An Economist's Rational Road to Christianity By Eric Falkenstein

An Economist's Rational Road to Christianity By Eric Falkenstein

• Most ex-atheists who become deists turn to Buddhism, so I thought I'd be clear why they are all wrong (Robert Wright!).
• I came to Christ via rational inference, not a personal crisis.
• A Rational Argument for Christianity
• Bertrand Russell...discusses many arguments for the existence of God—first cause, natural law—and finds them all logically defective, except the argument from design... He found the theory of evolution adequate to rebut this theory, but a lot has been discovered since then.
• Evolution Just Like Abiogenesis
• from the beginning, evolutionary theorists conceded that the appearance of initial life forms had yet to be explained.
• Just as his grandfather did, Darwin believed that the discovery of the first life form would occur soon.
• The more we learn about the minimum necessary components of life, the more complicated it gets.
• ... The most basic cell requires at least a hundred proteins, each of which has approximately 300 amino acids , and all need to be able to work with each other.
• The inevitable conclusion is that showing how a natural process can create a set of letters used in typesetting does not go far in showing how natural processes create words, let alone novels.[ 4] The origin of life is one of those puzzles that has been right around the corner, for the past two centuries.
• The problem is that natural selection can explain the survival of the fittest, but not how novel tissues arose,
• looking at many thousands of generations of fruit flies and bacteria, we see only a handful of minor mutations.
• microevolution does not imply macroevolution,
• From Deism to Christianity
• after I accepted that a creator exists...I experienced a strange consilience, as various facts all began to make much more sense.
• Things that work as if they are true, are often really true.
• The science behind evolution is essential to understand why it is rational to believe in a creator, and psychology, neurology, and economics tell us about human nature
• In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins wrote that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist... A little knowledge led us away from God, and now a considerable amount of knowledge has led us back.
• Unlike what the atheists say about God turning one off to science, it engaged me, because it is much more exciting to search for patterns if you think they exist objectively, rather than something I merely might be able to convince someone is important. The mathematician, Paul Erdos, used to become excited about determining not just mathematical proofs, but ones that were beautiful: inevitable, concise, and unexpected;
• basic problems of survival, the search for meaning is the essence of being human.
• The Christian Consilience
• Once you accept that we were created, it becomes easier to understand our common drive to find meaning and purpose, because it is more likely that we have an objective purpose
• Love is the only end in itself, and the love of God is the key to any Christian purpose,
• The most profound truth is that some being created us, and that created things have a purpose. Our purpose is hard-wired into our biology, and creates a longing to love something greater than ourselves, and following this simple purpose generates a social optimum via invisible hand.
• Christianity...its bottom-up focus encourages decentralized decision-making and individual liberty. Christianity neither legislates nor demands virtue; it merely encourages
• The modesty that comes from Christianity is not weakness, but rather, a combination of honesty and intelligence.
• A Christian purpose aligns with our nature so well that it is useful to believe and behave “as if”it were true, and in the history of science, many assumptions that were chosen because they worked were later found to be true.
• Una teoria dell'egoismo. Your attitude towards yourself is paramount because we really love our neighbor as ourselves...... those without any self-interest find it much easier to be cruel when acting selflessly...(e.g., ants are selfless animals, yet they are also the most warlike and take slaves)?
• making yourself a better person, not out of narcissism, but rather, in order to look better to someone beautiful who loves you. In contrast, Freudian psychoanalysis centers on fixing oneself for oneself
• the more we thought about ourselves, the more we thought about how others had wronged us. The motivation, the heart, is key.
• The progressive inspired ‘positive’rights for healthcare, food, education, and housing, are claims on the resources of others backed by coercive bureaucracies.
• Il welfare degrada i caratteri. Goods and services received without struggle—and the sense of insecurity that motivates it— leads to resentment, and this leads to a vicious circle of hating the 1% even more;
• The Bible is prescient in orienting an individual’s focus in concentric circles from him/ herself, to family, etc.,
• In Christianity....assumes that all people are imperfect, that such is the crooked timber of humanity. A Christian does not expect heaven on Earth,
• God.... Compared to his incredible powers, we are incredibly dumb so our greatest objective achievements in science and art are relatively lame... why God is more interested in our faith and love than any other aspect of our character.
• Status. If you find a community of people with a shared sense of purpose, whose values inspire virtuous conduct, and whose relationships provide support, guidance, and encouragement, your life will be better.
• people who attend religious services on a weekly basis are nearly twice as likely to describe themselves as “very happy”(45%) than are people who never attend (28%).[ 16]
• Poor areas tend to be more religious...Relatively prosperous people are also happier, yet within these prosperous cohorts, religious people are happier.... given any level of prosperity, religion increases happiness.
• Coda
• In Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution is True, he writes “the battle [for evolution] is part of a wider war, a war between rationality and superstition.
• Wars, alas, are not known for their rationality, rather their propaganda to maintain popular support.
• The focus on the will over reason, classical liberalism, classical virtues, love as the primal motive, that humans are by nature base, shows that the New Testament is right on all the issues that really matter.... for creating a thriving society, Christianity works.
• we can infer transcendent forces indirectly, and most of our knowledge is inferential, not deductive. That is, we see a universal desire for purpose, the benefits in this world of living for the next
• If you estimate rationally, there is a sufficient probability (e.g., 73%) that Christianity is true, with this probability it makes sense to act as if Christianity has a 100% probability of being correct. This is because, in any strategy that takes persistence, once you make the choice to do it you should be “all in.”In the words of a famous short green deist, “Do, or do not, there is no try.”
• My previous attempts to create meaning within the secular humanist worldview were not failures because I did not try hard enough, but rather because you need a lot of luck to do this without God.
• I will not find my purpose by adopting the worldview of some village in Costa Rica. That would not work primarily because I have no social connections in such a village, and without those relationships, the whole thing does not work at all, even if it works for them.

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GOD, LOCKE, AND EQUALITY Christian Foundations of 'John Locke's Political Thought di JEREMY WALDRON - seconsa parte cap. 3 Species and the Shape of Equality

GOD, LOCKE, AND EQUALITY Christian Foundations of 'John Locke's Political Thought di  JEREMY WALDRON -     seconda parte cap. 3 Species and the Shape of Equality

