What are the reasons for believing that Mamdani, even if he wins the mayor's office, will find that it is for him a dead end? There is his rent freeze thing, to begin. My old anarcho-cap instincts kick in here. Markets are very useful things -- it is precisely in the valuation of assets (and of transferable liabilities) that they most directly prove their worth, and rent control in all its forms is a direct attack on this function. New York City's history with "rent stabilization" is a solid illustration of this point. The history is not happy. And intensifying the war on the discovery of value will do a good deal of harm to actual values. Brenda Richardson wrote a fine brief piece in Forbes on some of these issues two years ago. The bottom line is that Mamdani seems likely to mess with the housing market in ways that effectively freeze new construction of livable spaces, force further skimping on maintenance, lead to longer waitlists and reduced m...
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Given Sanders' repeated reference to himself as a "socialist," arguments over the definition of the word have become very vogue. I want to contribute a thought today about a wrong way to proceed. A Facebook friend of mine, who shall go nameless, wrote as follows: "I'd say Stop Signs are socialist. I'd define it very broadly." What he is saying is that any government as the term is usually understood is socialist, because such an institution collects money, at least some of it non-voluntary, and uses at least some of that money for non-controversial purposes such as putting stop signs up in places that help avoid collision and death. There are at least two purposes to which such an argument may be put: If I know that you agree that the word "socialism" names something bad, I may use something like this to push you toward anarchism. On the other hand, If I know that you believe in some sort of government or other, I may use the argument...
I'll treat you today, dear reader, to another blog post inspired by shenanigans over at Yahoo!Answers. Someone asked, "Can anyone philosophically justify the existence of private property?" Some further explanation indicated that he had titles to land especially in mind. For the record, my answer was what regular readers of this blog would likely expect. The pragmatic answer is surely best: those social institutions are right which work, over time and on the whole. Private title to land is justified, if at all, only on that basis. Whether it IS justified by practical consequences is a fascinating empirical question. Consider Richard Pipes' book on this question, for example. That is much more interesting than trying to parse the differences between Locke and Rousseau on some primordial appropriation. But I'm bring this into Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed today because of another commenter. He ignored the specific matter of land and gave us a little lect...