Media Coordinator Update, 01/27/12   Thomas L. Knapp at Center for a Stateless Society (Friday, January 27)

Dear C4SS Supporters,

This week I’ve submitted 9,083 Center op-eds to 2,763 publications on seven continents, and have so far discovered seven “pickups” of our content:

• My own “This Depressingly Vitriolic Presidential Campaign” appeared in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on January 24, and in the Carroll County, Maryland Standard on January 26.
• Kevin Carson’s “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery … and Fighting Back is ‘Aggression’” appeared in Islam Daily on January 16 (a pickup I didn’t find in Google until this week) and in the Dhaka, Bangladesh New Age on January 25.
• Kevin’s “The Corporate State: A House Divided Against Itself” ran in the Baltic Review on January 25 and in Florida’s Hernando Today … today!
• The Baltic Review published Darian Worden’s “Egypt: A Year of Revolution” on January 26.

I’ve been remiss in tracking blogosphere action this week, so no pseudo-random link love. I’ll try to get back to that next week.

Have a great weekend!

Yours in liberty,

January 27.   at Ran Prieur (Friday, January 27)

January 27. The latest Archdruid post, The Myth of the Machine, makes an important point. Why do Americans get so angry at the thought of losing their cars, television, and other toys? Because there are two kinds of relationships: I-It and I-You. I-It is childish and easy; I-You is mature and difficult. The difference is whether the thing or person you're dealing with has an inner life. (To be more philosophically precise, I would ask: Does it make sense to ask what it's like to be that thing or person?) Because machines have no inner life, our relationships with machines are I-It.

School Choice   Matt Zwolinski at Bleeding Heart Libertarians (Friday, January 27)

This week is National School Choice Week. School choice is a subject we haven’t really discussed on this blog. But (at least in my own case), that’s a product of a relative lack of expertise, rather than a lack of interest. Bleeding Heart Libertarians care about the way in which freedom can serve the interests of the vulnerable, and a) children are about as vulnerable as you can get, and b) education looks like a domain in which a little freedom can go a long way.

So, in honor of the week, here are a couple links worth taking a look at.

First, LearnLiberty has just released a new graphically animated piece on the importance of educational freedom, What You Should Know about School Choice with Professor Angela Dills.

Second, the heroic Institute for Justice just announced a victory in Arizona, upholding education savings accounts for children with special needs.

What do you think, readers? Any reason for BHL-types not to get on board the school choice wagon enthusiastically? Philosophically, the issue of the proper legal status of children raises a lot of difficult issues. But this, to me at least, doesn’t seem like a hard case at all.

Rad Geek Speaks: Markets Not Capitalism in Austin, Texas (Feb. 4-5, 2012)   Rad Geek at Rad Geek People's Daily (Thursday, January 26)

I am happy to announce that Markets Not Capitalism is coming to Austin, Texas next weekend. I will be appearing at Brave New Books near the UT campus, and MonkeyWrench Books in North Austin, for a talk / reading / Q&A / market anarchist shindig on Saturday, February 4, and Sunday, February 5. Books will be available for purchase, I’ll be available for discussion and signing, caffeine will be available for consumption; spontaneously-ordered sociality to follow. Come on down; invite yr friends!

Egypt: A Year of Revolution   Darian Worden at Center for a Stateless Society (Thursday, January 26)

On January 25, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians packed Cairo’s Tahrir Square to mark the one-year anniversary of an uprising that ended nearly three decades of rule by Hosni Mubarak in less than three weeks. Numerous people now camping in the square call for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which has ruled Egypt since last February, to hand over their power to civilians.

Egypt’s military leadership, posing as a revolutionary government, has tried to co-opt the day by presenting the anniversary as a celebration without protest and rhetorically lifting the “emergency law” — with exceptions so vague that the move actually restricts the government very little.

While the SCAF has invited political parties to work with them in crafting a more permanent political order, the months since Mubarak’s fall have seen military detentions and brutal crackdowns against dissent continue. Tear gas from the United States, which many medics have said is of higher potency and health risk than usual, has been used extensively. While the top figure of the old regime is out of power and on trial, much of the regime that he headed remains intact.

