Brad DeLong confuses me.
Brad DeLong confuses me.
How can the same person who makes this observation:
Which displays the rare (among statist liberals) understanding that their tastes are not the objective and univerally correct tastes, also make the following observation:
Isn't it obvious that by entering into a bar that allows smoking one is agreeing to accept that environment? That, shudder!, bar patrons, on the whole, might actually prefer it?
In general the "right to swing your arms com(ing) to an end when it comes into contact with my nose" is the default rule for people who have no other contact with one another. People who make other arrangements among themselves, such as, obviously, boxers in the ring, and frequently other professional athletes who agree to have the occasional passion-induced fight adjucated by means that the rest of us do not use, have chosen their own rules.
How can the same person who makes this observation:
Daniel Davies has a solution to the problem of how to finance the creation of interesting content in the information age: simply repeat the BBC model. He's right, of course. There is, however, one key problem. How do you get the committees of the great and good that tend to boss government-funded enterprises to engage in the experimentation and then to register user feedback so that the system can provide programming users actually want to watch? It won't be a problem for me--the great-and-good's tastes are like mine. But experimentation and feedback are processes that markets are pretty good at. And we badly need to figure out alternative non-market ways of generating them...
Which displays the rare (among statist liberals) understanding that their tastes are not the objective and univerally correct tastes, also make the following observation:
The libertarian in the highly intelligent and articulate Jane Galt mourns the abrogation of property rights that is associated with New York City's plan to ban smoking* in restaurants and bars starting March 30, 2003.
I find this--as I find much of modern libertarian thought--bizarre, incoherent, and self-contradictory. You see, I had always thought that libertarians believed that your right to swing your arms comes to an end when it comes into contact with my nose.
Isn't it obvious that by entering into a bar that allows smoking one is agreeing to accept that environment? That, shudder!, bar patrons, on the whole, might actually prefer it?
In general the "right to swing your arms com(ing) to an end when it comes into contact with my nose" is the default rule for people who have no other contact with one another. People who make other arrangements among themselves, such as, obviously, boxers in the ring, and frequently other professional athletes who agree to have the occasional passion-induced fight adjucated by means that the rest of us do not use, have chosen their own rules.
posted by Scott at
7:49 PM
