Cory Massimino chats with Jason Lee Byas about public choice theory, reparations (for slavery and other injustices), and war. Jason Lee Byas is a fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society and a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Michigan. His academic work focuses on punishment (and its alternatives), rights theory, and…

Okumak üzere olduğunuz makale, Alex Aragona tarafından kaleme alınmış. 26 Kasım 2021 tarihinde “Political Realism vs Apoliticism” başlığı altında yayınlanmıştır. Siyasi realizm ve apolitiklik kavramları genellikle birlikte anılır, ancak birincisinin hak ettiği ilgi çoğunlukla ikincisine yöneltilir. Genel olarak siyasi realistler, politikacılara, hükümetlere, kurumlara, kanunlar yazarken toplumları ve ekonomileri düzenleyen politik faktörlere karşı pratik bir tutum sergilerler….

The concepts of political realism and apoliticism are often conflated, but merit owed to the former is often incorrectly assigned to the latter. Generally, political realists maintain a practical attitude toward the politicians, governments, institutions and other political factors that create laws, and regulate societies and economies. Instead of keeping a faith in people in…

Many intellectuals[1] lament the supposed apathy, stupidity, or ignorance of the average person. Some start from a charitable idea: e.g., people don’t care about issues of greater political implication for rational (economic) reasons. However, an end point for many is to conclude that it’s better if the idiots around them don’t engage in political activities…

Di Kevin Carson. Originale pubblicato il primo agosto 2017 con il titolo “Public-Private Partnership”: Public Cost, Private Profit. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. Anche se il programma infrastrutturale pare accantonato, tanto che neanche viene citato più, finora Trump ne ha parlato in termini di “collaborazione pubblico-privato”. Da qui, come c’era da aspettarsi, la gioia dei soliti…

Di Logan Marie Glitterbomb. Originale pubblicato il 31 luglio 2017 con il titolo Teaching Freedom. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. Persone di quasi tutti gli orientamenti politici potrebbero concordare sul fatto che l’attuale sistema scolastico americano non è l’ideale. La sinistra teme perlopiù che la scuola pubblica sia sotto attacco da parte delle aziende private e…

Although Trump’s infrastructure agenda seems to be pretty much on the back burner — to the extent that it exists as as anything but a talking point — his public statements on it so far have mostly been about “public-private partnerships.” Hence, as you might expect, all the usual right-libertarian suspects are making happy noises…

Nearly everyone from across the political spectrum can agree that our current public education system in america is not ideal. Those on the statist left tend to fear that public education is under attack by private corporations and is completely underfunded. More progressive leftists go so far as to not only advocate for more funding…

The dominant belief in our society is that prisons are a necessary tool to fight crime. Prisons are often thought to counter crime in at least three ways: 1. Deterrence: The expectation of a prison sentence increases the perceived cost of committing a crime, thus creating incentives not to commit crimes. 2. Incapacitation: By coercively…

In my recent op-ed, P. Diddy as the Rational Voter, I made a mistake. I haven’t read Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter. I have seen a presentation by Caplan on the book, read numerous blog posts by him and have heard his argument restated by other libertarians. In my op-ed, I was going on…

In a comment on last week’s post on The Labor Politics of Prisons, Steve Robinson said that my discussion of guards unions was “interesting given past posts about the for-profit prison industry.” He noted that while prison guard unions push for increased incarceration, they also are generally harmed by prison privatization, as private prison contractors have incentives to…

Dylan Matthews recently published an article at Vox titled Prisons are terrible, and there’s finally a way to get rid of them. Matthews’ article starts out strong, beginning with an explanation of the horrific costs of prisons. He describes the appalling rates of physical and sexual assault, the data on systemic racism, and the costs…

America’s criminal code is massive, criminalizing a litany of seemingly harmless and ethical actions. In an excellent 2013 article in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Paul Larkin explores this overcriminalization through the lens of public choice theory. Public choice theory uses the assumptions and methods of economics to study the behavior of…

These days, some policy makers are discussing rolling back America’s system of mass incarceration. Figures from Eric Holder to Rand Paul are proposing eliminating many mandatory minimum sentences. States like Colorado are legalizing marijuana. But while some policy makers talk about shrinking the prison state, prison expansion continues to be pushed and passed by legislators….