instances of people saying the most outrageous, filthy, profane, and destructive things, all apparently with no sense of guilt or shame, simply because they can.

An example is the scurrilous site called "Juicy Campus" (to whose site I will not link--a small thing, I realize, but still), which invites college students to post anonymous "juicy" gossip about their fellow students and faculty, all with guaranteed impunity. The results are shocking. Predictable, perhaps, but still shocking.

I wonder whether what we are seeing develop before our eyes is an answer to the Ring of Gyges problem posed to Socrates in Book II of Plato's Republic. The question was whether a person who had perfect assurance of never being discovered or caught would therefore break through all the rules of morality and engage in conduct even he would otherwise acknowledge is immoral and wrong. Socrates answered in the negative, but I wonder whether Glaucon's answer might not be right after all.

It is hard to know what to do about this phenomenon, how to combat the practice, or how to undo the damage that can come from a person making a malicious statement even just once. Another feature of our new digital age, remember, is that once something appears it exists forever. Hence even if the anonymous poster wrote something injudicious in a fit of anger or spite, only to regret it later, it is too late. Though it might be retracted, it cannot be expunged.

Our species developed in conditions very different from this, conditions in which it was possible to start anew and to have one's past mistakes forgotten, conditions in which it was far more difficult for a person to spread false rumors or malicious lies, especially anonymously. But now people's lives can be devastated and their careers can be destroyed, and, for the moment at least, there is precious little one can do about it. That is a frightening prospect--not only because any one of us might just as easily be the next victim, but also because of what it reveals about human nature.

It may be some time before mores and norms develop that can help us navigate these treacherous social and moral waters. In the meantime, I suppose all one can do is state publicly that slander is wrong and that one should take what one reads on the internet with a large dose of skepticism; and one should frequently remind oneself how pervasively the dark side of humanity is on display on the internet.

What I'm Reading

1. Fifty Major Economists, 2nd ed., by Steven Pressman (London: Routledge, 2006), part of the Routledge "Key Guides" series. Provides short introductions and overviews of the life and work of, as the title would indicate, fifty major economists. I enjoyed reading this immensely. It is at times idiosyncratic, but I learned a lot from it. (Note: Steven Pressman is not to be confused with Steven Pressfield, whose fantastic Gates of Fire is one of my--and my childrens'--favorite books.)

2. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, by Ludwig von Mises (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007 [1949]). I had read this on my own as a graduate student, but I am now re-reading it in preparation for a conference I am attending in February. A beautifully constructed argument, although I am less convinced than I once was that a purely "deductive" argument for the free market can be successful.

3. Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, trans. Gregory Hays (New York: Modern Library, 2002). If you have not read Meditations, you should. I like this translation, but there are many others. Read it slowly, to think about each passage, not just to finish the book. I have read it many times, each time with profit and each time learning and discovering something new. That is the mark of an enduring work--not to mention an enduring mind in the remarkable Marcus Aurelius. Meditations is, as a friend of mine recently reminded me, a work that can calm the soul in troubled times.

On my list:

1. Economic Facts and Fallacies, by Thomas Sowell (New York: Basic Books, 2008). I have read numerous other books by Sowell, beginning with his Inside American Education (rev. ed., New York: Free Press, 2003), and including the important Conflict of Visions (rev. ed., New York: Basic Books, 2007), which I frequently use in class.

2. When I can find the time, there are several other books by Ludwig von Mises I would like to read (or re-read, as the case may be), including Socialism, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, and Bureaucracy. All of these are now handsomely, and inexpensively, available from Liberty Fund in its ongoing publication of the works of Mises.

Wise Words

"Concentrate every minute like a Roman--like a man--on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can--if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that's all even the gods can ask of you." --Marcus Aurelius, Meditations II.5.