• the importance that Locke attaches to the dividing line between human and non-human species
• "The entire cosmos is the work of God....It is an ordered hierarchy, a `great chain of being', in which every species has its station, its rank."...
• Locke's human egalitarianism depends crucially on the clarity and intelligibility of the species-boundaries.
• we turn to the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. standing. What Locke says there about species is almost entirely at odds with the conception of species-hierarchy
• Locke envisages ages a series of created beings, ascending from the lowest entity to the highest... But it ascends up from us "by gentle degrees"... this chain of being forms a continuous series of entities..."no Chasms, or gaps" between beings
• We language-users have no choice but to confront this continuum with words............difference between this particular cat and that particular dog. Nothing in nature shows that these resemblances and differences categorize themselves into essences.... there is no reason to think that our tendency to organize resemblances into clusters under the auspices of general species-terms reflects anything other than our propensity as language-users to make use of general words.
• I think this offers little in the way of assistance for our use of the concept species in moral and political theory....Locke's account of real essences is far from straightforward...I believe it is basically a pragmatic one:
• Sometimes Locke presents the unavailability to us of objective real essences as a reflection of the limitations on our knowledge.
• In general, we seem to have here a pretty thorough-going anti-realism, so far as species are concerned.
• the putative boundaries between humans mans and other animals are blurred in a number of ways. Fetuses are sometimes oddly shaped, familiarly shaped humans often vary enormously mously in their rational abilities, some allegedly non-human animals have been rumored to have the power of speech, humans have been known to interbreed with apes (Locke alleges), and so on:
• The fact is, says Locke, that you are likely to get disagreement among people as to how to draw the boundaries of the species:
• which internal features caught our attention would be a matter ter of which were inherently interesting to us....it is our interests that would dictate what revisions we made in (what we called) the essence of man.
• when he talks about fetal monstrosities, Locke says that there is a question about whether the entity is entitled to baptism.....I think this shows the absurdity of the Laslett suggestion that we have, on the one hand, Locke the philosopher (uninterested in normative implications) and, on the other hand, Locke the political theorist (uninterested in philosophy).
• On the face of it, the implications of Locke's skepticism about species are pretty serious. If the boundaries of species are made by men and not given by our Creator... "the same individual will be a true Man to the one [party], which is not so to the other"... Locke's comment in Book IV of the Essay, on how an English child might "prove" that a negro is not a man, is really quite disconcerting in this regard.4°
• by rejecting essentialism, Locke is undercutting those theories of human inequality that depend on "essentializing" superficial characteristics like skin color or sex organs. Kathy Squadrito says, for example, that Locke's rejection of external form as real essence means that he doesn't really think there is an important portant difference between men and women.4'
• the point about Locke's anti-essentialism is that it leaves the field wide open for anyone to draw the boundaries...It leaves him with no naturalistic basis whatsoever for distinguishing those creatures
• Maybe this should boost the morale of anti-speciesist defenders of animal rights; but it is hardly calculated to cheer those who think there is something special about humans and human equality.
• Locke is also supposed to have committed himself to a fundamental principle of equality: members of the same species are naturally equal in authority, whatever the other differences between them. But now that species-based notion has collapsed...Locke seems to have deprived himself of the resource he needs to limit
• My strategy in this chapter is to show the indispensability for Locke's theory of equality of the religious aspect of his argument
• In biblical revelation, the only direct intimation of a basis for the distinction of the human species is descent from Adam.... Anyway, a purely genealogical basis for equality and inequality would be practically inadequate.
• Locke says in his political philosophy that any basis for inequality must be evident, clear, and mmnifest.
• Senso comune. So what is to be done? I think that in order to make Locke's account of equality in the Two Treatises consistent with his discussion in Book III ofthe Essay, we have to forget about real essences, and abandon the emphasis on species altogether. I think we should focus instead on   real resemblances between particulars:... We must ask which resemblances are actually doing the crucial work... That will give us his definition of humanity...
• .The emphasis now is on characteristics not on species or ranks of species. The domain of equality will simply be the domain of relevant similarity ity i.e. the possession of faculties that can be regarded as the same or (relevantly) similar.
• Our heuristic now is emphatically...we have to start from the idea of a similarity among faculties that would be robust enough to sustain
• focusing moral attention not on species, but on the complex property of corporeal rationality.... the detail of the issue about species can be left as a purely speculative problem for the naturalists and philosophers.
• Locke. The key, he says, is corporeal rationality...It is intriguing, though, that corporeality is also invoked... This little point, I believe, is quite unintelligible apart from the moral theology. ogy. Locke speculates that there are all sorts of rational beings in the cosmos
• .I don't think he is attempting to commit the naturalistic fallacy by inferring our normative equality from some factual similarity. He says in the Second Treatise that the connection is "evident" (2nd T: 4), but that this is not the same as saying that it is logically implied... like angels, for instance,
• Let us turn now to the rationality criterion....Unfortunately,...non-human animals have minds,... Since they are "not bare Machins (as some would have them), we cannot deny them to have some Reason"
• There are degrees of rationality, both among those we are pre-theoretically inclined to call humans and in a broader class of animals...On this gradual scale, who gets the benefit of equality?
• There is, for example, the human fetus, which, Locke says, "dfers not much from the State of a Vegetable...lunacy, idiocy.......Infants are a slightly different case,.... Locke's argument is that they are to be treated as beings destined for equality, though not our equals at present.... And finally there are the familiar distinctions between the wise and the silly,
• If there is, as Locke says, "a difference of degrees in Men's Understandings...there is a greater distance between some Men and others in this respect than between tween some Men and some Beasts" (E: 4.20.5), then how can we work with or justify any notion of basic equality?
• that, considered as tabulae rasae, our minds are all the same, and that the intellectual differences between us are simply a matter of input and exercise.
• In Book II of the Essay, he argued that what distinguishes humans from other animals is not their capacity to reason per se - for brute animals have some sort of reason - but rather the "power of Abstracting," the capacity to reason on the basis of general ideas.... So, maybe this is Locke's equality-threshold.
• But he quickly indicates that many who bear the nominal essence of man lack the ability to abstract. Many of those we call idiots
• Locke is not offering this capacity to abstract as the real essence of the species human. He is offering it as an interesting resemblance among all the beings
• for Locke the real resemblance on which basic equality rests the ability to form and work with abstract ideas must work rather like what modern political philosophers call a range property....A range property may be understood in terms of a region on a scale.... we may use the binary property of being within the range,l... In John Rawls's own use of the idea, the relevant range property is the capacity for moral personality.
• Relative to the interest driving the specification of the range property, the precise location tion of an entity on the scale is uninteresting. That it is Within the range is all we need to know...Is there anything which can do this work for Locke?
• No matter how inadequate the average human intellect is for a "universal, sal, or perfect Comprehension," it yet secures their great Concernments, that they have Light enough to lead them to the Knowledge of their Maker, and the sight of their own Duties... The existence of God, Locke believes, is something that can be established by the unaided human intellect, whatever that intellect's other limitations.
• God .... He has conferred on those whom He intends to serve Him the rational power that is required for easy recognition of His existence.... Anyone with the capacity for abstraction can reason to the existence of God... he has the minimal capacity to think of himself as a person.
• The fact that a being can get this far, intellectually, by whatever route, shows that he is a creature with a special moral relation to God.
• if I catch a human in full possession of his faculties, I know I should be careful how I deal with him. Because creatures capable of abstraction can be conceived as "all the servants of one Sovereign Master,
• That, it seems to me, is the interest that is driving and shaping Locke's moral conception of "man," and motivating the interest in the particular range of capacities that forms the basis for Lockean equality.
• Someone in denial of or indifferent to the existence of God is not going to be able to come up with anything like the sort of basis for equality that Locke came up with.
• There is no reason for an atheist to recognize such a threshold... The atheist has no basis in his philosophy for thinking that beings endowed with the capacity that Locke emphasizes are for that reason to be treated as special and sacred in the way Locke thought.
• Locke's equality claims are not separable from the theological content that shapes and organizes them. The theological content cannot simply ply be bracketed off as a curiosity
• Lockean equality is not fit to be taught as a secular doctrine; it is a conception of equality that makes no sense except in the light of a particular account of the relation between man and God.

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Incontro presso la scuola Arca di Legnano con Romana Koech e Andrea Bianchessi. AVSI a Nairobi

Incontro presso la scuola Arca di Legnano con Romana Koech e Andrea Bianchessi. AVSI a Nairobi

• Per Avsi la persona è al centro.
• Avsi ha deciso di investire in kenya sulle scuole.
• I risultati sono "pazzeschi".
• Scuola AVSI: nn solo istitruzione.
• Priorità: investire sugli insegnanti.
• Puntare sulla responsabilità: la famiglia deve dare un contributo per evitare dipendenza e pretese.
• Scuola: vaccino contro corruzione e terrorismo.
• Un percorso personalizzato x ogni bambino. Un paese in cui nella scuola statale ci sono 80 bimbi x classe.
• Motto: ogni bimbo è unico.
• I tre problemi del Kenya: tribalismo, corruzione e radicalismo fondamentalista. Il Papa li ha evidenziati. Ma ha parlato anche del bene: tradizione, famiglua e solidarietà.

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Changing the guard di Alex Tabarrok

Changing the guard di Alex Tabarrok

• Il pericolo delle carceri private: troppo efficienti. Rischio di mass incarceration visti i bassi costi e l'efficienza di gestione. Rischio zero amnistie.
• Altro rischio: scarsa trasparenza.
• Vantaggio: i privati nn scaricano sui contribuenti i costi delle risse, dei processi per maltrattamento ecc.
• Intro - tabarrok
• 3 vantaggi del privato. 1 costruisce più in fretta 2 opera a costi inferiori 3 la qualità è almeno pari a quella pubblica.
• La scarsa qualità delle prime prigioni?semplice: hai quello che chiedi. Nei primi contratti il governo aggiudicava solo in base ai costi. Solo ora esistono contratti multivariabile.
• Se il governo è inefficiente nel gestire le prigioni perchè mai dovrebbe essere efficiente nello scrivere i contratti o nel controllarne l'applicazione?
• Analogia: sicurezza negli aeroporti: l 11 settembre costituì un fallimento nella sicurezza ma in realtà tutti i servizi richiesti furono implementati. Era il contratto ad essere sbagliato. L'aeroporto più esposto ad attentati è quello di Tel Aviv e guarda caso la sicurezza è privata
• Bruce Benson: la privatizzazione delle carceri nn è auspicabile poichè rende più efficiente un servizio malvagio. Sarebbe come rendere più efficiente l'esazione delle tasse.
• Cap2  economics of prison kenneth avio
• I carcerati sono quadruplicati dagli 80 ai 90. Ma la prigione paga?
• La prigione riabilita? Martinson 1974: no (nothing work). Conclusione confermata dal the panel of research on rehabilitative techniques.
• Lattimore-Witte: molti programmi sono concepiti male. Recentemente Witte però si è portato sulle posizioni di Martinson. Forse qualche programma particolarmente accurato potrebbe avere qualche effetto nel breve termine. E forse anche nel lungo. Si passa al principio: "nulla funziona bene".
• E i programmi per chi è fuori, quelli almeno funzionano?
• meglio aiutare cercando lavoro che insegnando un lavoro.
• per mallar e thornton dare soldi è più efficace che fornire un lavoro, almeno se misuriamo il recidivismo
• conclusione: 1 la riabilitazione è estremamente costosa 2 nn abbiamo ancora capito cosa funzione 3 il one fits all non esiste.
• la prigione rende alla società? Le risorse dovrebbero essere concentrate per reprimere i giovani più pericolosi
• Donohue e siegelman calcolano un elasticità di deterrenza di 0.15. Considerati i costi sembrerebbe poco conveniente aumentare la popolazione carceraria usa. Ad ogni modo serve un termine di confronto verosimile per trarre conclusioni.
• Prison privatizzazione public policy di samuel brakel e kimberly gaylord
• tesi: privatizzare parte della macchina carceraria. L efficienza crescerà ovunque.
• opposizione alla privatizzazione. Motivi:1 deteriora l'immaginario simbolico 2 ci sono problemi legali
• l importanza di un buon contratto.
• il problema delle carceri statali:1 costi 2 sovra popolazione.
• oggi negli usa la maggior parte dei servizi di giustizia (prigioni, tribunali, polizia) è privata.

