- Annexation as a policy issue is here to stay Michael Koplow, Ottomans & Zionists
- Ashoka’s moral empire Sonam Kachru, Aeon
- Against damnation (is hell Christian?) Michael Robbins, Bookforum
- Lockdown among Stamford Hill’s Haredi community Toby Lichtig, TLS
Nightcap
- A leftist take on Espinoza v. Montana Mark Stern, Slate
- A conservative take on Espinoza v. Montana Ed Whelan, NR
- Tacitus on political authoritarianism Iskander Rehman,WOTR
- Tacitus on barbarian liberty Barry Stocker, NOL
A paradox
You know those little floaters on the surface of your eyes? They drift into view, catch your attention, then when you try to focus directly on one it disappears from view. They’re only really there if you don’t look straight at them.
Goodhart’s Law tells us that “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” The same basic logic applies to two of my favorite things: the Internet and college.
The Internet is still a magical thing, but we’ve killed some of the magic by trying to take the Internet seriously. The Internet ceases to provide output worth taking seriously when people actually take the Internet seriously. When you only keep it in your periphery, it’s actually worth taking seriously
Ditto for college. The basic problem with the current system is that we’re all taking it too seriously. That leads to all sorts of specific bad behavior. But it all comes from this root problem. College is only worth taking seriously if we don’t. When college is back in the ivory tower, separated from the “real” world, it’s a place where people can be creative and make non-obvious connections. But once we recognize “hey, that’s a pretty neat thing, let’s make it a one-size-fits-all solution to all of our problems” we kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
My advice for getting the most out of the Internet: don’t take it too seriously. It was only ever meant to be a place for weirdos to do weird stuff.
My advice for getting the most out of college: don’t take it too seriously. It was only ever meant to be a place for weirdos to do the sort of stuff that the rest of the world doesn’t have time for.
Nightcap
- The legacy of Wounded Knee Christopher Flannery, Claremont Review of Books
- Breaking the system Rachel Lu, Law & Liberty
- The man who reinvented India Kapil Komireddi, the Critic
- Woodrow Wilson’s ghost Ross Douthat, New York Times
Nightcap
- Vienna: city of paradox Alexander Carpenter, Aeon
- The Vienna of Ludwig von Mises Schulak & Unterköfler, Mises Daily
- Empire of Abstraction: British anthropology Nile Davies, JHIblog
- Wealth and the life cycle Eric Crampton, Offsetting Behaviour
Nightcap
- Why are the police in charge of road safety? Alex Tabarrok, MR
- Is decentralization overrated? Jason Sorens, Pileus
- Can corruption be good for growth? Brank Milanovic, globalinequality
- What is the relationship between urban change and the ship of Theseus? Nick Nielsen, Grand Strategy Annex
PS: I’m back from vacation. Hope y’all enjoyed yourselves while I was gone.
From the comments: All of the Bad Things that democratic governments do
My general point has to do with this anti-democratic argument:
[…] where are the masses to stand up against war, bank bailouts, taxation, police aggression etc?
These are all Bad Things that democratic governments do, but they are also Bad Things that all governments do. And, in turn, these Bad Things are much less prevalent in democratic societies than they are in non-democratic societies.
In fact, it is only in democratic societies that you can complain about these Bad Things. It is only in democratic societies that you can do something about these Bad Things (even if it’s just blog-ranting).
This simple observation leads me to conclude that anti-democratic libertarians have it back asswards when it comes to democracy. Democracy is a byproduct of liberty. Maybe anarchy would lead to even less “war, bank bailouts, taxation, police aggression etc,” but as of now it is in democracies that these Bad Things have been made less prevalent.
Anti-democratic libertarians aren’t thinking on the margin when it comes to democracy. (Hence the dogmatism you find in certain anarcho-capitalist circles.)
This is from yours truly, in another dialogue with Chhay Lin on democracies, anarchies, and meritocracies. Read it from the top!