The military leadership has presented a timetable for handing over power, but this does not solve the issue. Political pressure from the streets is probably needed just to hold them to the letter of their promises. It is unclear what kind of role the military leadership intends to play in managing the transition. And behind closed doors the Council will try to safeguard their political and economic privileges, which would keep Egypt’s economy serving the elite recipients of political favor at the expense of those who produce.

The experience of Egypt should drive home the fact that it could take more than a couple of weeks and a change at the top to make a substantial revolution that actually improves the lives of average people. This brings up the question of how a mass movement against the establishment can create the arrangements that replace it. Or is filling the gap left by the downfall even the movement’s role, or is it the role of smaller networks of affinity and interest to put the new society in place and work out differences? And how does one define who is in the establishment or draw the line between siding with the old regime and siding with the people?

The Liberalism of Classical Liberalism   Peter Boettke at Bleeding Heart Libertarians (Thursday, January 26)

I want to thank Matt for the invitation to blog through the semester at BHL. And contrary to Steve Horwitz’s depiction I don’t roll my eyes at the phase “bleeding heart libertarianism” but at the state of intellectual play in academia, and our broader intellectual culture, that makes the introduction of such an adjective necessary. As Steve highlights in his post on Jeff Sachs’s understanding of libertarianism, there should be no doubt that folks misrepresent the classical liberal and libertarian position. Why would Sachs believe that “Compassion, justice, civic responsibility, honesty, decency, humility, respect, and even survival of the poor, weak, and vulnerable – are all to take a back seat.” Did he read that in Adam Smith, in J. B. Say, in J. S. Mill, in F. A. Hayek, in Milton Friedman, in James Buchanan, or in Vernon Smith? Deirdre McCloskey’s perhaps more than another other contemporary scholar is really trying hard to set the record straight. She has already published 2 weighty volumes, which I have written review essays on — Bourgeois Virtues and Bourgeois Dignity – and is currently finishing up Vol. 3, of a projected 6 volumes,  and her work is so weighty because the argument requires that much elaboration in our current intellectual culture.

Our modern understanding of the technical economics, the structural political economy, and deeper moral philosophy of Adam Smith is so flawed that such a basic common concern of the Scottish Philosophers as that of creating the institutional conditions for a civil and compassionate society is lost in the rendering. Hume’s focus on private property, the transference of property by consent, and the keeping of promises through contract are not rules that only benefit one segment of society at the expense of others, but instead form the general foundation for civil society and peaceful social cooperation. Smith’s analysis of the wealth of nations is not ultimately measured in trinkets and gluttonous acts of consumption, but by a rising standard of living that is shared by more and more of the general population. It is an empirical matter as to which set of institutions best achieves that task. But the concern with raising the living standards of the least advantaged in society is never far from view. Sachs, in other words, I am arguing should know better. And so should others in philosophy, politics and economics. The atomistic neoclassical model has nothing whatsoever to do with liberalism as understood by classical political economist or the modern descendants of the mainline of political and economic thought.

The World Economic Forum Weighs In   stuartbramhall at The Most Revolutionary Act (Wednesday, January 25)

Quotebag #66   n8chz at In defense of anagorism (Wednesday, January 25)

“France is a hybrid. Day to day operations are run by a prime minister who works out of parliament… but the president is strong. Russia has oscillated between these two, depending on which office happens to be occupied by Putin.”—David Brin

“But in capitalism, no wage is ever low enough. And there is always someone poorer than you, somewhere, who can be exploited.”—Purple

“I don’t understand it at all. It’s almost like a prisoner’s dilemma, where if nobody ‘networked’, or if everybody ‘networks’, the end result is the same. But if only a few do it, more people know them (superficially) thus giving them a very slight advantage.”—B. Hrebec

“A quick search — I’m not going to link to them because they don’t need any more traffic — will turn up any number of blogs about blogging about blogging, internet businesses about starting internet businesses to sell internet businesses, and so on and so forth. There’s a whole subculture around it, in fact. Some of them even make a great deal of money, and insist that you too can be just like them. Self-help at its finest.”—Brian

The Corporate State: A House Divided Against Itself   Kevin Carson at Center for a Stateless Society (Wednesday, January 25)

The present historic epoch is one of transition from authoritarian institutions like states and corporations, to a society of self-organized networks and voluntary associations. As in any historic transition, second-order variables introduce high levels of turbulence to the process.