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Governare i beni collettivi di Elinor Ostrom

Governare i beni collettivi di Elinor Ostrom

• Che differenza c è tra i beni comuni e i beni pubblici?
• I beni comuni sono difficili da delimitare anche se l esclusione e cmq possibile.
• Tesi ostrom: nn esiste una dicotomia pubblico/privato ma un continum. Spesso le scelte sono cooperative e le istituzioni che governano i beni comuni sono flessibili e non eteroimposte.
• Gli utenti spesso hanno tra loro una vicinanza familiare e collaborano in un processo partecipativo. Il localismo è esaltato, così come l autogestione
• Esempi di risorse comuni: banchi di pesca, pascoli, co,tivazioni open fields, risorse idriche
• Le consuetudine spesso s impongono sull esclusiva perchè quest'ultima è troppo costosa da applicare, pensiamo ai banchi di pesca. Del resto la socializzazione è talmente inefficiente...
• Spesso le soluzioni ottimali sono state abbandonate perchè ritenute anti moderne. Le riforme agrarie hanno snobbato le so,uzioni open field per favorire la frammentazione artificiosa o la concentrazione. Anche la tecnica e le macchine hanno remato contro.
• Tesi: soluzioni open field tornano dove le istituzioni sono sufficientemente elastiche.
• SoLuzioni open fields sembrano limitare i rischi.
• L open field è nella pratica una proprietà privata sottoposta a vincoli d uso. Esempio: la rotazione triennale grano orzo maggese scelta dal paese, i privati si adeguano. A ciò si associava il diritto di spigolatura e l obbligo di seminare tutti insieme. Anche il bestiame era privato ma soggetto a regole collettive. Spesso esisteva poi una quota di terreno più collettivizzata delle altre.
• Esempio italiano: i boschi dell alto cadore. La legna come combustibile. I pascoli comuni cuscinetto evitavano l investimento in staccionate. Dopo la raccolta i campi venivano aperti per spigolatura e pascoli.
• Il bene comune nn era poi tanto comune visto che la restrizione di sfruttamento assegnava privilegi ad una ristretta cerchia di nobili
• Il common prevede una chiara definizione della comunità degli aventi diritto. Spesso anzi è necessario appartenere alla cerchia dei patri. Per questo forse i maggiori successi si colgono nelle aeree alpine e impervie in generale. La terra veniva difesa ferocemente dall arrivo degli outsider.
• L' esclusività è più efficace dei common per garantire sfruttamenti di lu go periodo. D altro canto favorendo la concentrazione favorisce anche l abbandono contro delle terre.
• Anche internet potrebbe essere trattata come un common.

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GOD, LOCKE, AND EQUALITY Christian Foundations of 'John Locke's Political Thought di JEREMY WALDRON - prima parte cap. 3 Species and the Shape of Equality

GOD, LOCKE, AND EQUALITY Christian Foundations of 'John Locke's Political Thought di  JEREMY WALDRON -     prima parte cap- 3 Species and the Shape of Equality

• xchè nn possiamo omettere la dimensione religiosa in locke?
• rawls ha bisogno di premettere il valore dell uguaglianza ma nn vuole compromissioni religiose
• relazione comando/comandante
• es. nn uccidere l altro... xchè anch esso è a immagine di dio... che relazione c è tra la prima e la seconda parte (quella religiosa)
• le ragioni di un comando ci consentono di capirlo meglio? sì quando il predicato è astratto e indeterminato
• nel precetto dell eguaglianza tra uomini il termine umano riceve il suo contenuto dall affermazione religiosa
• contenuto del comando e ragioni del comando nn sono sempre separabili ma interagiscono specie nei comandi astratti: siate onesti. questo fatto mette in crisi i nn cognitivisti
• "gli uomini sono uguali"... il concetto di uomo è in parte determinato dal comando e nn solo viceversa
• la necessità di definire l umano spiazza rawls e i laici
• @@@
• il principio di eguaglianza fa della specie umana qualcosa di speciale
• una filosofia che nn distingue tra specie crea grave danno alla filosofia ma x distinguere occorre introdurre l elemento religioso
• il dominio dell uomo sul creato
• .....
• Macintyre's observation:... arguments of John Locke concerning basic equality and individual rights were so imbued with religious content that they were not fit, constitutionally, stitutionally, to be taught in the public schools
• Why are we not able to bracket off the theological dimension of Locke's commitment to equality?
• Why can't we put the religious premises in parentheses?...this hope is crucial for modern secular liberalism.... Rawls's system definitely requires a premise of equality... but I am doubtful that this Rawlsian strategy will work.
• Rawlsian strategy... religious content has a purely external relation to the equality principle. By an external relation, I mean a relation that does not go to the meaning
• Consider, for example, the relation of some proposition about a commander to the content of his command.
• For example, the Sixth Commandment has a content "Thou shalt not kill" which seems logically quite independent of any proposition about... what one might call the preface to the Decalogue "I am the Lord thy God,
• The commandment to Noah prohibiting murder cites as a reason the fact that potential victims of murder are made in the image of the person (God) who has issued the commandment.... There the religious aspect seems to have an internal relation to the commandment,
• Someone might object that this confuses content with reasons....the fact that P is cited as a reason for Q doesn't mean that P is indispensable for understanding the meaning of Q
• Now this is sometimes true, especially where the reasons in question establish nothing but an instrumental relationship.....I think the Rawlsians overestimate the extent to which it is true generally,
• Abstract principles of justice and rights characteristically need to be filled
• I have argued this elsewhere with regard to John Stuart Mill's "Harm Principle."8
• I think this is particularly the case where a moral principle involves predicates whose extension is not given determinately apart from the principle in question.
• I believe this is also true of the predicate "human" in the principle of basic human equality.
• in Locke's account, the shape of human.....is not in the end separable from the religious reasons... If someone arrives at what purports to be a principle of human equality on other grounds (e.g., non-religious grounds), there is little reason to believe that that principle will have the same shape or texture as the Lockean principle....
• Many non-cognitivists assume that moral positions are subjective responses to factual features
• They think this is true not just of moral positions like "Causing pain is wrong," where it is clear that we can use the descriptive words "causing pain" to identify the actions concerned... but also that it is true of moral positions involving "thick" moral concepts, positions tions like "Honesty is the best policy" and "Courage cannot be taught."... concepts like honesty and courage can be analyzed into descriptive components referring to some fact about the world
• John McDowell and others have expressed doubts about the general applicability of this pattern of analysis. What, asks McDowell, makes us so confident that we can always disentangle the descriptive properties from the evaluative response?
• The descriptive features underlying a given normative attitude might well seem weird or "shapeless""
• I think a version of McDowell's point may apply to the concept human embedded in our commitment to equality.... But our concept human may be partly shaped by our commitment to equality,
• Locke's religious premises help to make sense of or give shape to a certain cluster of human characteristics
• shapelessness point deprives the Rawlsians and others who favor the bracketing approach
• All men are equal...These are familiar egalitarian propositions. To whom do they apply?...I shall devote the rest of this chapter to an exploration of some of the extraordinary difficulties thatJohn Locke gets into as he tries to answer these questions,
• John Locke asserts as a matter of principle the fundamental equality of all members of the human species. Members of this species have a special status, or occupy a special moral position quite unlike that of any other animal....any parallel for the co-members of any other species.
• But in his philosophy of science...Locke comes very close to saying that there are no such things as species....species are at best just human conventions... The danger that this poses to the moral and political argument is enormous.
• Locke is not a pragmatist, like (say) Richard Rorty, proposing to keep a whole moral system tem afloat by using some conventional commitments to evaluate others.13 His approach in the Two Treatises and in his other political writings is explicitly plicitly foundationalist,
• A causa di qs difficoltà... we have been taught by historians of the Cambridge school- in particular ular Peter Laslett and his followers to assume that Locke's politics can and should be studied in more or less complete isolation from the rest of his philosophy...."Locke is, perhaps, the least consistent of all the great philosophers,
• Ma... The actual evidence cited for Locke's having contradicted himself was always quite slight
• Well, I believe they are wrong...it is not just a matter of noticing the difficulty and then winching down God to resolve it.
• Locke talks about God's decision to "make a Species of Creatures, that should have Dominion over the other Species

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GOD, LOCKE, AND EQUALITY Christian Foundations of 'John Locke's Political Thought di JEREMY WALDRON - 2Adam and Eve

GOD, LOCKE, AND EQUALITY Christian Foundations of 'John Locke's Political Thought di  JEREMY WALDRON - 2 Adam and Eve - nn finito

• uomo donna
• 1 entrambi a immagine di dio 2 entrambi dotati di ragione => la diseguaglianza prospettata è quindi di ruolo
• ....
• There is, first, an awkwardness...at having to make explicit... that humans are special and that some of the more obvious differences between them are irrelevant to the fundamentals of moral
• Secondly, we are discomfited at the prospect of having to take seriously, even if only for the sake of clarity and refutation, racist and sexist positions
• Filmer sottolinea... The biblical subordination of Eve to Adam
• women as much as men are created in the image of God and endowed with the modicum of reason that is, for Locke, the criterion of human equality.

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Presentazione de La bellezza disarmata a Rho. Intervengono: Fausto Bertinotti, Eugenio Borgna, Julián Carrón

Presentazione de La bellezza disarmata a Rho. Intervengono: Fausto Bertinotti, Eugenio Borgna, Julián Carrón - appunti