Just Arrived

The latest edition of The Adam Smith Review (vol. 4, 2008) is now out. It is a special issue edited by Douglas J. Den Uyl on the topic of "Adam Smith and His Sources." My paper, "Shaftesbury's Evolutionary Morality and Its Influence on Smith," is included in the volume, and I am happy to have some of my work included in a group of such excellent work. This volume also contains my review of Craig Smith's recent book, Adam Smith's Political Philosophy, along with Smith's response to my review.

The latest edition of The Independent Review (vol. 13, no. 13, Winter 2009) is also just out. My paper "Kantian Individualism and Political Libertarianism" is included (the webpage includes a summary of my paper). TIR is a journal that I find myself reading from cover to cover whenever it comes out--a high compliment, I can assure you. So I am happy to have some of my work appear in it.

Submissions Welcome

Since starting this site a couple months ago, I have received several suggestions from readers of books I should read. Thank you! I thought I should extend a general invitation: I would be happy to hear your suggestions of books. Either post them as comments or e-mail them to me at jimotteson [at] gmail [dot] com.

UPDATE 12/22/08: I have received numerous good suggestions. Thank you! I will post them in a future entry. Please keep them coming!

And in Sports . . .

[Commentary]

Barack Obama is right: College football needs a playoff. It is the only major sport, at either the professional or collegiate level, that has no playoff tournament, and every year that fact gives rise to needless arguing about who should be included in the single, subjectively-determined national championship game and, thus, who is truly the best team.

Now that this year's BCS bowl games, including the national championship game between Florida and Oklahoma, have been set, the predictable and perfectly reasonable arguing have begun. Why not Texas? Why not USC? On any given day, any of those teams, along with the other BCS teams--Alabama, Utah, Penn State, Cincinnati, Virginia Tech, and Ohio State--might be the best team in the country. And let's not forget undefeated Utah and Boise State, along with one-loss Ball State. Why not give them a chance to prove on the field just how good they are?

Here is an easy solution (the one that Obama suggested as well): take the top eight teams and have a single-elimination, three-weekend tournament. Piece of cake. The locations of the seven games could be selected from standard bowl locations, with the championship game rotating through the current BCS locations. The final game could be on January 1, the traditional day of the most important bowl games. Other teams with six or more wins could go to other standard bowls.

Why eight teams? There is nothing special about the number eight. It seems reasonable, however, to think that the best team in the country will be among the top eight at the end of the season; two or four seem too few, and more than eight seems needless. Moreover, an eight-team playoff is easy to administrate.

The fans and coaches have long been in support of this, and now the President-elect is as well. This is a change that we can all believe in.

This Just In

Well, not just in, but . . .

Ayaan Hirsan Ali's latest book Infidel is now available. She is the inspiring Somali-Dutch writer, activist, scholar, and politician who has criticized Islam especially for its treatment of women and has shown astonishing courage in the face of threats of reprisals. Her defenses of the dignity of womanhood have been compelling and inspirational. Infidel has been published at the same time (this past April) as her book The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, another work well worth reading.

What an amazing person.

Coming Soon

I have had the pleasure as serving as guest-editor of volume 7, number 1 of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy, which is dedicated to the topic of "Scottish Philosophy and the Social Sciences." It contains excellent original papers by Samuel Gregg, Maria Pia Paganelli, Henry Clark, Ryan Patrick Hanley, and Craig Smith, as well as a review of Eugene Heath and Vincenzo Merolle's edited collection Adam Ferguson: History, Progress and Human Nature by Gordon Graham and a review of Neil McArthur's David Hume's Political Theory by Eric Schliesser. See here for more details.

It should appear soon--keep an eye out for it!

This Just In

A book that has just been brought to my attention is America's Forgotten Founders: Beyond Washington and Jefferson, edited by Gary L. Gregg II and Mark David Hall (Louisville, KY: McConnell Center, 2008). Gary Gregg, whom I had the pleasure of meeting recently, holds the Mitch McConnell Chair in Leadership at the University of Louisville and is the McConnell Center's director. This book focuses, as its title suggests, on the thoughts and actions of some of America's lesser-known founders.