One such source of uncertainty is internal divisions within the authoritarian camp. That can only be expected. The very existence and function of authoritarian institutions is zero-sum in character. States are instruments of economic exploitation, through which ruling classes extract their wealth from producers. The wealth of parasitic corporations consists of rents on artificial property rights and artificial scarcities extracted from the consumer. It’s no wonder a gang of thieves might fall into quarreling internally as each attempts to put one over on the other.

On the other hand networks, non-capitalist markets, and other voluntary associations among free individuals have no reason for dissension because they’re predicated on positive-sum, cooperative relations among equals.

Among the instabilities of the authoritarian side is dissensions among states in the global system.  We’ve seen this in recent years with states aiding (and frequently attempting to co-opt) dissident movements within competing states. Hence the American policy of encouraging the use of encrypted routers in Iran and China, and its limited support for the Arab Spring uprisings (except in Bahrain and the other conservative Gulf monarchies, of course).

Compared to the Arab Spring, the US had somewhat better luck co-opting the so-called “color revolutions” of the former USSR, using them as disposable tools for installing neoliberal regimes. In Egypt, in contrast, the Tahrir Square movement seems ill-disposed to settle down, accept the new military regime, and take orders from the World Bank and IMF. And the US is on the whole hostile to movements like those in Spain and Greece, because of their much stronger anti-neoliberal focus.

What Sort of (Libertarian) Consequentialist are You?   Kevin Vallier at Bleeding Heart Libertarians (Wednesday, January 25)

Last post, I claimed that lots of libertarians are consequentialists. In this post, I want to try and state the kind of consequentialism I think most libertarians would sign on to if asked. This is the conception of consequentialism that is “implicit” in the writings of most (non-philosopher) libertarian consequentialists.

Let me be circumspect: many libertarians are consequentialists about politics if not morality generally. They think that coercive laws and policies are justified when they produce good consequences for people. Such libertarians are skeptical of additional moral criteria, like natural rights. Their mantra is “Maximize efficiency” but the mantra obscures a lot, as consequentialism can be qualified in many ways. The purpose of this post is not merely to articulate the version of consequentialism most common among libertarians but to introduce you to the genus consequentialism if you are interested.

My bet is that most libertarian consequentialists are what I shall call AMORE-3 utilitarians (“Three Love” utilitarians, if you like!). They are average, maximizing, ordinalist, rule, expected, egalitarian, efficiency utilitarians. Let’s get clear on what this means.

Nearly all of these definitions come from this encyclopedia entry, though they are modified to concern when political coercion is permitted.

Before I begin, note: everyone values good consequences; arguing for a law or policy based on its consequences does not make you a consequentialist. And so:

(1)   Consequentialism: whether coercion is permitted depends only on consequences (as opposed to the circumstances or the intrinsic nature of the act or anything that happens before the act).

The definition does not by itself require a maximizing response to consequences.

(2)   Maximizing Consequentialism: whether coercion is permitted depends only on which consequences are best (as opposed to merely satisfactory or an improvement over the status quo).

Maximizing is often contrasted with satisficing (doing well but less than the best). I think most libertarian consequentialists are maximizers partly due to their economics background which may lead them to think that satisficing is generally the most efficient way to maximize.

Revamping the NFL Playoffs   at James Leroy Wilson (Tuesday, January 24)

“This Depressingly Vitriolic Presidential Campaign”   Thomas L. Knapp at Center for a Stateless Society (Tuesday, January 24)

That’s how my friend, conservative political blogger Robert Stacy McCain, characterizes the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential primary race to date.

Note that McCain doesn’t argue that the campaign is unusually vitriolic. He’s smarter than that; thus far it has actually been quite pedestrian.

The “vulture capitalism” barbs aimed at Mitt Romney’s career with Bain Capital, the Daily Beast‘s “investigative reporting” on Karen Santorum’s ex-boyfriend, even the Newt Gingrich “open marriage” bombshell … none of these hold a candle to past negative campaigning.

In the 1800 campaign — America’s first competitive presidential election — Thomas Jefferson’s SuperPAC equivalents referred to John Adams as a “hideous hermaphroditical character;” in reply, Adams’s supporters described Jefferson as “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”

It’s pretty much gone downhill from there.

