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Assorted links
2. Health and safety fears: stepladders banned from Oxford's Bodleian library. Book still are kept on very high shelves, however.
4. Is setting goals counterproductive?
5. Beauty, education, and caste trade-offs in Indian marriage markets.
6. Critique of Paul Collier on causation; and here is Easterly on causation and foreign aid.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 10, 2009 at 06:35 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
Reason and Rationality is not that new. There is a new one on Tocqueville that I really hope to read soon:
http://www.amazon.com/Alexis-Tocqueville-First-Social-Scientist/dp/052174007X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241995346&sr=8-5
Posted by: NPTO at May 10, 2009 6:43:18 PM
Re. goals: it's the difference between setting a goal as part of achieving a larger purpose and letting the goal become that purpose. In GM's case, the purpose was making money and long-run viability, and 29% share was to aid that purpose; when the purpose became achieving its 29%, GM lost sight of its real purpose and failed. This sort of switch also happens all the time in morality: for instance, we make rights in order to serve the purpose of making people better-off, but sometimes people take rights as the ultimate moral arbiter instead of the well-being of humans. (This is a subtle dig at people who think property rights are more important than tax-supported welfare. ;)
One might say this has happened with the American constitution, actually. The Constitution was created to serve the purpose of creating a working legal framework for the country, but now Constitutionality is considered a goal in and of itself, rather than subordinate to the betterment of the country as it should be.
Posted by: Neal at May 10, 2009 9:11:04 PM
"The Constitution was created to serve the purpose of creating a working legal framework for the country, but now Constitutionality is considered a goal in and of itself, rather than subordinate to the betterment of the country as it should be."
Right. Which is why the government should be able to warrantlessly wiretap suspected terrorists, and no one should complain about it.
Posted by: PM at May 10, 2009 9:31:10 PM
"subordinate to the betterment of the country as it should be."
and to whom do we delegate powers to do the right thing when the Constitution says they can't?
Like if some free speech were bringing the country down, or it would be really awesome to pass an ex post facto law, how do we go about that? For the betterment of the country, obv.
Posted by: Vernunft at May 10, 2009 9:38:10 PM
One might say this has happened with the American constitution, actually. The Constitution was created to serve the purpose of creating a working legal framework for the country, but now Constitutionality is considered a goal in and of itself, rather than subordinate to the betterment of the country as it should be.
Right on, this is what I thought when I read The Trial. Sure Josef K. may have gotten the short end of the stick, but maybe everyone else was better off!
Posted by: Curt Fischer at May 10, 2009 10:57:49 PM
Goals are only counter productive if you have stupid goals.
Posted by: Sameer Parekh at May 10, 2009 11:20:12 PM
Some people are spectacularly missing the point. As illustrative examples: If you oppose things like wiretapping or ex post facto laws, you should be able to come up with perfectly good reasons why they're bad aside from "unconstitutional!" And if you know someone who wants to make the US a theocracy, he needs a better justification than "the Constitution is based on Christian principles!"
Posted by: Neal at May 10, 2009 11:35:56 PM
Neal:
The congress and presidents have been wiping their asses with the Constitution for more than a century. Very few people actually care about the Constitution anymore. Most politicians are just concerned with enriching themselves and their friends with the limitless power the people have ceded to tht federal government.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
Posted by: Jay at May 11, 2009 4:19:26 AM
Constitutional, limited government IS the goal. Due process IS the goal. Those founding cats were pretty clever--it's not impossible to change The Constitution, but it's supposed to be harder than hiring enough lawyers to reinterpret, issue signing statements, or outright ignoring it when you don't feel like putting forth effort because you have convinced yourself that your idea makes everyone better off.
Property rights combined with limited government do make people better off than tax-funded welfare. Government making people better off is not the goal BECAUSE it is the market that does it.
Posted by: Andrew at May 11, 2009 4:53:39 AM
As illustrative examples: If you oppose things like [...] ex post facto laws, you should be able to come up with perfectly good reasons why they're bad aside from "unconstitutional!"
Your point seems to be in response to a straw man. For whom, exactly, are ex-post facto laws bad because they're unconstitutional?
Posted by: Curt Fischer at May 11, 2009 8:08:21 AM
Expect to see the link between tallness and success to increase, at least in the UK.
Posted by: Jens Fiederer at May 15, 2009 4:51:23 PM