Wise Words

"For it is more characteristic of virtue to do good than to have good done to one, and more characteristic to do what is noble than not to do what is base." --Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1120a11-13

Wise Words

"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate. [ . . . ] And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener, neglect and pass them by. But with far more subtlety does this mischief insinuate itself into philosophy and the sciences; in which the first conclusion colors and brings into conformity with itself all that come after, though far sounder and better." --Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620), Aphorism XLVI

Wise Words

"There is no particular . . . in which we are more frequently unjust, than in applying to the individual the supposed character of his country; or more frequently misled, than in taking our notion of a people from the example of one, or a few of their numbers." --Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (pt. IV, sect. V)

What I'm Reading

Mark Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30). The main thesis of the book is that the promised efflorescence of learning and education with the onset of the digital age has not happened. Bauerlein argues that the evidence does not support the widespread consensus that computers, digital media, wifi, wikis, etc. in the classrooms aid education. Indeed, he argues that, if anything, these tools have limited our intellectual horizons by enabling--and even encouraging--students to spend more and more time on social networking, which tends to contract rather than expand our attentions. Who has time to read and digest all the wonderful information available on the web if we're updating our Facebook page 27 times per day?

I recently finished reading, on a recommendation from a friend, John R. Lott Jr.'s Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't. Lott is the author of the infamous More Guns, Less Crime. The cacophonously named Freedomnomics is intended as a response to the wildly popular--and quite entertaining--Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, which Lott argues does not fully understand why and how markets work.

I am also re-reading parts of Mark Blaug's Economic Theory in Retrospect, 5th ed. Having just completed teaching a course on the history of economic thought, I found the insights in this book even more impressive than I did the first time I read it.

Up next on my list: Ha-Joon Chang's The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.

What I'm Reading

Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality, by Charles Murray. Murray is the co-author of the notorious The Bell Curve. Real Education claims that America's system of education rests on a series of falsehoods. The four "simple truths" that Murray argues would, if acknowledged, radically improve American education are: (1) academic ability varies widely, and is largely incorrigible; (2) half of the children are below average; (3) too many people go to college; and (4) America's future depends not on how we educate those at the lower end of the bell curve but rather on how we educate the academically gifted.

In preparation for a conference I am attending, I am also re-reading Edmund Burke's 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France, F. A. Hayek's essays collected in Individualism and Economic Order, and selections from Russell Kirk, including from his 1953 The Conservative Mind and his 1954 A Program for Conservatives. These are fascinating, and enduring, works. One striking fact is that both Hayek and Kirk claim Burke as one of their intellectual forebears, yet Hayek claims to be a "liberal" and sharply criticizes conservatives, while Kirk claims to be a "conservative" and sharply criticizes liberals.

Wise Words

"No one who attempts to lay down propositions for the guidance of mankind, however perfect his scientific acquirements, can dispense with a practical knowledge of the actual modes in which the affairs of the world are carried on, and on extensive personal experience of the actual ideas, feelings, and intellectual and moral tendencies of his own country and of his own age. The true practical statesman is he who combines this experience with a profound knowledge of abstract political philosophy. Either acquirement, without the other, leaves him lame and impotent if he is sensible of the deficiency; renders him obstinate and presumptuous if, as is more probable, he is entirely unconscious of it."

--John Stuart Mill, "On the Definition of Political Economy and the Method of Investigation Proper to It" (1836)

Wise Words

"We frequently hear the young and the licentious ridiculing the most sacred rules of morality, and professing, sometimes from the corruption, but more frequently from the vanity of their hearts, the most abominable maxims of conduct. Our indignation rouses, and we are eager to refute and expose such detestable principles. But though it is their intrinsic hatefulness and detestableness, which originally inflames us against them, we are unwilling to assign this as the sole reason why we condemn them, or to pretend that it is merely because we ourselves hate and detest them. The reason, we think, would not appear to be conclusive. Yet why should it not; if we hate and detest them because they are the natural and proper objects of hatred and detestation? But when we are asked why we should not act in such or such a manner, the very question seems to suppose that, to those who ask it, this manner of acting does not appear to be for its own sake the natural and proper object of those sentiments. We must show them, therefore, that it ought to be so for the sake of something else. Upon this account we generally cast about for other arguments, and the consideration which first occurs to us, is the disorder and confusion of society which would result from the universal prevalence of such practices."

--Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), II.ii.3.8.

In the Movies

Some of the talks I have given were recorded. Here is the beginning of a talk I gave at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, on April 3, 2008:

Here is the beginning of the dinner at which the Templeton Enterprise Awards for 2007 were announced, on October 30, 2007, at the University Club in New York:

Wise Words

"Almost all the governments, which exist at present, or of which there remains any record in story, have been founded originally, either on usurpation or conquest, or both, without any pretence of a fair consent, or voluntary subjection of the people." --David Hume, "Of the Original Contract" (1748)

"In actual history, it is a notorious fact that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, in short, force, play the greatest part." --Karl Marx, Das Kapital, vol. 1 (1867)

Wise Words

"Natural science will in time include the science of man as the science of man will include natural science: There will be one science." --Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, "Private Property and Communism" (1844)

(Sounds very like the thesis of E. O. Wilson's 1999 book, Consilience.)

What I'm Reading

The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, by Christine Kenneally. This book was recommended to me by a former colleague and friend, but, because I have only just begun it, I cannot yet recommend it myself. It is a fascinating topic, however, one that cuts across many disciplines: history, anthropology, linguistics, political economy, and evolutionary biology.

Up next on my list:

Language Evolution: Contact, Competition and Change, by Salikoko S. Mufwene. I met Professor Mufwene briefly when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago and he was chairman of its linguistics department. He is a very impressive person. I look forward to reading his book, especially since "invisible hand" is one of its central organizing concepts, and appears already on p. 2 and throughout the book.

What I'm Reading

A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, by Gregory Clark. A fascinating new entry into the debate about (1) why there was an unprecedented explosion of wealth around 1800AD, and (2) why some places got so much wealthier than other places. Clark's intriguing suggestion is that culture--not, e.g., institutional structures or geographical features--is the most important single factor explaining both (1) and (2).

A remarkable passage from the book:

". . . much of modern quantitative economic history has been a search for empirical confirmation of his [Adam Smith's] vision of growth. These empirical studies of past societies, however, rather than confirming Smith's hypothesis, systematically find that many early societies had all the prerequisites for economic growth, but no technological advance and hence no growth. [. . .]

"Economic historians thus inhabit a strange netherworld. Their days are devoted to proving a vision of progress that all serious empirical studies in the field contradict." (pp. 146-7)

And later:

"Indeed, based on the Smithian conception, it is not clear why economic activity has not completely ground to a halt [in today's many countries with "high taxes on economic activity, combined with generous provision of income and services independent of effort"]." (p. 150)

Blogging

I have resumed blogging at the History News Network's blog, Liberty and Power. I had blogged there a few years ago, but am returning now after a hiatus. I am pleased to join several other distinguished bloggers on the site, whose focus is politics, political philosophy, economics, and educational policy.

Wise Words

“A man should never be ashamed to own that he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.” --Alexander Pope (1688-1744).

A Personal Matter

It is with an enormous sense of relief that I report that an appellate court has upheld the conviction of the man who brutally attacked my step-father, giving him injuries that eventually led to his death. He was convicted of murder over a year ago, and the appellate court just this week rejected his petition to reduce the sentence to manslaughter. He will serve 79 years.

This has been a painful years-long ordeal. My step-sisters have been heroic in their diligence and vigilance, making sure that justice was done. Perhaps we can now all begin to mourn Jack properly.

May God rest your soul, Jack.

What I'm Reading

A periodically updated post on things I've been reading recently . . . .

