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Assorted links
1. On Hayek's Road to serfdom, via Megan McArdle.
2. Boston Review symposium on Africa, very good.
3. Will Wilkinson continues his excellence.
4. The world's most impressive subways and yes Tokyo is #1.
5. Extended version of BSG interview with Ron Moore, interesting throughout.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 2, 2008 at 05:59 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
I believe Moscow's metro is better than the others.
And it doesn't seem that the article actually ranks them, so it's not true that "Tokyo is #1".
Posted by: Andy at Jun 2, 2008 6:24:03 PM
Never been on the Moscow subway, but Tokyo's subway rocks! Not fancy, no artwork, no stained-glass windows, but in combination with the commuter rail around Tokyo, the subway will get you from pretty much any point A to any point B with at most two changes of train (well, probably 98% of the time). There are maps available that show the whole rail and subway network of Tokyo, and the spider-webby nature of it is just awe-inspiring. When I moved to Tokyo in '93, I quickly realized a car is expensively superfluous in that city (and I worked for a car company at the time), so I walked, took the subway and the train, and saved gobs of money.
Posted by: Don K at Jun 2, 2008 8:19:26 PM
The relatively new Taipei metro I think is better than Tokyo. Singapore also has a nicer subway.
Posted by: Gary at Jun 2, 2008 8:57:39 PM
I found Jesse Larner's article amazingly erudite in parts and bafflingly ignorant in others. His insistence that Hayek would object to voluntary collectivism is based on nothing I can see in the text (I happen to be reading the road to serfdom at the moment). As David Boaz said: “The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can’t tolerate a libertarian community.”
Also complaining that disciples of Hayek confuse rabid communists with more moderate lefties and then calling Libertarians "Right Wing" is just poor form and makes him look a little ridiculous (as he is clearly aware of at least the Classical Liberal tradition.)
Posted by: Ben at Jun 2, 2008 9:04:48 PM
Hong Kong's metro easily wins:
"The Hong Kong MTR has the distinction of being one of the few subway systems in the world that actually turns a profit. It's privately owned and uses real estate development along its tracks to increase revenue … and ridership. It also introduced "Octopus cards" that allow people to not only pay their fares electronically, but buy stuff at convenience stores, supermarkets, restaurants and even parking meters. It's estimated that 95 percent of all adults in Hong Kong own an Octopus card and they generate more than 10 million transactions each day."
The octopus cards are extremely convenient, the trains are fast, on-time, and frequent. It's also much cleaner than many of the big city metros, especially New York, Paris, and Washington.
Posted by: Jake at Jun 2, 2008 10:07:19 PM
That Larner article is hilarious. The logic in it reads like a homily given by a priest. I agree with Ben, Larner should take a step back and see who the intolerant fascists are, those in favor of voluntary collectives, or those in favor of the coerced collectivization.
Posted by: Jay at Jun 2, 2008 10:12:03 PM
Let me sing the praises of the Moscow Metro as well- clean, well run, almost never any problems, trains never more than 5 minutes apart, usually 2 minutes or less, beautiful stations, cheap, etc. It's also huge. It's so much better than New York that it can't be compared. (I'm pretty sure that more escalators in new york don't work than do, but I've almost never seen one not work in Moscow and since there are usually three at a station there is a back-up if one doesn't work.)
Posted by: Matt at Jun 2, 2008 10:27:19 PM
(Although this is completely word of mouth info) One of my former development economics professors was a grad student under Hayek at Chicago. When I asked my prof. what he thought of a particular Sachs/Easterly debate that centered on the meaning of The Road to Serfdom, his response was interesting. He claims that following The Road to Serfdom’s release, Hayek was already uneasy over the seemingly formal public interpretations. The book was not written as piece of academic scholarship; Hayek intended to set benchmark for matters of social thought, not produce an analyzable theory. Many academics and journalists fall into the trap of trying to apply strict meaning to casually connected principles.
The same thing commonly occurs when authors justify self-serving economic policies by dropping a Wealth of Nations quote without any appropriate consideration for The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Posted by: Jamie C at Jun 2, 2008 10:42:27 PM
I found it very thought provoking and interesting, though I do think he got a lot wrong. The weirdest bit for me began when he said "although he acknowledges that the state can legitimately serve social needs, he contradictorily views collective benefits as incompatible with individual freedom"
Why would "serving social needs" imply that freedom isn't lost? There is nothing contradictory in those two claims. Or is it about the legitimacy?
In any case, I think he has sidestepped the question about voluntary versus coerced, and also blurred or minimized the arguments underlying Hayek's distinction regarding what is or isn't legitimate function of the state (which, admittedly, he didn't really go into in Road to Serfdom, but the author clearly read other works).
