The Curious Turns of Robert Nozick

"The libertarian position I once propounded," Nozick wrote in an essay published in the late '80s, "now seems to me seriously inadequate." In Anarchy democracy was nowhere to be found; Nozick now believed that democratic institutions "express and symbolize … our equal human dignity, our autonomy and powers of self-direction." In Anarchy, the best government was the least government, a value-neutral enforcer of contracts; now, Nozick concluded, "There are some things we choose to do together through government in solemn marking of our human solidarity, served by the fact that we do them together in this official fashion ..."

-- Stephen Metcalf at Slate.com

Wow, I didn't know that Nozick converted. I feel cheated for not knowing that twenty years ago. I remember well how Nozick, with his defense of libertarianism, was still a force in my undergraduate seminar on jurisprudence in the mid-eighties. Apparently, it was not long after that that he renounced his position, himself. Though, I don't suppose the big libertarians in the room would feel especially red-faced. It's enough to be rich. Who needs philosophical principle?

( article )

The Curious Turns of Robert Nozick

"The libertarian position I once propounded," Nozick wrote in an essay published in the late '80s, "now seems to me seriously inadequate." In Anarchy democracy was nowhere to be found; Nozick now believed that democratic institutions "express and symbolize … our equal human dignity, our autonomy and powers of self-direction." In Anarchy, the best government was the least government, a value-neutral enforcer of contracts; now, Nozick concluded, "There are some things we choose to do together through government in solemn marking of our human solidarity, served by the fact that we do them together in this official fashion ..."

-- Stephen Metcalf at Slate.com

Wow, I didn't know that Nozick converted. I feel cheated for not knowing that twenty years ago. I remember well how Nozick, with his defense of libertarianism, was still a force in my undergraduate seminar on jurisprudence in the mid-eighties. Apparently, it was not long after that that he renounced his position, himself. Though, I don't suppose the big libertarians in the room would feel especially red-faced. It's enough to be rich. Who needs philosophical principle?

( article )

Showdown Over the Debt Limit

So what’s really going on is extortion pure and simple. As Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute puts it, the G.O.P. has, in effect, come around with baseball bats and declared, “Nice economy you have here. A real shame if something happened to it.”

-- Paul Krugman for The New York Times

Professor Krugman gives us a good overview of the raging battle in D. C. over the debt limit. Like a lot of these battles, it could just melt away as we run into high noon, but if it does not, and if the limit is not raised, this would mark another historic drop in the fortunes of the United States in the world, as we would no longer be the gold standard in the global economy. We get locked into our new identity as just another uncertain and faltering country. It could make for a much poorer world all the way around, which presumably would also mean a nastier world.

( column )

Showdown Over the Debt Limit

So what’s really going on is extortion pure and simple. As Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute puts it, the G.O.P. has, in effect, come around with baseball bats and declared, “Nice economy you have here. A real shame if something happened to it.”

-- Paul Krugman for The New York Times

Professor Krugman gives us a good overview of the raging battle in D. C. over the debt limit. Like a lot of these battles, it could just melt away as we run into high noon, but if it does not, and if the limit is not raised, this would mark another historic drop in the fortunes of the United States in the world, as we would no longer be the gold standard in the global economy. We get locked into our new identity as just another uncertain and faltering country. It could make for a much poorer world all the way around, which presumably would also mean a nastier world.

( column )

Fertility of the Earth

A little liberation poetry.
Of the Third World and First World.
Of rich and poor.
Of men and girls.

_ _ _

Beauty is sexual, and sexuality
Is the fertility of the earth and the fertility
Of the earth is economics. Though he is no recommendation
For poets on the subject of finance,
I thought of him in the thick heat
Of the Bangkok night. Not more than fourteen, she saunters up to you
Outside the Shangri-la Hotel
And says, in plausible English,
“How about a party, big guy?”

Here is more or less how it works:
The World Bank arranges the credit and the dam
Floods three hundred villages, and the villagers find their way
To the city where their daughters melt into the teeming streets,
And the dam’s great turbines, beautifully tooled
In Lund or Dresden or Detroit, financed
By Lazard Frères in Paris or the Morgan Bank in New York,
Enabled by judicious gifts from Bechtel of San Francisco
Or Halliburton of Houston to the local political elite,
Spun by the force of rushing water,
Have become hives of shimmering silver
And, down river, they throw that bluish throb of light
Across her cheekbones and her lovely skin.

-- "Ezra Pound's Proposition" by Robert Haas

Fertility of the Earth

A little liberation poetry.
Of the Third World and First World.
Of rich and poor.
Of men and girls.

_ _ _

Beauty is sexual, and sexuality
Is the fertility of the earth and the fertility
Of the earth is economics. Though he is no recommendation
For poets on the subject of finance,
I thought of him in the thick heat
Of the Bangkok night. Not more than fourteen, she saunters up to you
Outside the Shangri-la Hotel
And says, in plausible English,
“How about a party, big guy?”

Here is more or less how it works:
The World Bank arranges the credit and the dam
Floods three hundred villages, and the villagers find their way
To the city where their daughters melt into the teeming streets,
And the dam’s great turbines, beautifully tooled
In Lund or Dresden or Detroit, financed
By Lazard Frères in Paris or the Morgan Bank in New York,
Enabled by judicious gifts from Bechtel of San Francisco
Or Halliburton of Houston to the local political elite,
Spun by the force of rushing water,
Have become hives of shimmering silver
And, down river, they throw that bluish throb of light
Across her cheekbones and her lovely skin.

-- "Ezra Pound's Proposition" by Robert Haas