In 2000, George W. Bush’s operatives spread rumors in South Carolina that John McCain — a former prisoner of war in Vietnam — might be a “Manchurian candidate,” and that his adopted daughter (of Bangladeshi ancestry) was actually an out-of-wedlock “love child” from an affair with an African-American woman.

In 2008, we learned that Barack Obama not only “pals around with terrorists,” but is in actuality a Kenyan-born Muslim Communist, smuggled into the US and his birth records doctored so that he could someday destroy the United States from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And that Sarah Palin faked her own pregnancy. And that Mitt Romney was a robot. OK, that last one may be true. But anyway …

Negative campaigning is part and parcel of American politics for three reasons.

The first is that there’s a lot at stake. Even the least fiscally demanding of the Republican candidates, US Representative Ron Paul, only wants to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget. That means he’s running for executive control of $2.7 trillion, or more than $8,500 to be annually seized from each man, woman and child in the United States through taxation, inflation or debt assignation. I’ve seen customers and cashiers say nasty things about each other over a 39 cent discrepancy in the grocery checkout line. We’re not talking chump change here.

National Day of Action–February 4   noreply@blogger.com (Sheldon Richman) at Free Association (Tuesday, January 24)

Iraqi Death Toll   noreply@blogger.com (Sheldon Richman) at Free Association (Tuesday, January 24)

Posted by Dahlia Wasfi on Facebook:

To Whom It May Concern:

Your January 3, 2012 post, “Lest We Forget, Iraq’s Horrific Body Count” offers a final toll for the Iraq “War” (honestly, an illegal invasion and occupation) as 162,000, 79% civilian, from Iraq Body Count. This figure is horrific enough, but it is not even close to the results of accurate surveys. Iraq Body Count is a non-scientific tabulation of the dead. Accurate studies were done, published in the Lancet journal in 2004 and 2006. The estimated number of dead in 2004--more than seven years ago--was 98,000. The estimated number of dead in 2006—more than five years ago—was 654,965, and this calculation excluded the slaughters in the city of Fallujah. The British polling agency ORB put the figure at over 1,000,000 in 2007. That was more than four years ago, and the figure has only grown since then. As for using the qualifier of “civilian,” when we invade a nation that poses no threat to us; that is, when we commit the supreme crime against humanity, ALL of our victims are innocent. The very least we can do to respect the dead is acknowledge how many there are to the best of our ability. Please publish a correction.

Sincerely,

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Guest Blogging – Pete Boettke!   Matt Zwolinski at Bleeding Heart Libertarians (Tuesday, January 24)

As I mentioned in my last post, I have a few exciting announcements to make about the blog. The first, of course, was that Steve Horwitz and Kevin Vallier have joined us as full-time contributors. I’ll have another announcement in the coming week.

For now, though, here’s another bit of terrific news. Pete Boettke will be guest blogging for us for the whole Spring Semester of 2012! Most of you probably already know Pete from his blogging at Coordination Problem and his ongoing work as one of the world’s leading authorities and public intellectuals on the subject of Austrian Economics. Hopefully some of you are more deeply acquainted with his far-reaching and important academic work. For more about Pete (there’s way too much to tell for a short blog post), see his full bio here.

As most of you know, Pete is a professor of economics at George Mason University, where he regularly teaches advanced graduate-level courses in Austrian economics and cognate subjects. This semester, Pete is involved in two activities that might be of special interest to our readers. The first is teaching a course on Constitutional Economics (syllabus here) with readings from Schmidtz, Gaus, Lomasky, Nozick, Buchanan, and lots of other people near and dear to the Bleeding Heart Libertarian project. As the semester goes along, Pete will drop in with comments and questions about the readings. So, for those of you who want to play along at home, download the syllabus, head on over to Amazon, and start reading! (And start early because there’s a lot on that reading list!)

The second thing Pete’s going to be doing is running the Workshop in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, which brings in visiting faculty members to present papers every week or so.  You can see the schedule here. Some of Pete’s contributions to the blog will be driven by reflection on these papers, which look like a stimulating bunch.

Steve’s post from last week suggests that Pete might not quite consider himself a bleeding heart libertarian. So perhaps I’m continuing my trend of inviting apostates to guest-blog here. If so, so be it! Pete is a fascinating thinker and a terrific guy, and I’m looking forward to learning a lot from his contributions. I hope you will too!

