Back in August, I wrote a piece called “Fiscal Cliff Madness” about the set of consequences produced by the law enacted by the government that will severely reduce spending and raise taxes. Today, new research has surfaced from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that gives us a clearer idea of just what exactly the fiscal cliff might do to the United States’ economy if it comes to pass. The new information is even more dire than the information we had in August, and so the “madness” has now been upgraded to “insanity”.
Tag: politics
The Obama Economy
It has become a common sense view that the US economy has performed poorly under Barack Obama. The assorted punditry are all trying to explain how Obama managed to win the election despite this fact. Perhaps they should stop to consider that perhaps this fact is not a fact at all? Well, if no one else is going to do it, it might as well be me.
Unreasonable People
Many of the popular theories of justice claim that all “reasonable people” in a given circumstance would rationally agree to them, and therefore they are just. Rawls, for instance, claims that all reasonable people can readily agree to Rawls’ principles of justice (in order of priority: everyone has as much liberty as possible without infringing on the liberty of others, all people have equal access to opportunities, and inequality is only justifiable provided that it benefits the worst off–“maximin”) because he thinks all reasonable people readily acknowledge that all people are free and equal. This leaves a question open–who are the unreasonable people? Racists, sexists, ethnocentric people, all of those are obviously unreasonable under this theory, but what about conservative theorists? Are they unreasonable, and, if so, what does that mean for theories of justice?
Facebook: When Free Speech Costs Money
Very quietly, so quietly that it has almost gone without notice, Facebook has begun to charge its users to have their posts shown to more than a small percentage of their friends, fans, and subscribers. New posts on Facebook now come with a “promote” option, where you have the opportunity to pay Facebook money to ensure that your posts actually reach the people who have signed up to receive them. Facebook, famous for its promise that “it’s free, and always will be”, seems to have skirted this issue by charging not to be a user of Facebook, but to actually have your material seen by more than a tiny number of people. Do not mistake this post for a rant about Facebook however–though I myself am impacted (even as this blog has grown more popular over the last several months, the number of referrals from Facebook I receive has indeed dropped since I got the “promote” option), I am not here to trash Facebook but to point out what this move by Facebook more broadly represents–a move toward a fusion of free speech with income, and the debilitating effects this has on democracy.
Democratic Illegitimacy
Democratic theorists are fond of saying that democracy has a unique claim to legitimacy because it is the only system of government that can be accepted by all reasonable people without qualifications. Today I will illustrate precisely what this argument says and then endeavour to kill it via a metaphor I call “Mount Democracy”.
Benjamin Studebaker 