• Borgna
• L amicizia. Un miracolo, come la bellezza. Sintonia dei cuori.
• La tristezza. Nostalgia dell assente ed emersione della domanda.
• Interiorità. È lì che abita la verità. Agostino. La voce dell infinito passa di lì. Cuore: parola biblica x indicare la ricchezza interiore.
• Solitudine. Da distinguere dall isolamento (prigionia)
• Speranza. Una zattera su cui imbarcarsi. Il treno dell eterno si ferma grazie a lei. Da separate dalle speranze concrete.
• Umanità. Passione: comunicazione del cuore che alimenta la ragione.
• Mistero. Il confine della ragione. Imho: complessità e scoperta infinita.
• Incontro. Testimonianza reciproca. Luogo dell attenzione.
• Bertinotti
• Il libro: un corpo a corpo tra la fede e il potere.
• Altra opposizione: morte e resurrezione
• La domanda politica: la crisi aiuta la rinascita? S intende una crisi di civiltà.
• B.  è pessimista... la catastrofe dell umano è possibile... a meno che... accada un evento. Un imprevisto. Una scintilla.
• Nume: Benjamin, marxista triste: il capitalismo è una religione disumana.
• L attesa nn deve essere inerte.
• Dal dialogo verrà la scintilla decisiva. Un dialogo che coniughi fede e dubbio. La fede da sola è violenza che s'impone ma temperata dal dubbio è confronto aperto.
• Altra endiade: libertà e comunità. La comunità può diventare una corazza (per fare la guerra). È la libertá che ti salva.
• Eclisse del popolo. Altra faccia della perdita di evidenze.
• Perchè tanta sordità della sinistra verso il dialogo con Carron? Perchè la sconfitta ci rende individualista.
• Muraro: la ragione moderna è disumana nn dialoga e nn parla dell uomo.
• Il dialogo implica un rischio. Abbiamo coraggio?
• La novità: lo scarto. La migrazione. Il migrante è l altro e ci chiede dialogo.
• Il potere oggi è impersonale. Il dialogo deve sfuggire al potere.
• Carron
• Il mistero dell essere. Ci serve una ragione che lo renda.
• Cultura americana: per dialogare lasciamo perdere la ricchezza. Dubbio: ma allora che gusto c è?
• La crisi e la paura si auto alimentano. Occorre uno scatto. Un ergersi x il dialogo.
• Il dialogo oggi è più probabile. Prima eravamo troppo sicuri nella propria fede.
• Ma la fede chiude o apre alla realtà?
• La fede nn si oppone alla ricerca.  Più incontro più desidero conoscere. La fede scatena la ricerca. E la fede cristiana ancora di più. Perchè nn è un insieme di dottrine ma è carne.
• Se la fede è ricerca il fondamentalismo che la impone è contrario alla sua natura.
• Appartenenza: per appartenere devo rinunciare o usare la libertà? I figli come appartengono alla famiglia.
• Ci aspettiamo troppo dalle regole. Dobbiamo invece motivare con l esempio e la testimonianza.
• Metodo di dio: sceglie un uomo per cambiare il mondo: Abramo.

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GOD, LOCKE, AND EQUALITYChristian Foundations of 'John Locke's Political Thought di JEREMY WALDRON - Introduction

GOD, LOCKE, AND EQUALITYChristian Foundations of 'John Locke's Political Thought di  JEREMY WALDRON - Introduction

• messaggio cristiano: creati eguali...eg. di base...raccolto da locke
• domanda consueta: quale uguaglianza?
• nostra domanda: xchè l uguaglianza
• Dworkin: l eguaglianza data x scontata (il dibattito è su quale). Ma xchè tanta sicumera?
• xchè giustificare l uguaglianza?: nessuno la nega.
• ai tempi di locke era negata: filmer
• x locke l assioma dell eg. è un assioma teologico
• che fatica tradurre locke nel linguaggio di oggi
• il ponte: anche x noi l eguaglianza è un valore difficilmente relativizzabile... col relativista qui casca l asino
• il ponte: l uguaglianza come valore pre politico
• il fondamento cristiano: secondo l a. è necessario x difendere la causa dell e.
• alternative:isaia berlin e la difesa utilitaristica... argomento circolare
• confutazione di filmer: 1 primo trattato: sulla base delle scritture 2 sec. trattato: sulla base della ragione
• 1 trattato: fissa l eguaglianza 2 trattato: spiega l eguaglianza
• filmer e aristotele... inegalitarismo particolare e generale... diritto divino dei re contro schiavi naturali
• l argomento religioso x la libertà è spesso caricaturizzato... cpn locke c è l occasione di prenderlo sul serio
• .......
• equality: the proposition that humans are all one another's equals created equal,
• I propose to explore in the company ofthe seventeenth-century English political philosopher John Locke.
• Testo. The Reasonableness of Christianity is as well-worked-out a theory of basic equality as we have in the canon of political philosophy.
• Philosophers ask whether we should be aiming for equality ofwealth, equality ofincome, equality of happiness, or equality of opportunity... mitigation of poverty;
• La questino del libro. Not "What are its implications?" but "What does this foundational equality amount to?"... "What is the character of our deeper commitment to treating all human beings as equals
• Il silenzio degli egalitaristi. Distinction between basic equality and equality as an aim is fundamental to Dworkin's work. Yet Dworkin has said next to nothing... He has devoted very little energy to the task of considering what that principle amounts to in itself... He maintains that it is an obvious and generally accepted truth
• .If he is right and I think he is then there is a failure of argument on a very broad front indeed.
• No doubt part of the reason for reticence here has to do with the unpleasantness or offensiveness of the views - sexist and racist
• Esperimento mentale. In philosophy generally erally one sometimes has to pretend to be a weirdo... In political philosophy, one has to appear to take seriously positions that in other contexts would be dismissed out of hand as offensive...
• By contrast John Locke and his contemporaries...were confronted with such denials,
• Sir Robert Filmer, the great proponent of patriarchalism... and the divine right of kings...in the same Multitude ... there is one Man amongst them, that in Nature hath a Right to be king
• It was the contrary position the principle of equality that seemed radical, disreputable, beyond reason, valid only as a philosophical hypothesis
• Locke, beyond doubt, was one of these equality-radicals... Political correctness argued the other way,
• Locke accorded basic equality the strongest grounding that a principle could have: it was an axiom of theology, understood as perhaps the most important truth about God's way
• Locke attempting to think through the consequences of this radicalism.... holding fast to what he knew was a counter-intuitive position,
• We are not accustomed to debate public controversies about equality using Old Testament sources;
• "Creatures of the same Species and rank"... "there is no appeal but to Heaven"
• Even if we say it is "just" a metaphor, it is a forbidding enough task to explain to a modern student what makes the metaphor apt,
• potential for anachronism and misunderstanding,
• many of us believe that this business of respecting one another as equals might have to be referred, in turn, to the idea of something important in or about human nature.
• Locke was exploring the possibility that humans were by nature worthy of respect as one another's equals, not just one another's equals in the politics of late seventeenth-century England,
• The title of my Carlyle Lectures and the sub-title of this book refer to the Christian foundations of Locke's political thought......Why "Christian"? Why not just "Religious Foundations of Equality"?...Locke was intensely interested in Christian doctrine...Dunn has argued that the whole frame of discussion in the Two Treatises of Government is "saturated with Christian assumptions..... Jesus Christ (and Saint Paul) may not appear in person in the text of the Two Treatises but their presence can hardly be missed
• I want to ask, not only whether we can discern the influence of Christian teaching... but also whether one can even make sense of a position like Locke's.........apart from the specifically biblical and Christian teaching that he associated with it.
• For Dunn, I suspect, the theological logical and specifically biblical and Christian aspects ofLockean equality are features of Locke's theory that make it largely irrelevant to our concerns. Locke's political theory of its theological foundations is a way of confining Locke to the seventeenth century.
• the deep philosophical commitments ments of a modern theory would likely be oriented to secular values such as autonomy or dignity or human flourishing,
• Tesi. I actually don't think it is clear that we now can shape and defend an adequate conception of basic human equality apart from some religious foundation.
• Isaiah Berlin, for example, imagines that there might be a utilitarian defense of basic equality.... But that is hopelessly confused.
• "Every man to count for one, nobody for more than one"32 is partly constitutive of utilitarianism, and so cannot be defended on utilitarian grounds except in a question-begging way.
• Locke confronted the claim, put forward in his own time, that these fundamental, apparently transcendent positions, could be understood on a purely secular basis. He had grave reservations about these claims,
• To treat Locke's argument as though it were a secular argument.... is one sort of anachronism.
• One has only to read the first of Locke's Two Treatises to become aware that we are in a quite different intellectual world
• Every Locke scholar, and not just those of a secular bent, views the methods and substance of the First Treatise as strange and disconcerting... "reason" part of the argument is mostly presented in the Second Treatise... So it is tempting to say that the First Treatise is just irrelevant to our modern concerns.
• Of course, part of John Locke's interest in the specifically biblical part of his argument is connected with the determination, driving his work in the Two Treatises, to refute the specific claims of Sir Robert Filmer,
• the most familiar philosophic defense of general inegalitarianism, namely Aristotle's theory of natural slavery.
• Filmer's primary interest is in identifying specific individuals who have authority over others, rather than classes or types of individual in some general hierarchy.4° A theory of the divine right of kings is particularistic... So this too seems to deprive Filmer's theory and its refutation of most of its interest for us.
• as Locke points out, Filmer is not consistent in his particularism....but much ofthe time he seems to be arguing for absolute authority in the abstract... Locke's attack at this point is one of the most powerful
• nobody in particular could possibly have the authority that Filmer says Adam and his heirs have had because of the relation that God has established among people in general.
• dispel the impression, which John Dunn's article might leave us with, that Locke is so different from us... Locke like us is interested in the meta-theoretical question
• First Treatise is an indispensable resource in the reconstruction of Locke's theory of equality... The First Treatise is nothing but a defense of the proposition that humans are, basically, one another's equals; it is a defense of the basis on which the Second Treatise proceeds.
• Secular theorists often assume that they know what a religious argument is like........a crude prescription from God,l.......they contrast it with the elegant complexity of a philosophical argument by Rawls (say) or Dworkin.... I suspect that it might be as caricatural.... ma.... Religious arguments ments are more challenging
• One virtue, then, of devoting all this time and all this space to an analysis and elaboration of Locke's religious case for equality is that it promises not only to deepen our understanding

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Praise: Substitution versus Income Effects, Bryan Caplan