Occupy Wall Street: The View from Davos   stuartbramhall at The Most Revolutionary Act (Monday, January 23)

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "Explanations Presented to the Public Minister" (1842)   Shawn P. Wilbur at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule (Monday, January 23)

So What if SOPA Passes?   Kevin Carson at Center for a Stateless Society (Monday, January 23)

In a single day of glory, January 18, a major portion of the Web went dark as a warning that we will no longer tolerate the Copyright Nazis’ infringements on our speech.

The next day, with the FBI’s takedown of MegaUpload, they showed us the law doesn’t even matter to them — that they never needed SOPA in the first place. And they really didn’t. For the past few years, the FBI has seized the domain names of alleged “intellectual property infringers” through in rem actions and civil forfeiture. SOPA was just a legal fig leaf. As Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) Media Coordinator Tom Knapp argues, regardless of whether SOPA passes, its substance will still be implemented piecemeal through executive action.

But only hours after the MegaUpload takedown, Anonymous showed us the real way to fight back against the Copyright Nazis. The good guys’ sites went dark on Wednesday; the bad guys’ sites went dark on Thursday. The websites of the US Department of Justice, FBI, MPAA, RIAA, and dozens of media companies were taken down by distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.

The beauty of it is, this was an an impromptu action using Anonymous’ “Low Orbit Ion Cannon” attack from our grandparents’ day, all of two years ago. DDOS isn’t hacking a site; it’s the equivalent of tearing down a poster — taking a site temporarily offline by overloading it with traffic. In contrast, during the past year, Anonymous has actually infiltrated major corporate and institutional websites — like those of HBGary, Texas law enforcement, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), and Stratfor — and published reams of highly embarrassing internal emails and memos. This is called a “doxing” attack. Just my guess, but I imagine we can expect something similar to happen to the MPAA, Chris Dodd, and assorted Big Content companies starting any day now.

The ultimate response, rather than trying to fight for reform within the system, is simply rendering the Copyright Nazis’ filthy laws — whatever they are — unenforceable. As C4SS board member Charles Johnson has argued, a gram of circumvention is worth a metric ton of lobbying. Let the wicked write whatever laws on paper they see fit; the righteous will break them, as Samson broke iron chains like bands of tow.

Nock on Moral Education   noreply@blogger.com (Sheldon Richman) at Free Association (Monday, January 23)

The point is that any enlargement [of the State], good or bad, reduces the scope of individual responsibility, and thus retards and cripples the education which can be a product of nothing but the free exercise of moral judgment. Like the discipline of the army, again, any such enlargement, good or bad, depraves this education into a mere routine of mechanical assent. The profound instinct against being ‘done for our own good’ . . . is wholly sound. Men are aware of the need of this moral experience as a condition of growth, and they are aware, too, that anything tending to ease it off from them, even for their own good, is to be profoundly distrusted. The practical reason for freedom, then, is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fibre can be developed.

--Albert Jay Nock, “On Doing the Right Thing”

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Political Philosophy: The Libertarian State of Play   Kevin Vallier at Bleeding Heart Libertarians (Monday, January 23)

Hi y’all. Let me take the opportunity to thank Matt and my fellow cobloggers for allowing little ole’ me to join their ranks. Instead of me blathering on about myself, let’s get down to philosophical business.

Libertarians (academics, public intellectuals, pundits, bloggers and activists) tend to base libertarianism in two political philosophical positions: self-ownership and utilitarianism. My aim is to describe the two views. In future posts, I will explain why many libertarian political philosophers (including the BHL-strand) reject these two views and then I will offer an alternative. But for now, let’s focus on accurately describing the libertarian state of play. Tell me if I’ve got it right.

(1)   Self-Ownership

Self-ownership views are deontological. That is, self-ownership theorists claim that we have reason to respect persons’ natural ownership of themselves (their body, mind and their activities) and justly acquired property even if it has bad consequences (subject to certain limits). The self-ownership view is most prominently defended by Murray Rothbard. Contrary to what many believe, the idea plays a relatively small role in Robert Nozick’s political philosophy. In my view, most of Nozick’s arguments are made in terms of premises his interlocutors accept.