Nightcap
- Back in Brazil: bureaucracy Bruno Gonçalves Rosi, NOL
- Turkey at the start of one-man rule Barry Stocker, NOL
- Government isn’t the only problem Rick Weber, NOL
- Urging Cambodians to critique their culture, Chhay Lin Lim, NOL
From the comments: Microstates and military protection
I took a look at the table Easterly & Kraay provided in the paper that you cited (here is an ungated pdf; it’s on pg 22) and all of the rich small states save for The Bahamas (which is 50 miles away from Florida) enjoy military protection from larger polities.
Bahrain and Qatar have the US Navy looking after them, Iceland is in NATO, Bermuda is a Crown Colony, and Luxembourg is nestled comfortably in between France and Germany (and people say the EU is worthless!). If you throw Macau and Hong Kong into the mix you’re looking at a well-protected group of microstates.
It’d be very interesting to see how empirically robust this observation is, but I suspect it won’t be done because most people who focus on microstates tend to have a soft spot for them. To acknowledge the deep intertwinement that successful microstates have with larger polities is to acknowledge the prominence that incoherence and messiness enjoy when it comes to existence of states and the issue of sovereignty.
This is from yours truly, in a dialogue with Chhay Lin on microstates and economic development. Read the whole thing from the top!
Nightcap
- The importance of understanding causal pathways (Affirmative Action) Michelangelo Landgrave, NOL
- Legal silences Ethan Blevins, NOL
- Party politics and foreign policy in Brazil’s early history Bruno Gonçalves Rosi, NOL
- Immigration and states’ rights Rick Weber, NOL
Nightcap
- Expanding the Liberty Canon: John Fortescue on the Laws and Government of England Barry Stocker, NOL
- Rawls, Antigone and the tragic irony of norms Aris Trantidis, NOL
- Expanding the Liberty Canon: Marsilius of Padua on the Defence of civic Peace Barry Stocker, NOL
- John Rawls had good reason to be a reticent socialist and political liberal Nick Cowen, NOL
Nightcap
- Defending Political Liberty in an Administered World Barry Stocker, NOL
- The legacy of autocratic rule in China Mark Koyama, NOL
- Role of a Citizen in Hegemonic Authoritarianism Shree Agnihotri, NOL
- From the Comments: Ottoman autocracy, Turkish liberty Barry Stocker, NOL
Hazony’s nation-state versus Christensen’s federation
Yoram Hazony’s 2018 book praising the nation-state has garnered so much attention that I thought it wasn’t worth reading. Arnold Kling changed my mind. I’ve been reading through it, and I don’t think there’s much in the book that I can originally criticize.
The one thing I’ll say that others have not is that Hazony’s book is not the best defense of the status quo and the Westphalian state system out there. It’s certainly the most popular, but definitely not the best. The best defense of the status quo still goes to fellow Notewriter Edwin’s 2011 article in the Independent Review: “Hayekian Spontaneous Order and the International Balance of Power.”
Hazony’s book is a defense of Israel more than it is a defense of the abstract nation-state. Hazony’s best argument (“Israel”) has already been identified numerous times elsewhere. It goes like this: the Holocaust happened because the Jews in mid-20th century Europe had nowhere to go in a world defined by nationalism. Two competing arguments arose from this realization. The Israelis took one route (“nation-state”), and the Europeans took another (“confederation”). Many Jews believe that the Israelis are correct and the Europeans are wrong.
My logic follows from this fact as thus: the EU has plenty of problems but nothing on the scale of the Gaza Strip or the constant threat of annihilation by hostile neighbors (and rival nation-states).
The European Union and Israel are thus case studies for two different arguments, much like North and South Korea or East and West Germany. The EU has been bad, so bad in fact that the British have voted to leave, but not so bad that there has been any genocide or mass violence or, indeed, interstate wars within its jurisdiction. Israel has been good, so good in fact that it now has one of the highest standards of living in the world, but not so good that it avoided creating something as awful as the Gaza Strip or making enemies out of every single one of its neighbors.
To me this is a no-brainer. The Europeans were correct and the Israelis are wrong. To me, Israelis (Jewish and Arab) would be much better off living under the jurisdiction of the United States or even the European Union rather than Israel’s. They’d all be safer, too.
Notes On Liberty 