Praise: Substitution versus Income Effects, Bryan Caplan

• Touchy-feely parents shower praise on their kids.   "Great job!"   "You're super smart!"   "Wonderful."   Old-school parents do the opposite.   "You could have done better."
• I suspect, is emotional rather than strategic. Parents praise or withhold because that's what feels right to them.
• accordingly.The pro-praise story: Praise is a form of reward.
• The anti-praise story: Yes, praise is a form of reward. But the more rewards kids rack up , the more satisfied they feel. The more satisfied they feel, the less effort kids exert.Framed
• pro- and anti-praise debate boils down to the intermediate micro analysis of the substitution and income effects.
• Touchy-feel parents also typically avoid shaming their kids.   Old-school parents, in contrast, shame freely.  
• Here, then, old-school parents seem to rely on the substitution effect - the greater the cost of bad behavior, the smaller the quantity.  
• Touchy-feely parents, in contrast, seem to tacitly appeal to the income effect: A shamed kid will act even worse because he has so little left to lose.
• Personally, my parenting style embraces the substitution effect in both directions.....That's definitely more consistent

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License parenting. Parenting Failure and Government Failure di STEVE HORWITZ martin gurri andrew cohen

License parenting

• Parenting Failure and Government Failure di STEVE HORWITZ
• public choice: licenza? ma quali sono le alternative alla famiglia?
• possiamo scrivere l esame del buon genitore?
• xchè la patente: 1 il bambino è debole 2 non c è competizione
• adam gurri: il problema affrontato dai 3 liberalismi (diritti utilitarismo hayekiani)
• la famiglia: l istituzione più ricca di tradizione
• gli amish e il test del buon genitore
• ......
• I also draw on some material from my forthcoming book on classical liberalism and the family.
• If one believes that the state’s job is to prevent harm to third parties, and that’s a key part of Andrew’s argument, it is not a priori out of bounds to ask what the state could do to protect children from harm by parents and others.
• the argument Andrew makes is a perfect example of what can happen when philosophers (and others) make arguments about what government should do in the absence of serious consideration of the way in which the state actually works.
• “if the state worked just the way we philosophers say it should…”
• That is, government failure is just as real as market failure and parenting failure.
• we can ask in the case of “parenting failure”whether there are other institutions
• There is enough empirical evidence on the problems with foster care, especially short-term placements where the incentive to really behave as a steward for the child is weaker
• Andrew says children of parents who fail the license test should be “put up for adoption by someone licensed.”
• In short, everyone with a pet issue or a financial gain to be made will be lobbying the process to see their particular concern added to the test of adequate parenting.... One need only think of the controversy over Lenore Skenazy’sFree Range Kids
• I would argue that in the case of parenting licenses, the imperfections of politics raise a much greater danger than do the imperfections of parenting,
• The Organic Body Politics and Parental Licensure BY ADAM GURRI
• the storied divide between “first principles” libertarians, who usually subscribe to some theory of natural rights, and consequentialist libertarians.... Rarely discussed is a third, more Hayekian approach,
• Because children don’t have the power to pick who their parents are, and there’s no similar competitive mechanism to make sure they’re more likely to end up with good parents, he argues that parenting should be licensed for the sake of children’s safety.
• Personally, I found Cohen’s proposal quite shocking. The family is the oldest, most durable institution that humanity has.
• Responding to a thick and rich history with something as simple as the harm principle is to do injustice to that history.
• To think that the people who inherit that system today can be directed by the motivations of one man, a philosopher-designer
• Cohen’s plan requires an army of evaluators
• Il progetto:
• First, a means test—that is, no one that cannot afford to raise a child should have a child... The second, and more important, test would be a psychological exam
• specify what it means to “understand how to parent”or “handle the stress a child brings”. And this isn’t a problem that can be solved with oversight—
• Such top-down enforced monoculture of ethics and lifestyles ought to be anathema to libertarians and liberals of all sorts,
• never put all your eggs in one basket...
• to force a society into monoculture is to plant a time bomb under its feet... positive externalities will be lost when the long tail of lifestyles is cut off?
• Does anyone seriously think that such a central body would tolerate radically different parenting styles such as the Amish
• What I’m suggesting here is that the only way to affect change of human systems is as a participant, not an architect.
• Licensing Parents
• @@@@IMHO@@@@@@
• Plausibilità della richiesta:
• 1il genitore può fare molti danni
• 2 diamo patenti x meno
• argomenti contro
• 1 differenze tra famiglia e nazione: 1 i valori famigliari sono autentici, tanto è vero che nn richiedono coercizione 2 la famiglia è + morale, nn richiede doppio standard
• 2 fallisce la f. ma anche lo s. specie laddove la  centrale: meglio che la disciplina sia insegnata da chi ama
• 3 nel dubbio privilegiare ciò che rende felice genitori e figli nel breve periodo ovvero f.
• 4 stili educativi. Tipico ambito a ipotesi nulla
• 5 guidare una macchina è complicatissimo ma nn complesso: nn dobbiamo scoprire come si fa. Sull'educazione di un figlio siamo invece perennemente alla ricerca di soluzioni.

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HL The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority DI Martin Gurri Chapter 3 My Thesis

The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority DI Martin Gurri  Chapter 3 My Thesis

• I’m not a visionary prophesying doom.......
• .If I describe the present accurately, I will have achieved my goal.
• If, after all these admissions, you were to ask me why you should read on, I would respond:   because the world I’ll describe is probably very different from the one you think you’re living in.example
• because we still think in categories forged during the industrial age –liberal and conservative, for , or professional and amateur –our minds are blind
• A War of the Worlds, Deduced From the Devil’s Excrement
• My thesis is a simple one.   We are caught between an old world which is decreasingly able to sustain us intellectually and spiritually, maybe even materially, and a new world that has not yet been born.   Given the character of the forces of change, we may be stuck for decades in this ungainly posture.
• Many features we prized about the old world are also threatened: for example, liberal democracy and economic stability.
• public discussion, may also warp or break from the immoveable resistance of the established order.
• Each side in the struggle has a standard-bearer: authority for the old... the public for the uncertain dispensation striving to become manifest.
• The perturbing agent between authority and the public is information.
• The industrial age insisted on portentous-sounding names of great seriousness..“Bank of America,”“National Broadcasting Corporation,”“New York Times. ”
• The digital age loves self-mocking names... “Yahoo,”“Google,”“Twitter,”“reddit,”“Flickr,”“Photobucket,”“Bitcoin.”
• I feel reasonably sure that the founders of Google never contemplated naming their company “National Search Engine Corporation”and Mark Zuckerman of Facebook never felt tempted by “Social Connections Center of America.”  It wasn’t the style. The names of two popular political blogs from the early days of blogging, Glenn Reynolds’Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, poked fun at the pretentiousness of the news business.
• The names asserted non-authoritativeness. They created a conscious divide between the old order and the new.
• Hierarchy has ruled the world since the human race attained meaningful numbers.... From the era of Rameses to that of Hosni Mubarak,
• Against this citadel of the status quo, the Fifth Wave has raised the network: that is, the public in revolt,
• Wael Ghonim’s passionate insistence on being an ordinary Egyptian rather than a political leader was an expression of digital culture.
• If hierarchy worships the established order, the network nurtures a streak of nihilism.
• The Center Cannot Hold And the Border Has No Clue What To Do About It
• Another way to characterize the collision of the two worlds is as an episode in the primordial contest between the Center and the Border.
• Making a program is a center strategy; attacking center programs on behalf of nature, God, or the world is border strategy.
• Government lost control of its own classified documents.   Book publishers and the TV and movie industries, still very profitable today, depend on technical and copyright regimes which could be breached at any moment.
• On 9/ 11, a miniscule network of violent men slaughtered thousands of Americans..... Obama, propelled by online networks which generated funds, volunteers, and an effective anti-Center message,
• sectarian advances have been reversed.   My suspicion is that they must be reversed, if sects –the public in revolt –truly have no interest in governing and possess no capacity for exercising power.
• The result is paralysis by distrust. The Border, it is already clear, can neutralize but not replace the Center. Networks can protest and overthrow, but never govern.
• The closest historical parallel to our time may have been the wars of religion of the seventeenth century. I say this not necessarily because of the chaos and bloodshed of the period, but because every principle was contested.... “Who won – Catholics or Protestants?”... Neither won.
• My great concern as a citizen is for the future of liberal democracy.... That democracy became hierarchical, organizational, an institution of the Center... Many aspects of representative democracy have become less democratic, and are so perceived by the public.
• How it changes may depend on the aggregated decisions of individual citizens –in other words:   on us –no less than on procedural reforms.
• Cyber-Utopians, Cyber-Skeptics, Cyber-Pessimists, And How All Their Sound and Fury Signifies Very Little
• A century of research on media and information effects has delivered confusing if not contradictory findings.
• 3 modelli
• 1 do I, in my condition as a member of the public, accept all the mediators’ information, and act accordingly?... Lippmann argued... Propaganda, on this account, injected new opinions and actions directly into the gullible brains of the public.
• 2 I accept none of the mediators’information, because my moral and political beliefs were formed by “strong”social bonds, like church and family, rather than “weak”links like reading a newspaper?   That also has been proposed, most recently by Malcolm Gladwell
• 2 bis do I engage in a “two-step”process, in which I first absorb the opinions of a strong personal connection, like a trusted friend or minister, and only then accept certain mediated information?
• 3 Or is it the case that mediators have no power to control how I think or act, but can command my attention to those public issues... Roland Schatz,
• Some writers saw in digital media a boost to human collaboration and democracy.   Critics dubbed this tribe cyber-utopians.   Others found in the internet all manner of ills –the corruption of our culture, for example, or an invitation for governments to spy on their citizens.   These were the cyber-pessimists.   A third, much smaller group wondered whether anything important had really changed:   call them cyber-skeptics.
• Malcolm Gladwell... compared the strong personal ties of the civil rights activists in the 1960s with the weak ties between participants in online causes like the Save Darfur Coalition.   Only strong ties, argued Gladwell, made possible the informal coordination... real politics happened among comrades..Gladwell is a thinker of the Center, a mind of the industrial age.... He explicitly identified strong ties with hierarchy,
• Clay Shirky has noted that a committed activist with strong personal ties to others also can expand his reach by becoming a Facebook warrior.
• Gladwell at least grounded his skepticism on a traditional conception of power:   hard trumped soft, scissors always cut paper.   I find it harder to make sense of the warnings of the cyber-pessimists.   pessimists hover somewhere between pointless and trivially true.
• The favorite goat of cyber-skeptics and cyber-pessimists has been Clay Shirky, whose 2008 book, Here Comes Everybody, was described by Gladwell as “the bible of the social media movement”...Shirky walks on the sunny side of the street,... His message was that the new digital platforms made it easy for groups to “self-assemble,”and that the rise of such spontaneous groups was bound to lead, sooner or later, to social and political change.
• Ancora la tesi. power has fundamentally shifted between authority and obedience, ruler and ruled, elite and public, so that each can inflict damage on the other but neither can attain a decisive advantage.   That is the non-utopian thesis of this book.
• Homo Informaticus, Or How Choice Can Bring Down Governments
• This anxiety to control information in those who already controlled the guns should alert us that political power may be less “hard,”and more intangible, than supposed.
• Power....a matter of trust, faith, and fear,
• the potential influence of information over political power flows more from its fit into stories of legitimacy than from, say, investigative reporting
• the rise of a restless, disruptive organism, which I have taken the bold step to name Homo informaticus... products of....the spread of education, expanded levels of wealth and security, and improved means of communication.
• Unmediated Man lacked access to any media.   He was likely to be illiterate, and had neither the means nor the interest to travel very far.   His only channels of information were the people around him...... the typical Egyptian of 1980,
• Il regime.... To impose its will on Unmediated Man, it had to find a way to convey the particulars to him, in the context of a persuasive justifying story.......for the regime to communicate and interact with Unmediated Man in terms advantageous to its story of legitimacy, it needed only to control the community... regime appointed the local authorities
• Unmediated Man....may have protested, even violently, against local conditions, but he could never seek to overthrow the political system.
• Homo informaticus is a differently-endowed member of the public: he’s literate, and has access to newspapers, radio, movies, TV. He has been exposed to a larger world beyond the immediate community..... conceives of an alternative form of government
• To cover the threat, the regime must deploy a costly and elaborate state media apparatus.... control, the means of mass communication: newspapers, radio, TV, books, cinema, etc.
• regime’s story of legitimacy are gone forever.   Under these conditions, the best outcome for the regime is acceptance by the public that the world is too complex to be understood
• we can say with confidence that it won’t be triggered unless the public is shown a differently-ordered world:   a choice.
• A trivial example would be a TV commercial for a new, improved dishwasher detergent. A political example was the jolt of hope experienced by the Egyptian opposition after the fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia.
• If H. informaticus were to try to absorb this mass, his head would explode.   This is not what transpires.   He will pick and choose.   So will other members of the public.   By that very selectivity, that freedom to choose its channels of information, the public breaks the power of the mediator class created by mass media, and, under authoritarian rule, controlled by the regime.
• An accurate representation based on volume would show state media to be microscopic, invisible,
• The regime accumulates pain points: police brutality, economic mismanagement, foreign policy failures...... In essence, government failure now sets the agenda.
• At this stage, the public, clustered around networked communities
• hypotheses sulla relazione info-potere
• 1 Information influences politics because it is indigestible by a government’s justifying story.
• 2 The greater the diffusion of information to the public, the more illegitimate any political status quo will appear.
• 3 Homo informaticus, networked builder and wielder of the information sphere, poses an existential challenge to the legitimacy of every government he encounters.

