- (De)centralized law-making and climate change Josephine van Zeben, SSRN
- A defense of maths in economics Chris Dillow, Stumbling & Mumbling
- The end of the world John Guzlowski, North American Review
- Small business in the urban riots of the 1960s (pdf) Jonathan Bean, TIR
Author: Brandon Christensen
Nightcap
- Taiwan as the world’s newest flashpoint Blackwill & Zelikow, War on the Rocks
- Witch hunts, economics, and the Holy Roman Empire Johannes Dillinger, Aeon
- On deserts Tariq al Haydar, Threepenny Review
- System, empire, and state in Chinese IR (pdf) Yongjin Zhang, Review of Int’l Studies
Nightcap
- What did John Calvin think about economics? Steven Wedgeworth, Calvinist International
- The ethnocultural borderlands of early Maoist China Benno Weiner, Age of Revolutions
- Burning books Akram Aylisli (interview), Los Angeles Review of Books
- Ivy League English departments and low culture Mark Bauerlein, Modern Age
- “But Maliki was supported both by Iran and by the United States.” John Jenkins, New Statesman
Nightcap
- Cancel Neera Tanden Irfan Khawaja, Policy of Truth
- Magical thinking and economic growth Branko Milanovic, globalinequality
- The Bird Juan Cárdenas, Southwest Review
- On cosmopolitan humility and the arrogance of states (pdf) Luis Cabrera, ISPP
Nightcap
- A liberal case for seapower? Caverley & Mitchell, WOTR
- Catastrophism and cycles Chris Shaw, Libertarian Ideal
- The Left’s culture war rebranding Shant Mesrobian, AA
- The voice of the Anglo-Saxons NEO, nebraskaenergyobserver
Nightcap
- Noise, interests, and democracy Chris Dillow, S&M
- Meritocracy and its discontents Wilfred McClay, Hedgehog Review
- Something must be done Lee Jones, Disorder of Things
- Nuclear power and the environmentalists Scott Sumner, EconLog
Nightcap
- In defense of Ted Cruz Thomas Knapp, TGC
- The political economy of exit clauses and secession (pdf) Huysmans & Crombez, CPE
- A republic of equals and unequals (pdf) John Meadowcraft, Public Choice
- An empire of stupidity Nina Herzog, LARB
Nightcap
- Sweet Home Hialeah César Baldelomar, Commonweal
- The totalitarianism of origins Tal Fortgang, Law & Liberty
- Moralism, nationalism, and identity politics Andrew J Cohen, RCL
- A practical approach to legal-pluralist anarchism Jason Morgan, JLS
Nightcap
- The highway to serfdom (pdf) Gus DiZerega, Cosmos + Taxis
- Russia’s greatest river Farah Abdessamad, ARB
- A marketplace and a temple (h/t Michalis) Michael Kulikowski, LRB
- “politics are now entirely a consumer-branding exercise” Antonio Garcia-Martinez, TPR
Nightcap
- Aliens Robin Hanson, Overcoming Bias
- War, Peace, and the State (pdf) Murray Rothbard, The Standard
- The new ruling class (h/t Michalis) Helen Andrews, Hedgehog Review
- Free speech and socialist dictatorships Sharansky & Troy, Tablet
Nightcap
- Extending human habitability to outer space Claire Webb, Noema
- A widow on imagination Victoria Ritvo, Bat City Review
- Assigning blame for the blackouts in Texas (h/t Mark from Placerville) Judith Curry, Climate Etc.
- The failure of Welsh devolution Rhianwen Daniel, spiked!
Nightcap
- That brutal uncivilizer of nations (pdf) Jens Bartelson, CAL
- “[…] the Taliban, who have long made international recognition and legitimacy a priority.“
- The end of the interstate system (pdf) Giovanni Arrighi, JW-SR
- Habsburgs, Ottomans, and British anti-slavers (pdf) Allison Frank, AHR
Nightcap
- Driving alone, listening to talk radio Addison del Mastro, New Urbs
- My history of manual labor Tyler Cowen, MR
- My first year in the Covid lockdown Maria Farrell, Crooked Timber
- Biden finally called up Netanyahu Michael Koplow, Ottomans & Zionists
- The Strastnoy of Ayn Rand Roderick T. Long, Policy of Truth
- Brand India Ravinder Kaur, Aeon
Nightcap
- Depicting extraterritoriality Mathew Hart (interview), JHIBlog
- America’s plot for world domination Robert Merry, TAC
- Beyond the !Kung (but no Wilmsen?) Manvir Singh, Aeon
- In high praise of Parler Eugene Volokh, Volokh Conspiracy
Exit, federation, and scale (from the comments)
I think you make an interesting point, but allow me a bit of push back. The world government would set the rules of how federated entities would interact. This would be like standards and protocols. You are correct that a set of shared standards can allow for enhanced competition, of the good variety (what I call constructive competition). This would be a good thing.
However the same shared standards would lock in the world to one set of protocols, thus reducing the discovery via variation and selection of the shared institutions themselves.
Thus we would see more short range constructive competition between states, and less long term exploration of new and potentially better institutional standards.
This is from Rojelio. He is pushing back against my argument in favor of world government from a libertarian point of view. He’s right, of course. There’s two points I need to do a better job of clarifying when I advocate for world government from a libertarian point of view:
- I don’t think federating the entire world is a good idea. I think the piecemeal federation of political units is what libertarians ought to aim for. (I think the US interstate order is the best avenue for achieving this aim.) A healthy “world federation” would govern (say) 85% of the world’s population. This brings me to my second point I need to clarify.
- The importance of exit needs to be addressed and institutionalized in a proper federal order. This is difficult to do, but not impossible. My argument is to make exit difficult, but not too difficult. The difficulty of exit should be somewhere on the scale between a constitutional amendment (too difficult) in the US order and Brexit (too easy) in the Westphalian order.
The bottom line is that a more libertarian world will likely be composed of a large federal polity that protects the freedoms of the vast majority of its citizens better than most nation-states do today. The other 15% of the world would live under despotism (which will center around “cultural cores”), or under sparsely-populated democratic republics (i.e Australia), or within free-riding microstates that otherwise rely on the protection of the large federal unit.
If, say, England, Tamaulipas, and Duyên hải Nam Trung Bộ were to federate with the United States tomorrow, these polities would not be agitating for exit after 10 years of experimentation in self-governance. If, say, Texas or Vermont wanted to exit after 10 years of federation with those 3 polities, they would have to go through a process (via all of the legislative branches involved) to do so. A simple majority vote would be disastrous. It is unlikely, then, that Texas or Vermont would leave such a federation. Pure freedom would be unrealized, but billions of people would be much freer.