Earlier this afternoon: Rachel: do the libertarian wonks supporting seasteading intend to continue their wonkery once they move to the sea colony? or would they have to like, build stuff for the first few years? Julian: Build stuff? Don’t be silly.  The Market will provide Rachel: So the equilibrium is a place populated partly by [...]

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Via Brad Plumer, I see Cato’s Jerry Taylor is riled at responses to an open letter ad the Institute published in which a group of scientists signed off on a statement questioning the strength of the case for catastrophic climate change. I’m broadly sympathetic with his irritation at the proportion of ad hominem attacks in [...]

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Kerry Howley points out that people who treat “libertarian” and “feminist” as antonyms are, by and large, really fucking dumb: For some reason, various libertarian-leaning men are only capable of acknowledging the limiting nature of social norms when those norms result from recent political action. We all worry that universal surveillance breeds passive adults with [...]

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I’m late to the ball here, but there have been an enormous amount of silly things written about redistribution in the past week or two. First, we have the claim that Barack Obama’s agenda is “socialist,” which is just sloppy. Words mean things, and “socialism” is about centralized economic planning and state control of the [...]

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Just when Obama’s economic rhetoric is giving me hives, I see something like this and get, if not a thrill running up my leg, a little more at ease: But you know, the truth is that my education was a pretty standard, liberal arts education. So I was exposed to thinkers on the left. At [...]

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Well, this is a Republican platform I could support. Which I’ll take as prima facie evidence that its chances of being adopted are nil.

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Well, this is obviously incredibly flattering: Among the many dark tidings for American conservatism, there is one genuine bright spot. Over the past five years, a group of young and unpredictable rightward-leaning writers has emerged on the scene. These writers came of age as official conservatism slipped into decrepitude. Most of them were dismayed by [...]

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Thoreau’s post on the potential pitfalls of advertising our presence to aliens who may be unfriendly reminds me of Robert Nozick’s morbidly delightful short story RSVP. It’s behind the subscription wall at Commentary, but can also be found in the collection Socratic Puzzles.

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Some libertarians out there think Larry Lessig, whatever his faults, might have a few ideas deserving of serious consideration. And that seems to have sent at least one supporter of strong IP hurtling over the edge. Over at Ars Technica, I take up the question: Is the creative commons really a Soviet gulag? Addendum: I [...]

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Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler’s notion of “Libertarian Paternalism” has already occasioned plenty of blogospheric debate, but their recent LA Times op-ed has reopened the floodgates. Jonah Goldberg has a crop of posts, and Jim Manzi and Will Wilkinson also take shots. I’ve been at least somewhat more open to the idea than some of [...]

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