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Speriamo che i ricchi diventino ancora più ricchi By lodovico pizzati - fisco americano

Speriamo che i ricchi diventino ancora più ricchi By lodovico pizzati - fisco americano

• Praticamente metà degli americani non paga tasse sul reddito. E tre quarti dei nuclei familiari arriva, al massimo, ad un’aliquota marginale del 15%. In questo sistema l’84% dei $ 1.4 trilioni di entrate dalla tassa sul reddito viene pagato solo dal 20% più ricco, gente che guadagna almeno $ 10,000 al mese.
• entrate fiscali di $ 3 trilioni (dati 2014). Di questi il grosso sono proprio income taxes: $ 1.4 trilioni, pari al 42% della torta. Un altro 40% sono le payroll taxes che vanno a pagare la social insurance. Le corporate taxes sono solo $ 0.3 trilioni (un misero 10% del totale). Il resto sono tasse minori.
• Poi ogni stato raccoglie soprattutto le sales taxes, mentre le città si tengono le property taxes.
• ci sono una serie di possibili detrazioni che tralascierò per concetrarmi sulle due principali: la standard deduction e la exemption.
• la standard deduction di $ 12,600 per coppie (e $ 6,300 per singoli).
• le exemptions, e cioè $ 4,000 per ogni membro del nucleo
• prendiamo il nostro average Joe che guadagna con la moglie $ 53,000 in lordo.... Scopriamo che il suo reddito tassabile finisce per essere $ 24,400........... con $ 24,400 di reddito tassabile la income tax è $ 2,741. E il nostro average Joe le paga? No! Il fisco americano ti fa una sorpresa perché una volta che hai scoperto quanto devi pagare, ora puoi dedurre il child tax credit, ovvero togli altri $ 1000 per ogni figlio che hai.... una famiglia tipica paga $ 741 all’anno, e cioè il 1,4% scarso, praticamente nulla.... Insomma, pressapoco metà degli americani non deve praticamente neanche pagare l’income tax.
• Guardiamo all’altro vicino di casa di average Joe, quello a capo della famiglia che guadagna in lordo $ 68,200... paga solo il 6,6% del lordo.
• Guardiamo a quella modesta famiglia che guadagna $ 112,262,.... Qui siamo nel ceto medio-alto (upper-middle class)....una tassa media solo del 9,4% rispetto al lordo!
• In sintesi, gli americani più poveri (quelli con un reddito equivalente alla media italiana) ovviamente pagano zero tasse, ma praticamente anche il ceto medio-basso non ha tasse da pagare. Il ceto medio-alto al massimo vede delle aliquote al 10% e 15%. In sostanza è solo il 20% più ricco che paga
• ricchi, quel 20% della popolazione che guadagna il 50% del reddito nazionale e che paga l’ 84% del totale delle tasse sul reddito versate....
• negli Stati Uniti l‘80% della popolazione è un free rider sulla groppa del 20% più ricco. Non solo, ci sono delle esternalità positive ad avere tutti questi ricconi. Pensiamo alla Google car di Page e Brin che darà la possibilità al nostro average Joe di avere l’autista personale. Pensiamo a Bezos e Musk che, indipendentemente, hanno fatto atterrare un razzo in verticale, consentendo enormi risparmi per il settore spaziale.... Pensiamo alle auto elettriche di Musk, alla filantropia di Gates... Oltre a queste esternalità positive i ricchi pagano il conto per tutti.
• mentre le decisioni su come amministrare il bene pubblico vengono prese dalla maggioranza.
• speriamo che i ricchi diventino ancora più ricchi, perchè in questo sistema vuol dire non solo niente tasse per il ceto medio basso, ma ormai anche sempre meno tasse anche per il ceto medio alto.
• il sistema fiscale americano è progressivo fino ad un certo punto. La partita si gioca all’interno del top 20% (vedi tabella WSJ): tra il 19% di famiglie che guadagnano tra un $ 120mila a un $ 600mila all’anno (un 62 milioni di americani), e il top 1%
• le 50mila famiglie di multi milionari (e i bilionari) che usufruiscono di scappatoie fiscali costruite ad hoc a suon di lobbying. 
• è una battaglia tra alcuni milioni di ricchi come Sanders e qualche decina di migliaia di uber ricchi 

E se tassassimo solo i ricchi? By lodovico pizzati

• negli USA, ci stanno arrivando paradossalmente riducendo le tasse sui ricchi.
• il sistema fiscale americano non era poi così diverso da quello europeo, ma grazie a quattro principali riforme fiscali negli Stati Uniti sono riusciti a ridurre gradualmente, e alla fin fine drasticamente, il peso fiscale per il cittadino medio
• Fino al 1981 l’aliquota che incideva sul reddito dell’household mediano (il nostro average Joe) era del 28%, mentre l’aliquota massima era del 70%... quella massima è ora al 39.6% per i guadagni oltre i $ 465,000
• Le prime due riforme fiscali sono avvenute con Reagan, nel 1981 e nel 1986, la terza con Clinton nel 1997, e la quarta con Bush nel 2003.
• Le riforme fiscali americane solitamente fanno notizia perché riducono le tasse sui ricchi (e questo è vero) ma quello che passa inosservato è la riduzione ancora più notevole per la middle class.
• Il grosso della riduzione fiscale per la middle class è avvenuto sotto Clinton nel 1997 e ancora di più con Bush nel 2003. Nel 1997 e nel 2003 l’aliquota per la middle class non è cambiata, ma oltre all’aumento delle deduzioni sono stati introdotti dei tax credit che hanno azzerato le tasse per milioni di americani.
• In termini relativi la famiglia mediana ha visto le imposte federali sul reddito praticamente scomparire, mentre la famiglia ricca le ha viste quasi dimezzarsi.
• Questo rende il meccanismo fiscale molto più progressivo perché ora il ricco paga relativamente molto di più dell’average Joe, anche se in termini assoluti adesso paga molto di meno di quanto pagava prima. Come è possibile?
• La risposta istintiva potrebbe essere che gli americani hanno atrofizzato le entrate fiscali e così facendo chissà di quanto hanno ridotto la spesa pubblica e i benefici pubblici per l’average Joe.
• Ma i dati invece dicono tuttaltro.... Se guardiamo alle entrate fiscali dalla federal income tax... queste entrate fiscali sono aumentate:
• In parte questo può essere dovuto alla crescita economica generale ma, dato che il carico fiscale pesa sempre di più sul 20% più ricco, questo aumento sembra dovuto soprattutto al fatto che i ricchi stanno diventando sempre più ricchi.
• Gli Stati Uniti hanno raggiunto il massimo di progressività fiscale tassando di meno il ricco, quasi proprio non tassando per niente la middle class, e fregandosene dell’impatto sulla disparità di reddito
• per l’ideologia socialista la progressività fiscale è invece vista come il mezzo per raggiungere il vero fine, che è la riduzione della disuguaglianza
• Ma qual è il fine ultimo? È il benessere in termini assoluti o il benessere relativo al mio vicino di casa?
• Europa. pur di ottenere una varianza minore (meno divario tra il ricco e il ceto medio) finisco per tassare di più il ricco. Ma facendo così rischio di far meno cassa e mi tocca compensare col tassare anche il ceto medio,
• 

