It’s one thing to make an argument that more individuals would get greater returns doing X than Y, or that common ideas about economic or cultural value are off base. These are great discussions. But when they move from individuals to aggregates, and especially when they move from exploration or persuasion to policy, they descend into stupidity. Or more precisely, what Hayek called the Fatal Conceit.
Tag: knowledge
Reflections from Spain
I just got back from a five-week visit to Spain. The first four weeks, I was teaching labor economics at Universidad Francisco Marroquín while my sons took Spanish-language classes on Islamism, Self-Government, and the Philosophy of Hayek. Then we rented a van and saw Cordoba, Seville, Gibraltar, Fuengirola, Granada, and Cuenca.
Don’t Fall For The Borderists’ Dishonest Trap
Here’s the dishonest setup followed by the dishonest question: “The question that no open-borders advocate has ever answered is, How many illegals should be allowed into the United States?” He’s a liar.
Alice Miller: Childhood, The Unexplored Source of Knowledge (28m)
This episode features an audio essay written by psychologist and psychoanalyst Alice Miller in 2007, which comprises Chapter 25 of Everything Voluntary: From Politics to Parenting, edited by Skyler J. Collins and published in 2012. She explores childhood as a source of understanding tyranny and violence.
Historically Hollow: The Cries of Populism
The populists of our Golden Age are loud and furious. They’re crying about “monopolies” that deliver firehoses worth of free stuff. They’re bemoaning the “death of competition” in industries (like taxicabs) that governments forcibly monopolized for as long as any living person can remember.
The Entrepreneur Who Became a Billionaire After Being Rejected by Facebook
Jan Koum had a rough upbringing. At 16, he immigrated from Europe to the United States with his mother and grandmother, who were fleeing political unrest and religious persecution. Jan’s mother got a job as a babysitter in California while Jan went to school and worked at a grocery store cleaning floors. His father planned…
It’s More Than Just Willpower
It breaks my heart every time I pass someone sleeping in the street. I go through a mental process, wondering what circumstances, preferences, and choices get a person to a spot where sleeping on the sidewalk is better than the next best alternative.
Opposition Research: It’s Not Trump’s Fault That Politics is a “Dirty” Game
In a June 12 interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, President Donald Trump freely admitted that he would listen to foreigners offering him “dirt” on his political opponents: “I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening …. Somebody comes up and says, ‘hey, I have information on your opponent,’ do you call the FBI?”
If You Hate it, You’re Not the Audience
I love Shark Tank. I used to watch it with my kids. It exposed them to tons of new concepts. The idea of building a business with someone else’s money was novel. The realization that you’ve got to have a story that’s compelling enough to convince the holders of that money to join.
School Will be Remembered Like Leeches and Cigarettes
How did humans learn stuff the other several thousand years of civilization? How were 80% of colonial Americans literate with no standardized institutional schooling, and when books were rare and costly and most jobs didn’t even require reading? How did people invent stuff, start businesses, write books, create great art, and expand the corpus of human knowledge for thousands of years without certified teachers and grades and degrees?