Sheldon Richman responds to my Cato Unbound essay here, criticizing my position as being insufficiently libertarian, although he otherwise shares many of my underlying premises. And Jason Kuznicki responds to my essay here, supporting Title II from a Hayekian perspective, while, unlike me, expressing no noticeable qualms about the vast expansion of the antidiscrimination edifice […]
Archive | Libertarianism
A Timely Lord of the Rings Analogy
Ian Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute makes this analogy between our current situation and the Lord of The Rings [HT: Instapundit]: [W]ith even liberal anger against the President growing, perhaps the analogy at the end of this Daily Show segment is worth considering further. The orcs who are despoiling the free enterprise system draw […]
Essay on Libertarianism and Antidiscrimination Law
I’ve written an essay for Cato Unbound, which the editors have titled “Context Matters: A Better Libertarian Approach to Antidiscrimination Law.” Over the next few days, Sheldon Richman of the Foundation for Economic Education, Jason Kuznicki of Cato, and Jeff Miron of Harvard will write comments, and then we’ll have some back and forth. Should […]
Who’s the Kook?
Conor Friedersdorf wonders whether Rand Paul’s policy ideas any crazier than those embraced by more conventional politicians.
Some Strange Consequences of Public Accommodations Laws
All the discussion of Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act has obscured the fact that public accommodations laws, especially at the state and local level, have expanded way, way, beyond their original purpose of ensuring that previously excluded minorities are served in restaurants, hotels, and the like. This has happened more via aggressive […]
Public Opinion, Anti-Discrimination Law, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964
One of the most common rationales for anti-discrimination law is that it is needed to protect unpopular minority groups against exclusion from jobs and other opportunities. This conventional wisdom has a significant weakness: If the group in question really is unpopular with the majority, a democratic government is highly unlikely to enact antidiscrimination laws protecting […]
“Activist Government” and the Rights of Minorities
I want to analyze two positions that I’ve seen liberals take on the role of government in promoting civil rights and antidiscrimination norms. One position is as follows: We liberals believe in government activism to solve important social problems, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act was an important example of where this philosophy had extremely […]
So a Libertarian and a Liberal Walk into a Bar
Let’s say a liberal and a libertarian are having drinks at a bar, and discussing public policy. The liberal asks the libertarian what he thinks of anti-discrimination laws that apply to private parties. The libertarian says that he wants to put the issue of race to one side, because of its special history in the […]
The “Racist” Charge
One thing that’s been especially appalling about the Rand Paul controversy is how quick many liberal commentators (including people who frequent the comments section on this blog), have been to accuse not just Paul of racism, but also anyone who takes the libertarian position on antidiscrimination laws, i.e.., that the government itself may not discriminate, […]
Libertarianism, Federalism, and Racism
The firestorm kicked off by Rand Paul’s remarks has again rekindled the debate about the relationship between libertarianism, federalism, and efforts to combat racial discrimination. There is nothing unlibertarian about supporting federal efforts to combat racial discrimination by state governments. At the same time, however, libertarians (and others) should not assume that unconstrained federal power […]
Ideology and Economic Ignorance
Co-blogger Todd Zywicki links an interesting article by Zeljka Buturovic and Dan Klein showing that certain forms of economic ignorance are more common among self-described “progressives” and “liberals.” These findings are very valuable. But they are subject to several caveats. First, as Buturovic and Klein themselves point out, the Zogby survey they relied didn’t ask […]
Timothy McVeigh Was No Libertarian: The Fallacy of Conflating Two Very Different Types of “Anti-Government” Movements
Some commentators are associating the Oklahoma City bombings of 15 years ago and other far right violence with the rise of “anti-government” sentiment in opposition to the Obama health care bill and other recent expansions of federal spending and regulation. Former President Clinton’s recent New York Times op ed is a good example of this […]
Richard Thaler Responds to Critics of Libertarian Paternalism
Economist Richard Thaler, a leading advocate of libertarian paternalism, has briefly responded to some of the points I made in my most recent post on that subject. In that post, I argue that advocates of libertarian paternalism implicitly rely on the assumption that regulators and voters are rational, while consumers and other private sector actors […]
The Double Standard of Libertarian Paternalism
By Ilya Somin on April 15, 2010 12:35 am in Libertarian Paternalism, Libertarianism, Paternalism, Political Ignorance
Cato Unbound has an excellent symposium on “libertarian paternalism,” the theory that argues that government should intervene to protect people against cognitive biases that lead them to make decisions that ultimately reduce their ability to achieve their own objectives. Advocates of libertarian paternalism argue that their approach is different from and superior to traditional paternalism, […]
Paternalistic versus Therapeutic?
I finally had a chance to read the Cato Unbound symposium that Todd Z mentioned below. It’s well worth the read. I should add to my earlier post on this that I am not, as it happens, hostile to the pursuit of behavioral economics; far from it. But I do share some of the skepticism […]