Well, it’s been coming for a while now–Barack Obama has decided to arm the Syrian rebels. The justification? The administration believes that somewhere between 100 and 200 people in Syria have been killed with chemical weapons, specifically, nerve agents, even more specifically, sarin. It is too often taken for granted that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government provides a good reason for the United States to intervene in the Syrian conflict on behalf of the rebels. The assumption must be questioned–does the use of chemical weapons make it in the interest of the United States to intervene where before it was not in the US interest to do so?
Don’t Hate the Player; Hate the Game
I’m an NBA fan–I love pro basketball. Like most NBA fans, I have a favorite team, my local Chicago Bulls. And like most talented teams, my favorite team has a nemesis, the Miami Heat. And while my Bulls have been knocked out of the playoffs, said Heat are still playing, and I watch every one of their playoff games so I can cheer for the opposing team. First it was Indiana in the conference finals, now it’s San Antonio in the NBA Finals. None of this sounds especially political, to this point, I expect, but I would like to explore a larger philosophical question stemming from this example–why do I dislike the Miami Heat so much, and is my dislike justifiable?
Search and Seizure
In the United States, we often get very upset about violations of privacy on the basis that they are thought to violate the 4th amendment, which protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures”. But what is it about search and seizure that is objectionable in the first place, and to what extent do the modern privacy violations we often argue about conform to that?
Tax Rates and Growth
Last week, I took a look at optimal tax rates, the top rates of income tax which economic research suggests would maximize revenue if implemented as policy. The research suggested that for every 1% higher the top rate of income tax rises, the rich report 0.25% less income. This suggested an optimal top rate of between 73 and 80%. Toward the end of that post, I suggested that it might be the case that even as the rich report lower earnings, the economy as a whole might operate more efficiently at those high rates, if the government is more effective at investment than the private sector. Today I’d like to look at some empirical data to see if there’s any historical basis for that claim. Continue reading “Tax Rates and Growth”
The Moral Irrelevance of the God Question
A while back, I wrote about the separation of moral philosophy and metaphysics. I argued in agreement with Dworkin that whether or not a moral claim is true does not rely on objective metaphysical blunt facts about the nature of the universe. It occurred to me today that this makes the entire debate between the new atheism of Dawkins, Hitchens, and the like and traditional religion irrelevant to questions of moral philosophy–the metaphysical debate about whether or not there is a deity and what that deity’s nature might be can have no bearing whatsoever on our moral theory.
Continue reading “The Moral Irrelevance of the God Question”
Benjamin Studebaker 