How Sociologists Made Themselves Irrelevant – Part 2
07 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, liberalism Tags: sociology
I would like to suggest two “smell tests” for all sociologists, but especially those engaged with the public sphere, when assessing their work.
The first is the Garfinkel rule: Never treat your subjects as cultural dopes.
If you find yourself struggling to explain away your subjects’ own reasoned and widely held account of what they consider important in explaining their condition, you are up to something intellectually fishy.
The second is this: If you end up with findings that have policy implications that you would never dream of advocating for yourself or your loved ones, be wary of them.
A case in point: If you find that neighborhoods have no effects, you should be prepared to do the rational thing and go live in an inner-city neighborhood with its much cheaper real estate, or at least advise your struggling son or daughter searching for an apartment to save by renting there. If the thought offends you, then something stinks.
Horoscopes, horoscopes and horoscopes
07 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in liberalism Tags: horoscopes, Quacks
Anti-prohibition demonstrators were in-your-face about what they wanted
07 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economics of regulation, law and economics, liberalism Tags: drug decriminalisation, expressive voting, marijuana decriminalisation, prohibition
Afghanistan, 1960
07 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in liberalism, war and peace Tags: Afghanistan, The Age of Enlightenment
The Guardian review of “Devils’ Alliance” – a response
06 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in liberalism Tags: Leftover Left, Nazi-Soviet Pact, World War II
The uncomfortable fact for Professor Evans and others on the left is that in those opening two years of World War Two, the Soviet Union was much more practiced than Germany in the sifting, persecution and deportation of subject populations.
We forget perhaps, but at this point the Holocaust had not yet begun.
Hitler may have been an eager student of such matters, but Stalin was very definitely the master.
If there is an “imbalance” in the book therefore, it reflects a historical imbalance, and one with which many on the left are uncomfortable.
via historian at large: The Guardian review of my “Devils’ Alliance” – a response.
How Sociologists Made Themselves Irrelevant – Part 1
06 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, liberalism
Sociologists have shied from such cultural work, fearful of critiques similar to those that greeted 1960s culture-of-poverty scholarship by Oscar Lewis, the policy studies of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and the Parsonian overdetermining emphasis on values.
In focusing on ways that impoverished communities perpetuated poverty, such scholarship was criticized for blaming the victim, and for several decades, sociologists have taken pains to distance themselves not only from that approach but from studies of the cultural dimensions of poverty, particularly black poverty.
The great irony in that overreaction is that throughout that 40-year period of self-imposed censorship within the discipline, the vast majority of blacks, and especially black youth and those working on the front lines of poverty mitigation, have been firmly convinced that culture does matter—a lot.
Black youth in particular have insisted that their habits, attitudes, beliefs, and values are what mainly explain their plight, even after fully taking account of racism and their disadvantaged neighborhood conditions.
Don’t support laws you are not willing to kill to enforce – The Washington Post
06 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in liberalism Tags: Criminal Law, drug decriminalisation, marijuana decriminalisation, meddlesome preferences
10 Street Drugs That Used To Be Legal
05 Dec 2014 1 Comment
in applied welfare economics, economics of regulation, liberalism, libertarianism, political change, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: drug decriminalisation, marijuana decriminalisation
Environmental Law 101 | Richard Epstein
05 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, law and economics, liberalism, property rights, Richard Epstein Tags: environmental law, law of nuisance, Richard Epstein, tort law
Back in 1999, Richard Epstein wrote a great summary of what should be environmental law from an old common law perspective, from a classical liberal perspective, and a pragmatic economic libertarian perspective:
Stated bluntly, nothing in the theory of property rights says that my property is sacred while everybody else’s property is profane. That single constraint of parity among owners should lead every owner to think hard…
This recognition of the noxious uses of private property is the source of the common law of nuisance.
That law dates from medieval times, certainly by 1215, at the time of the Magna Carta. It is no new socialist or environmentalist creation for the twentieth century.
When the common law of nuisance restricts the noxious use of property, it benefits not only immediate neighbours but the larger community. If I enjoin pollution created by my neighbour, others will share in the reduction of pollution.
Simply by using private actions, we have built a system for environmental protection that goes a long way toward stopping the worst forms of pollution.
Epstein does not stop there. He recognises as he should that the common law of nuisance is not enough to stop all problems of pollution:
Yet before we leap for joy, we must recognize that private actions are not universally effective in curbing nuisances.
Sometimes pollution is widely diffused—waste can come from many tailpipes, not just one—so that no one can tell exactly whose pollution is causing what damage to which individuals.
Under those circumstances, private enforcement of nuisance law can no longer control pollution…
We do not change the substantive standards of right and wrong, but we do use state regulation to fill in the gaps in private enforcement.
Epstein then makes a plea for private covenants to deal with a great deal of the social frictions that arise in the suburbs:
But often when individuals worry about their local environments, they’re not particularly happy to treat the nuisance law, however enforced, as the upper bound of their personal protection.
They want (especially as their wealth increases) more by way of aesthetics and open spaces. Fortunately, our legal system has a way to accommodate these newer demands.
One of our most important land-use control devices is the system of covenants by which all the holders of neighbouring lands agree among themselves and for their successors in title
Covenants might work in Greenfields developments in modern cities. But they really doesn’t work in managing land use conflicts in the inner city where regulation is been used to substitute the covenants for many decades.
Epstein’s ideal for modern environmental law is:
In sum, the system of public and private enforcement of nuisances and public and private purchases of environmentally sensitive sites is the way that sound environmental policy should proceed.
Apparently, this is how the Mont Pelerin Society rules the roost!?
05 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in liberalism, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: conspiracy theories, Leftover Left, Mont Pelerin Society, neoliberalism, nutters on the bus, Quacks, vast right-wing conspiracy
Solid lines refer to funding and dashed lines refer to mostly ideological connections
HT: old-rothschild-and-rockefeller-hands-controlled-the-libertarian-communist-dialectic/
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