Alright, enough with all the negativity, and time to get positive. Now, I know very well that we don’t want this, and we don’t want that. This is fundamentally corrupt and needs to be destroyed, and that is entirely oppressive and needs to be abolished. This is completely fucked-up and needs to be attacked, and that thing over there… well, let’s not even talk about that!
Tag: conflict
Monetize Your Anger
Critics of the economics profession often accuse us of “knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.” But economists also often antagonize a far larger group – ordinary people who barely realize our profession even exists. How? By asking about Willingness To Pay (WTP).
American Militias after the Civil War: From Black Codes to the Black Panthers and Beyond
The Civil War (1861-1865) was nothing less than a revolutionary reorganization of American government, society, and economics. It claimed almost as many lives as every other U.S. conflict combined and, by war’s bloody logic, forged the nation which the Founding Fathers could not by settling once and for all lingering national questions about state sovereignty and slavery.
War for Poverty
When a country is mired in poverty, violent revolution is the most emotionally appealing remedy. So cinematic. Since the powers that be almost never agree, any call for violent revolution is, in practice, a call for civil war. But how well does the “remedy” of civil war actually work?
War Crimes Pardons: A Terrible Memorial Day Idea
As I write this, news reports indicate that Trump intends to celebrate Memorial Day by pardoning several other Americans convicted of (or accused of and not yet tried for) war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s a horrible idea for several reasons.
Big Business: Recasting the Anti-Hero
My main criticism: Tyler is so pro-business that he often forgets (at least rhetorically) to be pro-market. He spends minimal time calling for moderate deregulation – and even less calling for radical deregulation. So while he effectively calls attention to everything business does for us, he barely shows readers how much business could do for us if government got out of the way.
This Is What Peace Looks Like
This – here, now, concretely, in front of me- is a small vision of what I and all of my idealistic friends and forebears talk about when we talk about the world we want. This is what people have fought and died for. This is it. Peace becomes far more interesting and compelling when it has a face. And that face is far more beautiful than any of the allure of war and conflict.
More Bang for Your Buck; or, Better Ways to Buy Your Happiness
Money has little effect on happiness. Ancient Greeks like Epicurus said it, and modern empirical psychology confirms it. Why do we have so much trouble accepting this? In part, because our immediate reaction to money is highly favorable – and that sticks in our minds. Before long, however, hedonic adaptation kicks in. We start to take our good fortune for granted… and then we largely forget that our fortune is good.
The History of History
It would be interesting, though very difficult, to study how history changes. I don’t mean how the sequence of human events changes from the present into the future, I mean how the past changes. Since it exists only in memory from our present perspective, the stories we believe about the past are the past. But those stories aren’t fixed. They change all the time.
The Depression Preference
When I describe mental illness as “an extreme, socially disapproved preference,” the most convincing counter-example people offer is depression. Do I really think people “want to be depressed” or choose depression as a bizarre alternative lifestyle?