Bryan Caplan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center. He is the author of The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, named “the best political book of the year” by the New York Times, and Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think. He has published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the American Economic Review, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Law and Economics, and Intelligence, and has appeared on 20/20, FoxNews, and C-SPAN.
Mike Huemer’s new Justice before the Law is predictably excellent. I’ll eventually discuss it in greater depth, but for now I’ll focus on Huemer’s critique of plea bargaining. The heart of the critique is that plea bargaining is coerced confession: It is universally agreed in legal theory that coerced confessions are unacceptable. The main reason is that […]
The post How Thoughtful Torture Beats Plea Bargaining appeared first on Econlib.
People routinely justify government on the basis of “consent.” As in: “There’s a social contract, and you’re obliged to follow it.” If you deny consent, they just move the goalposts of consent very close. In fact, they usually give the government an instant touchdown.
“Leave no man behind.” This slogan is the peak of military romanticism. No matter how much you suffer for the cause, you are never alone. You belong to an unbreakable brotherhood of blood. “I’m expendable.” This admission is the peak of military realism. You’re not part of a loving “family”; you’re part of a callous system. If you die, you’ll be replaced by someone else. Before long, the men who sent you to your doom won’t even remember your name.
Demagogic policies surround us, but no true demagogue enforces them strictly. The result: As long as you don’t call too much attention to yourself, you can pick and choose which laws to follow at surprisingly low cost. So, I ask you, why not follow your conscience?
Ten years ago, I never heard anyone talk about “microaggressions” or “privilege.” The substance, however, is almost exactly what teachers, textbooks, and the media told me back in the 1980s.
The Nineties were almost crisis-free; indeed, the collapse of Communism ended the forty-year crisis of the Cold War. Ever since, however, we’ve had one exasperating crisis after another: 9/11, the Iraq War, the Great Recession, and ISIS, followed by Covid-19, the crisis that puts all the others to shame.
America is now an elective dictatorship. Unlike almost all historical dictatorships, however, these are dictatorships within a federal system. Every governor makes it up as he goes along… but he only makes it up for his own state.
While I found Terence Kealey’s case for protectionism underwhelming, it definitely got me thinking. Here are my further thoughts.
While I was teaching at the John Locke Institute, our Summer School sponsored a debate on free trade between Daniel Hannon and Terence Kealey. Kealey rested his case for protectionism squarely on the classic infant-industry argument. Kealey’s version: While free trade does indeed improve efficiency at the moment, the long-run effect is to suppress economic growth in poorer countries. Why? Because you don’t improve at doing things that you don’t do.
What’s the big deal about masks? In exchange for slight inconvenience and discomfort, we save lives. Basic human selfishness explains why many would fail to comply. Anti-authoritarian scruples might lead some to oppose government mask mandates. But how could anyone sincerely disagree with the principle that wearing masks is a good thing?