The Cato Unbound symposium on my book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter is wrapping up up today. I am grateful to political theorist Jeffrey Friedman, Yale Law School Professor Heather Gerken, and Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics for their thoughtful critiques of the book, and to Jason Kuznicki of Cato Unbound for […]
Archive | Public Choice
My Response to Jeffrey Friedman’s Critique of Democracy and Political Ignorance
By Ilya Somin on October 22, 2013 7:02 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Polls, Public Choice, Public Opinion
Cato Unbound has now posted my response to political theorist Jeffrey Friedman’s insightful criticism of my book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter. Here is an excerpt: In his critique of my book, Jeffrey Friedman continues his longstanding efforts to show that most political ignorance is inadvertent rather than rational. In his […]
Baptists, Bootleggers, and Marijuana Prohibition
Public choice economist Bruce Yandle famously developed the concept of a “baptist-bootlegger coalition” to describe situations in which regulation is supported by a strange bedfellow alliance of groups who favor it for narrowly self-interested reasons and those who support it out of moral or ideological considerations. The paradigmatic example was the way in which Baptists […]
Sports Stadium Corporate Welfare Continues in Detroit
By Ilya Somin on July 26, 2013 3:38 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Choice, Sports and Games
Despite the having filed for bankruptcy, Detroit is going ahead with plans to spend over $400 million in public funds on a new hockey arena for the Detroit Red Wings [HT: Josh Blackman]: Detroit’s financial crisis hasn’t derailed the city’s plans to spend more than $400 million in Michigan taxpayer funds on a new hockey […]
Penalties for Underperforming Politicians
By Ilya Somin on May 29, 2013 11:15 am in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Politics, Public Choice
Law professor Glenn Reynolds (AKA Instapundit) has an interesting column in USA Today advocating that we increase penalties for politicians who do a poor job in office: As scandals explode across Washington… one thing that I’ve noticed is that the people involved don’t seem to suffer much…. Government officials are happy making and executing plans […]
James Buchanan, RIP
Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan passed away today. Buchanan was one of the founders of public choice economics, which seeks to apply economic analysis to politics. Closely related was his important work applying economic analysis to constitutions, most notably in his classic work The Calculus of Consent, coauthored with Gordon Tullock. The burgeoning field of […]
Corporate Tax Breaks in Fiscal Cliff Deal
“Congress, apparently, couldn’t end the year without showering billions on a handful of interest groups, some of which you probably didn’t even know existed,” the Washington Post editorializes. the final bill incorporated a Senate measure that extended various corporate tax breaks and a farm bill extension. More from Brad Plumer and Matt Stoller have more […]
The Other Beneficiaries of ObamaCare
Whether or not you believe the PPACA has been or will be good for the American people, it has certainly been good for the lobbyists and legislative staffers who wrote it, as Tim Carney explains. Glenn Greenwald comments further: This is precisely the behavior which, quite rationally, makes the citizenry so jaded about Washington. It’s […]
Massachusetts Highway Safety Director With Terrible Driving Record Resigns
Sheila Burgess, the Massachusetts Highway Safety Division Director with a horrible driving record and no qualifications for the job, has resigned. I blogged about Burgess here. The resignation was almost certainly caused by recent revelations about her driving record and the fact that she got the job through political connections without having any real qualifications […]
Director of Massachusetts Highway Safety Division Has Extensive Record of Car Accidents
It sounds like something from a bad libertarian parody of government. But it turns out that the Director of the Massachusetts state highway safety agency has a long record of traffic accidents and moving violations. She apparently got the job through political connections, even though she had no relevant expert qualifications for the job. But […]
When Is an Earmark not an Earmark?
When it’s pushed by the Republican leadership, is located in a politically important state, and is carefully written to avoid the official definition of an “earmark.” (HT: Instapundit)
A Too Big to Fail Parking Lot at Yankee Stadium?
Manhattan Institute scholar Nicole Gelinas has an interesting column about a massive financially dubious parking lot at Yankee Stadium, which Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. claims requires a government bailout to prevent a local financial crisis: If the Zuccotti kids want to protest Wall Street bailouts, they should go occupy the Yankees’ luxury parking […]
More Evidence of the Repressive Nature of the New Egyptian Government
In a recent post, I cited evidence suggesting that the new Egyptian government is degenerating into a military dictatorship at least as bad as the Mubarak regime that was overthrown earlier this year. Jeff Jacoby compiles some additional relevant points: [T]he “spirit of Tahrir Square’’ has ushered in neither liberal democracy nor a rebirth of […]
Egypt Sliding into Military Dictatorship
By Ilya Somin on October 11, 2011 5:06 pm in Democracy, Political Ignorance, Public Choice, Public Opinion
When the revolution that eventually overthrew Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak began, I warned that the end result could easily be a government as bad or worse than Mubarak’s was. In a revolutionary situation, liberal democratic forces often get outmaneuvered by more ruthless and better-organized opponents – even if majority public opinion would prefer a liberal […]
The Debt Deal and Divided Government
The debt deal passed today does not go as far in cutting spending as I would like. But it does nonetheless enact substantial cuts without any tax increases, with a significant likelihood of more cuts in the future. If the bipartisan commission created by the new legislation fails to come up with a spending cut […]