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The Proactionary Principle By Bryan Caplan

The Proactionary Principle By Bryan Caplan

• precazione vs proazione
• punti del pro azione:
• 1 privilegiare    ciò che migliora la  conoscenza anzichè ciò che la blocca
• 1 bis riconoscere i limiti della conoscenza che impediscono la mera analisi utilitaristica costi/benefici
• 2 simmetria: pesare i pro e i contro di tutte le azioni alternative
• 3 privilegiare l uomo sulla natura
• 4 privilegiare il vicino sul distante c.p.
• 5 privilegiare il certo sull incerto c.p
• ...
• a neat essay by Max More defending a "Proactionary Principle" against the far more popular "Precautionary Principle."
• 3. Triage: Give precedence to ameliorating known... over acting against hypothetical risks.
• 4. Symmetrical treatment...Treat technological risks on the same basis as natural risks... Fully account for the benefits of technological advances.
• 9. Prioritize
• Esempi. (a) Give priority to risks to human and other intelligent life over risks to other species;
• priority to immediate threats over distant threats;
• concept of opportunity cost... progress you don't see...
• ...
• 1 Libertà di innovare
• 2 Obiettività
• 3 Comprehensiveness
• 4 Apertura/Trasparenza
• 5 Semplicità
• 6 Verifica
• 7 Trattamento simmetrico
• 8 Proporzionalità
• 9 Prioritizzazione
• 10 Rinnovare e Rinfrescare
• i. Il principio di proazione è basato sull'osservazione che, storicamente, le innovazioni tecnologiche più utili e importanti non erano né ovvie né ben comprese al momento della loro invenzione.
• Il primo principio di More, libertà di innovare, piazzerebbe il peso della prova su quelli che propongono delle misure restrittive.

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The Origins of Mass Incarceration Daniel D'Amico Adam Gelb Mike Riggs by Susanne Karstedt

The Origins of Mass Incarceration Daniel D'Amico Adam Gelb Mike Riggs by Susanne Karstedt

• Sunti
• Why Nations Jail by Daniel D'Amico
• international context: Yes , we all know that we are a nation of jailers.
• in recent years many other countries have dramatically increased their incarceration rates
• proposed causes for our high incarceration rate, including racism, our free-market economic system, and our War on Drugs. He finds the latter the most persuasive
• incarceration is particularly bad here - and in certain other countries - because of the public choice effects inherent in common law
• Better Question: How Do We Unjail? by Mike Riggs
• concentrated benefits and dispersed costs tend to operate in criminal justice policy
• Politicians receive the benefits of the system, in that it pays to look tough on crime.
• The purpose of our penal institutions is......to impart respect for the law, to deter crime, and to reintegrate former offenders into society in ways that will ensure they do not offend again. Our current system is manifestly a failure
• Riggs recommends that we turn to penalties other than prison for a significant number of crimes
• Laboratories of Incarceration by Adam Gelb
• Classica distorsione: state government often pays for the prison system, while the local government pays for community supervision. As a result, local governments send former offenders back to prison as a way of saving money
• Great facts and new facts: The end of U.S. mass imprisonment? by Susanne Karstedt
• Karstedt looks at the relationship between wealth and imprisonment.
• Is it really the case that neoliberal nations prefer to warehouse their poor in jails? She finds that the evidence supporting this claim is weak.
• Yet budget constraints seem to reduce incarceration rates, and she says it’s no coincidence that mass imprisonment seems to have peaked and come to a halt in 2009.
• ......
• Saggi
• Why Nations Jail By Daniel D'Amico
• The U.S. imprisonment trend also looks like a hockey stick.... in the 1970s, the line shot up, quintupling by the 2000s.
• Culture, racism, and the drug war obviously matter. But I’d like to challenge some of these presumed causes by simply asking how much they fully explain global
• Ecuador, Indonesia, Cambodia, Israel, Serbia, and Georgia don’t share much economic, partisan, or cultural American-ness, yet all doubled their prison populations in a decade, while Britain took
• no data confirms a consistent relationship between more liberal market economies –or higher economic performance –and larger prison populations.
• Is racism the primary driver of American mass imprisonment?
• In fact, in England, Canada, and Australia, the minority to white inmate ratios all outpace the United States. [8]
• The advent of American mass incarceration also occurred alongside measurable racial progress.
• Is America’s vengeful culture responsible? Again maybe partially, but such features don’t explain why so many other nations have multiplied their prisons without similarly rugged individualists supporting
• Most experimental evidence suggests vengeful preferences are common across identities,
• economist Naci Mocan reports the opposite cultural relationship, with poor, war-torn, and collectivist countries hosting more vengeance.
• shared timing of American incarceration with drug prohibition seems too tightly linked to be coincidence. But prohibition is not a sufficient explanation
• drug violations only make up about 17% of state inmates and represent about 20% of the growth
• Without drug convictions, American incarcerations would have quadrupled rather than quintupled.
• And again, if uniquely American factors cause mass incarceration, then why is there a global
• Current research emphasizes a general relationship between social institutions and incarceration.
• many public choice scholars have noticed that by concentrating perceived deterrent benefits while dispersing costs, democratic politics rewards the expansive spending, employment, and voter appeasement accomplished through criminalization and prison growth.
• Lacey [17] has observed the organization of electoral processes correlate with incarceration rates. Nations with winner-take-all elections host greater political incentives to appease punitive biases.
• my recent paper coauthored with Claudia Williamson shows nations founded in the British common law tradition rather than civil law host larger incarceration rates. While the common law is typically more decentralized, we suspect criminal justice systems were historically founded and subsequently organized more hierarchically relative to other common law social
• Common law: pm eletti.
• From Ferguson to Baltimore we seem to be stuck with the worst of both worlds: racially biased local cops and a militarized national response.
• Saggio
• Great facts and new facts: The end of U.S. mass imprisonment? By Susanne Karstedt
• Why do nations jail? It’s a rich man’s folly, says Jan van Dijk from Tilburg University
• The richer countries are, the more they use imprisonment when meting out punishment to citizens.
• Jan van Dijk has a point even from a historical perspective;
• imprisonment is a tool of criminal justice not affordable to all and sundry.
• United States is a visible outlier.... housing 25% of the world’s prisoners.... by far exceeds imprisonment in the poorest and cruellest dictatorships in the world,
• unprecedented growth and unparalleled size of the U.S. prison population between 1970s and the first decade of the 21st century
• Was this just another case of American exceptionalism, or was the United States in the vanguard... Most criminologists bought into the latter perspective.
• This was the start of the search for the one magic-bullet variable... The emerging candidate was broadly labelled “neo-liberalism.”Neo-liberalism’s manifestations of deregulating the economy and downsizing the welfare state... Another master narrative was based on the observation that nations with majority rules in their electoral processes have higher imprisonment rates. In both cases, the empirical foundations were shaky:
• American criminologist Frank Zimring argues that such “professionalization of punishment”combines several “leniency vectors”that keep imprisonment low.[ 3] It is a defining feature of civil law systems that decisions are made by professionals and according to professional standards, and criminal justice officials are not directly elected. In contrast, communities and the electorate seem to have been a driving force behind skyrocketing imprisonment in the United States.
• Esempio. Voters in California supported criminal justice policies that lay the ground for ever increasing imprisonment in that state;
• The year 2009 provides a reality check for all theorizing on mass imprisonment in the United States: It was the year when imprisonment growth in the United States came to a halt... 2009 was the year after the financial crisis, and this is no coincidence.
• prisons were closed in California, Nebraska, and New York.... estimated savings of nearly $ 340 million
• It comes as a surprise for many criminologists that the same neo-liberals and fiscal hawks who had been blamed for “mass imprisonment”were now in the driving seat for penal reform.
• “Right on Crime,”a conservative think tank, explains the turn in conservative penal policies: “How is it ‘conservative’to spend vast amounts of taxpayer money on a strategy without asking whether it is providing taxpayers with the best public safety return on their investment
• If two trends look like hockey sticks there might be some common ground which kicks them off.
• L'Europa ha meno carcerari xchè per ogni carcerato spende molto di più
• My own research shows that values like liberal individualism and egalitarianism are not related to how many are sent to prison, but significantly to the treatment of prisoners.[ 15] Both might be nonetheless related: more care for the dignity and liberty of those who failed might make nations more cautious in the use of imprisonment, not the least because it increases the costs of imprisonment.
• Many European countries, including Germany, have considerably lower recidivism rates then the United States. Spending on prisoners rather than on warehousing them seems a better way to deliver the goods.
• Policy: x ridurre la mass incarceration promuovere programmi rieducativo. Il vincolo di bilancio fará il suo lavoro.