A History of Economic Thought, by Lionel Robbins. A collection of 33 essays Robbins delivered at the London School of Economics in the early 1980s (shortly before he died, in 1984). Robbins was one of the great economists of the twentieth century, and an excellent writer in addition.

Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson, by Bradley J. Birzer. A fascinating biography of a thinker whose work was enormously influential on Catholicism in the first half of the twentieth century. A worthy successor to Birzer's previous book, J. R. R. Tolkein's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle Earth.

In the Shadow of Progress: Being Human in the Age of Technology, by Eric Cohen. An extended argument laying out the limitations of modern science and technology, while remaining cognizant--and appreciative--of their obvious promise and benefits.

The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big-Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy, by Richard Vedder and Wendell Cox. The authors argue that Wal-Mart unquestionably benefits everyone, and they review and address many objections to their claims and many criticisms raised against Wal-Mart.

Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life, edited by Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr. An extensive, wide-ranging, and challenging set of essays laying out the claims and evidence that experimental economists, evolutionary psychologists, primatologists, and others have presented attempting to give various forms of naturalistic explanations for human morality.

My Scholarship: Books

In 2002, my book Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life was published by Cambridge University Press. Here is a review of the book by Timothy M. Costelloe, here is one by David Gordon, here is one by Robert McCarthy, here is one by Margaret Schabas, here is one by Jack Russell Weinstein, and here is one by Jeffrey T. Young.

In 2003, my five-volume edited collection The Levellers: Overton, Walwyn, and Lilburne was published by Thoemmes Continuum Press.

In 2004, my edited collection Adam Smith: Selected Philosophical Writings was published by Imprint Academic, as part of the Library of Scottish Philosophy series.

In 2006, my book Actual Ethicswas published by Cambridge University Press. Here is a review of the book by Blain Neufeld, and here is a review by David Gordon. Actual Ethics won the Templeton Foundation's 2007 Culture of Enterprise Award, first place, which carries with it a cash award bigger than that of the National Book Award or the Pulitzer Prize! Here is a news story about the award, and here and here are two press releases about it.

Brief Academic Biography

I received a BA magna cum laude from the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame in 1990. My senior essay, entitled "The Therapeutic Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein," won PLS's Otto A. Bird Award for best senior essay. I spent my sophomore year abroad, studying at the Universitaet Innsbruck, in Innsbruck, Austria.

From there I went to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, from which I received an MA in philosophy in 1992. My paper "A Problem in Wittgeinstein's Philosophy of Language" won the department's 1991 Richard M. Peltz Memorial Award for Excellence in Philosophy. My master's thesis, "Locke's Arguments for the Existence of Natural Law," was directed by William Wainwright.

I then joined the philosophy department at the University of Chicago, from which I received a PhD in 1997. My dissertation was entitled "The Unintended Order of Morality: Adam Smith and David Hume on the Origins of Morality." It was directed by Daniel Garber (now at Princeton University), with readers Ted Cohen and Ian Mueller; Knud Haakonssen was an outside reader (then at Boston University; now at Sussex University).

Upon graduating from the University of Chicago, I took a position in the philosophy department at the University of Alabama in 1997. I was first an assistant professor, then promoted early to associate professor with tenure in 2002, then promoted to full professor in 2006. I was chairman of the deparment from 2005 until I resigned in 2007.

In the Fall of 2007, I accepted a position as Director of the Schottenstein Honors Program in Yeshiva College, Yeshiva University; I was also made professor of philosophy and economics. In 2008 I resigned from the directorship of the Honors Program, though I retain my position as professor of philosophy and economics.

I am currently on leave from Yeshiva, and I am a visitor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University for the 2008-09 academic year.

Jim Otteson's website

Hello and welcome to my new website! With the help of a good friend (thanks, Coop!), I've put together a site on which I will collect information about my professional activities. It will be under constant construction, and of course more content will be coming soon.

Please check back often and let me know what you think! E-mail me at jimotteson (at) gmail (dot) com.