He discusses the evolutionary ideas but doesn't tie them back in. Perhaps if he did he might see why some functions of government are less dangerous than others.
Posted by: liberty at Jun 2, 2008 11:01:18 PM
It's odd that Wired sang the praises of the Taipei Metro last month, but this month their gallery of the 10 "most impressive" subways in the world omits it entirely.
Moscow's subway is very impressive, you never have to wait very long for a train. On the other hand, the stations are all very deep, with very long escalator rides, and transfering between subway lines involves some fairly long underground walks.
Posted by: at Jun 2, 2008 11:51:29 PM
It's been a little while since I read Road to Serfdom, and Larner has some interesting points, but I feel like I'd have to sit through more of his columns to actually see what he's arguing in favor of when he digs into Hayek (and/or his followers).
Yes, I think that voluntary collectives are completely acceptable to Hayek's point of view. I don't know where in the book he would have railed against that. Is Larner arguing therefore that Hayek's position against coerced collectivism (in any form) has less weight?
I guess I just fail to see how the contemporary Left (and actually, Right) is any less in favor of coercion than that of Hayek's era, since the issue du jour with which the Left is currently enamored is the idea of forcing me to buy health insurance from Uncle Sam's Health Insurance Company, or else.
Hayek was indeed an idealist, democracy is far messier than anyone's philosophy of it, and Hayek's having influence on the Right doesn't the movement a clone of his ideas in any way.
Larner's got some decent points about Road to Serfdom and the Right in general, but his apparent belief in a new, improved Left makes him look rather silly.
Posted by: d.cous. at Jun 3, 2008 12:06:58 PM
d.cous,
Well, one of those items in Road to Serfdom that many forget is there
is support for national health insurance. YOu may condsider it coercive,
but do not look to Hayek to support you, although he got more negative on
it in some of his later writings. So, you can claim that he "saw the light."
Regarding subways systems, I have not ridden on the Hong Kong one. Some
of the newer ones are neater than Tokyo's, including some older ones like
Stockholm's tunnelbahnen. However, none of these come close to carrying
the volume of people that Tokyo's does. It is amazing that it functions
at all, much less as well as it does.
Regarding the comparison with Moscow's, the latter has majestic art works
in some of the stations, but it has far too few stops. Hence it is not so
good for getting to exactly where you want to go. The only other one that
I know well that is so densely packed with stops is the Paris one, but it
is not remotely comparable with the Tokyo one.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 3, 2008 2:06:46 PM
Larner seems to have built a well-detailed strawman. Strawmen seem to mature more quickly when raised by ideologues.
I wonder if there's a lefty bias to the general phenomenon of strawman arguments. It was Marx who saw the world as polar forces engaged in struggle. There is little acknowledgment that one might NOT be a supporter of the popular opposite to a view which one attacks.
To oppose government is not necessarily to support anarchy. To mistrust collectivism is not necessarily putting total faith in individualism. Opposing coercion is not necessarily licensing any and every voluntary action.
It is also commonly forgotten that lefty/righty or liberal/conservative are linguistic abstractions. Useful abstractions, but lacking detail. It is a strength of Hayek's concept of emergent order that we sort out the particulars and details as relevant to our lives, even as academics lump us into broad groupings.
As a Dynamistic Coherentist, I'm almost a universal opposite. I don't fully agree with nobody.
Posted by: foxmarks at Jun 3, 2008 10:17:48 PM
There must be two Moscows. The one I live in the Metro is filthy, it is dark because only half the lights are on, its overcrowded with poor people that never wash and has a homeless person that stinks of piss in every other carriage. Getting in and out is always a pain because of the six ticket offices only one is open and of the six escalators only one is working. The stations are too far apart. It's unbearably hot in the summer. The 'palatial' stations were built by peasants to impress peasants, only a couple of them are actually beautiful. Everyone I know pays whatever rent they have to live within walking distance of the office so they never have to go in it.
Posted by: jb at Jun 4, 2008 4:13:02 AM
Leftists have gone from wanting a planned economy to wanting a regulated economy. As far as Road goes, there is no difference.
Posted by: Russell Nelson at Jun 4, 2008 3:14:35 PM
Hello all,
Please note that I did NOT write that Hayek condemned voluntary collectivism. I wrote that he NEVER CONSIDERS IT - in Road, anyway.
Foxmarks, I agree with everything you wrote except, of course, that I was setting up strawmen. As a thinking person, I reserve the write to hold political positions from all across the spectrum; as, I think, every thinking person does. The idea that one must be consistently "right" or "left" in all of one's positions has always seemed odd to me, and tribal rather than political.
Regards,
Jesse Larner
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Posted by: mike at May 13, 2009 11:27:02 PM
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