Self-ownership views include distinct principles governing the acquisition and transfer of non-bodily property. External objects can be acquired through labor and transferred through free consent. A third principle regulates violations of self-ownership, acquisition and transfer, but it is subject to considerable controversy among self-ownership theorists (see Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty for an extensive discussion). Consequently, libertarian self-ownership theorists reject philosophical left-libertarianism, which combines a self-ownership principle with some principle of equal distribution of natural resources.

Self-ownership theorists take their views to ground either a minarchist (super small state) social order or a market anarchist social order. As a result, self-ownership views are more highly concentrated amongst radical libertarians. Self-ownership theorists tend to take a more axiomatic or rationalistic approach to political philosophy, even deducing entire legal systems from these rather slender first principles (again, see Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty).

Possible anagorist presence at Facebook   n8chz at In defense of anagorism (Monday, January 23)

In Facebook, there’s an “interest page” (I’m assuming here those can be viewed w/o logging in) called “Non Market Individualist Anarchism“.  These “interest pages” tend to be created when a Facebook user types in someghing under “interests” that’s not already on some user’s list of “interests”.  I found it using Google.  Apparently three people on Facebook share this interest.  No idea who—so much for building online community.  Facebook used to list those who “like” things, but no longer does, which may be just as well, considering the generally McCarthyist tenor of post-9/11 hysteria.  Of course the authorities are customers of Facebook’s extensive data mining operation.

It’s nice to see signs of interest out there, though.

Déjacque's "Authority—Dictatorship," revised translation   Shawn P. Wilbur at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule (Sunday, January 22)

Meme: Easy and hard things to learn   n8chz at In defense of anagorism (Sunday, January 22)

This is my first attempt at a blog meme. With any luck my friends will get me off to a good start by helping me catapult the propaganda. Some may object that it’s off topic. Perhaps, although one of my reasons for being an anagorist is the market’s tendency to turn vocation-finding into a trial-and-error exercise. This meme is an exercise in assessing my strong and weak suits and maybe even coming up with an effective (if belated) strategy for dealing with that particular Reality.

The gist of the meme is to list three things in the course of your lifelong learning that came as natural as falling off a log, especially if they strike you as possessing elegance, expository power, arousal of curiosity, or best of all, a lot of formerly disparate concepts somehow “fall into place.” The other list is three things that are utterly opaque to your mind, that you have made repeated attempts to learn, but for some reason or other, you just don’t seem to be meant to learn these things.

Proudhonian consistency—II   Shawn P. Wilbur at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule (Sunday, January 22)

Preparedness: A Good Alternative to Denial   stuartbramhall at The Most Revolutionary Act (Saturday, January 21)

Myths About My Views on the Myth of the Gender Wage Gap   Steve Horwitz at Bleeding Heart Libertarians (Saturday, January 21)

Thanks to being linked on reddit a few months ago, my LearnLiberty video on the gender wage gap is now close to 300,000 views on YouTube.  The video was one of four designed to rebut commonly held economic myths.  In this case, the myth is that women earn 75% of what men do because of labor market discrimination. What’s been interesting about the reaction to the argument there is that both “left libertarians” and “right libertarians” have criticized it.  That reaction tends to be a sign that I probably got it pretty much correct!  However, I do want to clarify a few points I was trying to make there, and have probably made better in longer presentations of the argument at IHS seminars and other venues over the years, so that my basic points are clear. In other words, let’s tackle three myths about my argument that the claim that women earn 75% of what men do is a myth.

1.  Myth:  Horwitz was arguing that labor market discrimination plays no role at all in the gender wage gap.

The point of the video was not to argue that labor market discrimination has nothing to do with wage differentials, but rather to point out that there are a lot reasons and pretty good evidence to suggest that when we control for human capital, compensating differentials and the like, most of the gender wage gap disappears.  The most reliable studies I know put the “unexplained residual” at 5% or less.  No study I’m aware of, other than ones of very specific markets, concludes that human capital and compensating differentials and other economic factors explain the entire gap.  Folks are welcome to see my Economics of Gender syllabus where we tackle human capital, compensating differentials, and discrimination models in one chapter each.

