June 26, 2007
June 04, 2007
Time to exhale
I landed on Andrew Speaker last week with all four feet and a couple of readers have since pointed out that I was probably out of bounds. If he knew what we know now about the communicability of his infection, he was certainly not sociopathic nor grossly irresponsible. Sorry. But he was jerky and irresponsible; the risk of causing another...
May 31, 2007
He what?? !! ...so he could WHAT??!!!
Update: A couple of readers point out that this is over-the-top in view of unfolding news; backoff here. Now this gives "to have and to hold, in sickness and in health" a whole new meaning. TB is spread feebly by casual public content (coughing in public places) but effectively by prolonged, intimate contact in closed spaces. If you have XDR-TB,...
May 10, 2007
Are our moral intuitions irrelevant?
Mark argued this morning (follow-up here) that it is neither irrational nor morally wrong for Americans to place greater weight on the well-being of their fellow citizens than on that of unknown persons abroad when thinking about the desirability of expanded global trade. This observation will draw fire from consequentialist moral philosophers, who insist that the right course of action...
The scope of the moral community: an exchange
Alex Tabarrok and I discuss the tension between overcoming individual selfishness and avoiding the bad consequences of collective selfishness.
May 09, 2007
Trade and the collective-action problem
No, it's not irrational or morally wrong for Americans to care more about the well-being of other Americans than about the well-being of Belgians, any more than it's irrational or morally wrong for parents to care more for their own children than for other children. Local social capital is valuable, and ought to be tended.
April 17, 2007
The Rap on Rap
Predictably, Imus' little contretemps raises questions about the relentless truly repulsive conventions of gangsta rap and its related forms. This AP story has some interesting quotes, from critics hostile to the misogynistic, violent stream of gangsta rap and from its defenders anxious to distinguish it from Imus' japes and jabs. The standard defense of this bilge is here offered by...
April 13, 2007
Acts and traits, rights and duties
Anything that gives us moral enlightenment from both Don Imus and Al Sharpton across a table from each other can't be all bad, right? Seriously, while Imus doesn't matter much, the whole episode gives us perspective on a pair of issues too often taken the wrong way. The first is a confusion of acts and traits, as in "anyone who...
March 13, 2007
For a proper moralism in politics
In common usage, "morality" means observing sexual taboos. But common usage is wrong. I'm not against "morality;" I'm against a false and partial morality. Let's not cede a good word to bad people.
October 21, 2006
October 05, 2006
David Brooks, moral idiot
Does David Brooks really think that letting your colleagues molest other people's children is merely a question of "management," somehow divorced from "morality"?
September 28, 2006
August 09, 2006
Just asking redux
Many comments on my previous post, concerning the comparison between Lebanon, Kosovo and Afghanistan, including one from Matthew Yglesias. There’s nothing like the Middle East to get people’s blood boiling—and that thousands of miles from the region. Commentators who rejected the analogy did so primarily on two grounds: 1) the goals and threats in each situation are different, so they...
August 01, 2006
Mel Gibson, Evil, and Art
Mel Gibson's little contretemps with the police has become a lot more interesting than it started out to be. It raises issues about how we should count traits, prejudice, and considered discourse in making moral judgments about people and, as Gibson is an artist (and not just an actor who speaks the lines of others), how the personality of the...
July 09, 2006
World Cup and Doing the Right Thing
I wash my hands of World Cup soccer. Half the games from the quarterfinals on, including the championship, were decided by penalty kicks that have nothing to do with the game, mostly because with all its wonderful qualities, soccer has a fatal design defect: not enough scoring in regulation play. The result of this is that the game score has...
April 14, 2006
March 29, 2006
Benevolent despotism in Singapore
Honest, competent dictatorship is better than the other kind. And Singapore's party oligarchy has delivered the goods. But is the development of a form of tyranny compatible with economic success really something to be happy about?
March 15, 2006
Hilzoy on the functions of moral judgment
Moral judgment, including adverse moral judgment, is a form of social and political action.
January 26, 2006
Google, Yahoo, and corporate social responsibility
I think Google didn't do the wrong thing by submitting to Chinese censorship, while Yahoo did do the wrong thing by narking out a reporter to the Chinese secret police. I could be wrong about that. What I'm sure of is that those are real moral questions, which can't be dismissed by saying that corporate managers should always do whatever will make the most money for shareholders.
January 15, 2006
Moral reform movements led by ministers: RIP.
The Reverend Martin Luther King led a society-wide moral movement for equality. That wouldn't be possible today.
November 18, 2005
Daily Lesson
Jonathan Zasloff writes: Early yesterday morning, the House Republicans passed a budget resolution severely cutting Medicaid, food stamps, and child care. Meanwhile, their allies in the Senate passed a resolution extending tax cuts for some of the wealthiest investors. Class, the Daily Lesson comes from Amos, 8:1-8: Thus the LORD showed me: Behold, a basket of summer fruit. And He...
October 29, 2005
Should corporations serve only their shareholders?
On shareholders' rights an organizational sociopathy.
Shareholder value
is not the same as shareholder wealth
A reflection on Mark's post on the Friedman proposition: I am not comfortable with corporations getting in the doing-good business on the whole, by which I mean charitable contributions. political activity outside their narrow business interests, and similar activities. This is partly because of the slippery-slope problem of excess, and partly because I fear that most corporate executives have some...