Yes, other disciplines might provide arguments and evidence for a larger role for discrimination.  Great, let’s have at it.  Economists need to take them seriously and they need to look at the economic evidence.  Let’s see where it goes.  So for my left-leaning critics:

Write Your Own Caption, STOP SOPA edition   Rad Geek at Rad Geek People's Daily (Saturday, January 21)

No War, No Sanctions, No Intervention, No Assassinations   noreply@blogger.com (Sheldon Richman) at Free Association (Saturday, January 21)

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Recent Writings   noreply@blogger.com (Sheldon Richman) at Free Association (Saturday, January 21)

TGIF: The Internet Dodges the SOPA Bullet – for Now

Glenn Greenwald Nails It -- Again   noreply@blogger.com (Sheldon Richman) at Free Association (Saturday, January 21)

“The “’anti-Semitism’ smear campaign against CAP and Media Matters rolls on”

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The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination   noreply@blogger.com (Sheldon Richman) at Free Association (Saturday, January 21)

Obama and the GOP   noreply@blogger.com (Sheldon Richman) at Free Association (Saturday, January 21)

Republicans hate Obama. But, then, it's said that one most hates those like oneself.

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No Bain, No Pain?   noreply@blogger.com (Sheldon Richman) at Free Association (Saturday, January 21)

I submit that judging Bain Capital through the fog of corporate statism is not easy. But a general suspicion is probably in order.

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Welcome Two New Bloggers!   Matt Zwolinski at Bleeding Heart Libertarians (Friday, January 20)

It’s hard to believe it, but in a little over a month, we’re going to be celebrating the first birthday of this blog! It’s been a great year so far. And I have a series of exciting announcements to make over the next week or so about the future. Stay tuned.

For now, I’m extremely happy to announce that two more individuals have joined the ranks of full-time bloggers here at BHL!

Some of you may have already noticed that Steve Horwitz has moved up the ranks from guest blogger to full contributor here. In his short time on board, Steve’s already written some terrific stuff for us, including this, which is currently the all-time highest viewed post on the site, and one I’m very glad I asked him to write!

Our other new blogger is one I’ve been trying to draft since before he earned his PhD and went “pro” last year. Kevin Vallier is a fellow alum of the University of Arizona’s philosophy program, is currently a Post-Doctoral Research at Brown University’s Political Theory Project while he is on-leave from his real full-time job as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University. He’s published articles appearing in journals including Utilitas, The Journal of Moral Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, Public Affairs Quarterly, Philosophy and Social Criticism and The Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Kevin has research interests in political philosophy, political economy, normative ethics and philosophy of religion. He’s presently writing a book manuscript on the proper place of religious commitment in liberal politics tentatively titled Beyond Separation: Uniting Liberal Politics and Public Faith.

Welcome Steve and Kevin!

The Lost Generation’s Call To Action   Keith Taylor at Center for a Stateless Society (Friday, January 20)

America is a country of rugged individualism. — I earned my money! — Free enterprise is the foundation of American greatness! — Don’t rock the boat. — Get with the game. — Don’t be left behind. — Go with the flow. — Policy should promote market certainty. — Why don’t poor people get a job?! — Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. — You reap what you sow. — If only they worked hard, the market would reward them!

Is this what the American dream has become?

Where is the inspiration?! Where is the aspiration to a higher goal, an advancement of humanity beyond pointless toil? The Great Recession is forcing a systemic shift. The current system situated on a bedrock of American exceptionalism seems empty, the illusion propped up by billions in advertising dollars meant to whitewash reality. We have big oil destroying an entire ecosystem in the Gulf. The nuclear industry is more dangerous than ever. Big financial firms like Goldman pulled a reverse Robin Hood and took from Peter (you) to pay Paul (the CEO class). Vulture capital firms buy up entire retail chains, cut them to the bone, then flip ‘em on the market for a fat profit; it’s how one Presidential candidate made his millions.Despite the feel-good rhetoric, everyone of us knows the current system offers little inspiration for our shared future. As the great social commentarian George Carlin used to say:

The owners of this country know the truth: It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

The owners of this country spend billions giving propagandists (some call them talking heads, others pundits) cushy prime time TV spots to regurgitate sound bites produced by think tanks like the corporate-financed Heritage Foundation. These propagandists explain away the hypocrisies of their corporate masters, and berate anyone who opposes their big money agenda. This is their game, rigged to support an ever-shifting set of rules, all at our expense. So obsessed are they with retaining their power, the owners of this country have shown they are willing to tank the entire global economy to retain their dominance, a point which became all too clear in the recent debt ceiling debate.