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Children's Safety and Liberty Lenore Skenazy

Children's Safety and Liberty Lenore Skenazy

• Lenore Skenazy: l'ossessione sulla sicurezza dei piccoli si è spinta troppo in là, nella cultura come nella politica (dai prodotti alle resp. famigliari). Insegnare a prendere dei rischi fa parte del processo educativo...
• Anthony Green: con la sicurezza dei bimbi nn si scherza: abbiamo fatto grandi progressi e tornare indietro sarebbe deleterio...
• James Swartz: le multinazionali dei giocattoli tendono a trascurare la sicurezza se non incalzate. Appena si molla il punto un malefico trend s'innesta...
• Joel Best: due fatti hanno modificato il ns atteggiamento sulla sicurezza dei bimbi: 1) i media con le loro storie allarmanti e 2) la bassa natalità che rende ogni bambino più prezioso
• ...........lead essay**************
• Smothered by Safety By Lenore Skenazy

• politician, principal, or bureaucrat wants to score points, he or she lets us know that kids are even more precious—and endangered—than we thought.
• explosion of new laws, products, and policies to protect them from, well, everything: Creeps, kidnappers, germs, grades, flashers, frustration, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men—all men are pedophiles until proven otherwise—sleepovers, toys from China, and/ or the perils of a non-organic grape.
• Which of the following did NOT happen this past year?
• (A.) Local licensing authorities outlawed soap in pre-school bathrooms for fear that children might suddenly start drinking it.
• (B.) Unaccompanied children under age 12 were banned from the Boulder, CO, library, lest they encounter “hazards such as stairs, elevators, doors,
• (C.) The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of certain fleece hoodies sold at Target because of lead paint on the zipper,
• (D.) Children under age 18 were prohibited from gathering on the streets of Tucson, AZ, for fear they might “talk, play or laugh”in groups, which could lead to bullying.
• (E.) A New Canaan, CT, mom was charged with “risk of injury to a minor,”for letting her 13-year-old babysit the three younger children at home for an hour while the mom went to church.
• (F.) A Tennessee mother was thrown in jail for letting her kids, aged 8 and 5, go to the park without her, a
• (G.) A Hazmat crew was summoned to Seminole High School in Florida after a science student brought in a mercury thermometer.
• Il libro. Gever Tulley, author of 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Kids Do).... objects and activities can be reclassified as dangerous when seen through the worst-case-scenario lens.
• federal playground safety guidelines propose removing “tripping hazards, like tree stumps and rocks.”
• If to a hammer everything looks like a nail, to a government agency charged with protecting children, everything looks like a health threat, death trap, or predator.
• Michigan mom had to come fetch her children—12 and 15—from the police station, after she’d expected them to walk home from the library. The library staff decided it was too cold to make the kids do this (the kids had walked there without coats).
• charged with “risk of injury to a minor... she allowed her seven-year and 11-year old children to walk down to Spruce Street to buy pizza
• The message to parents? The government is better at raising your kids than you are. The message to kids? You are weak little babies.
• onlookers now routinely call 911 when they see kids waiting in cars, usually because they are convinced that one of two extraordinarily rare tragedies are happening all the time. The first is children dying from hyperthermia, which DOES happen—but mostly when a parent literally forgets the child...
• Onlookers also worry that any children on their own will be instantly kidnapped,
• in the “real world,”stranger abductions are so rare that if for some reason you actually WANTED your child to be kidnapped by a stranger, do you know how long you’d have to keep your child outside, unattended, so that statistically the abduction would be likely to happen? The answer is about 750,000 years, according to author Warwick Cairns. And after the first 100,000 years or so, your kid isn’t even cute anymore.
• In its Zero Tolerance intolerance, it criminalizes any parent who refuses to engage in what I call “worst-first thinking”—
• When rational parenting decisions become criminalized, parents are forced to think irrationally.
• As law professor David Pimentel explains in his Utah Law Review article “ Criminal Child Neglect and the ‘Free Range Kid ,’” this is the way over-parenting becomes the law of the land:
• Law professors Gaia Bernstein and Zvi Triger noticed something similar: In several divorce proceedings they reviewed, the parents who could prove they were the most over-involved were the ones awarded custody.... The authors even found lawyers instructing their clients to obsessively text their kids all day, in order to leave a digital trail to document their pestering. Thus helicopter parenting
• The problem seems to be that because nothing is 100% safe, almost anything the commission sets its eye on is fair game for censure.
• In 2010 the government warned consumers to stop using—and stores to stop selling, and manufacturers to stop making—all cribs where the side drops down to make it easier to get the baby out. The reason given was that over the course of the nine preceding years, thirty-two children died in such cribs.... Those odds do not mean that the product is inherently unsafe. It means that drop side cribs are vastly safer than stairs (1,300 deaths per year), much safer than eating (about 70 kids younger than 10 choke to death on food each year), and waaay safer than driving your kid in a car (over 200 baby and toddler deaths per year).
• a world with zero risk is also a world with zero anything,
• ***********riassunto***************
• LEAD ESSAY Smothered by Safety by Lenore Skenazy
• Tesi: we have gone too far in the pursuit of safety at all costs.... it’s time to start learning to relax... allowing kids to take controlled risks
• Ambiti. Cultura. consumer product regulations... criminal law.
• Safety: More than Tree Stumps and Toe Mold by Anthony Green
• It is not an overreach to call the police if you see a child alone in a locked car;
• Child Safety: The First Priority by James A. Swartz
• multibillion dollar corporations that make children’s products have a responsibility
• Corporations are often indifferent to children’s safety.
• The Roots of Concern about Kids by Joel Best
• Perchè tanta paura?
• mass media, which excels at spreading alarming stories,
• declining birthrate, coupled with increased safety itself:
• As a result, smaller problems appear more alarming.
• CONVERSATION
• Skenazy...
• La regola è la nuova religione: prima dopo la disgrazia scattavano le preghiere, ora scatta la leggina. Cosa sia più razionale lascio a voi decidere. L'esempio del bimbo dimenticato in auto e morto...
• Incidenti. Se vuoi spaventare usa i numeri se vuoi capire usa la percentuali. I proibizionisti fanno un grande uso dei numeri. Esempio: nell'ultimo anno 10 bimbi morti dimenticati in auto negli USA (orrore). Ma si può davvero regolmentare con un rischio del 0,000000146%?...
• Quanto vi fidate di voi e dei vostri figli? E quanto vi fidate del regolatore?…
• Green...
• Non sembra vero che i rischi per un bambino sono così diminuiti. Gli incidenti stradali che feriscono o uccidono un minore sono ancora troppi. Non si può stare con le mani in mano...
• Quanti bimbi bisogna sacrificare prima che sia lecito intervenire con una legge? Ebbene, il buon genitore è sempre informato e sempre al lavoro x la sicurezza dei suoi bimbi...
• Swartz...
• La vita dei bimbi trascende le percentuali. Non dobbiamo evitare i numeri anche se ci fanno paura...
• La nozione di rischio accettabile ha poco senso. Accettabile x chi?…
• IMO: "accettabile"x la comunità esercitando il buon senso. Poi ogni genitore può e deve lavorare sul suo specifico rischio accettabile...
• La libertà ha un valore conoscitivo? Ma i nostri ragazzi nn sono cavie!...
• IMO: tutti noi siamo cavie: la vita è un'esperienza (esperimento) la libertà la rende sensata sia per noi che per gli altri...
• IMO: la prevenzione comprime sia la libertà che la conoscenza...
• Best...
• Green e Swartz mi confermano che l'anelito alla sicurezza nn è una finzione creata ad arte da un regolatore avido di potere...
• Gli incidenti automobilistici sono ancora un grave problema? No, sono clamorosamente calati, anche se restano la prima causa di morte. Non si può far finta di nulla. Certo potremmo portare i rischi vicino allo zero istituendo un limite di velocità di 30 all'ora...
• L'analisi costi/benefici non è mai neutrale sui valori. Il valore della vita e quello della libertà si confrontano di continuo...
• Green
• ......
• In Regulation We Trust By Lenore Skenazy
• But how do we leap from “don’t forget to lock”to “never leave a child alone in a car”? Especially when we all know that we spent at least a smidgen of our own childhoods waiting in the car while mom ran into pick up the prescription, or dad paid for the gas?
• Regulation is the new religion.... the struggling heart makes a leap of faith not to God’s great, unknowable plan, but to a more modern belief: The belief that if we just pass enough laws, we can prevent anything
• As a nation we went on the hunt for hidden dangers, found them all around, and demanded change.
• the safer our society becomes, the more we obsess
• Come spaventate? ... cites 31 children dying in cars last year (the majority of whom were forgotten there, not simply waiting out a short errand). That’s heartbreaking.... that’s 0.000000149% of them... Should we really be regulating parental choice based on percentages like these?
• you want to scare someone, use numbers. If you want to put things in perspective, use percentages.
• Laws exist to make society reasonably safe. They cannot make us completely safe without making us completely unreasonable.
• Halloween Myths Vanish with Facts By Anthony Green
• kid is on average twice as likely to be hit and killed by a car on Halloween than any other day
• real child safety efforts are based on research and facts and data, and not myths
• It’s not right to say that auto crashes (resolved by seat belts and booster seats) is a smaller problem.... Car crashes have been and remain the number one cause of unintentional death
• Children’s Lives Are More Than “Percentages”By James A. Swartz
• For me, as well as parents of children who have been maimed or killed and countless other concerned citizens, holding accountable those who manufacture and sell defective playthings for our nation’s children is no laughing matter.
• in Ms. Skenazy’s view, speaking about individual children, or numbers of children... is not appropriate because it might “scare”
• acceptable risk. Acceptable to whom?... Certainly not to those of us who believe we can and must do better... lab rats.
• focus must be on prevention,
• The Importance of Proportion By Joel Best
• the primary impetus for child safety does not come from meddling officials, but rather from private advocates, like Swartz and Green,
• everyone involved in this conversation approves of improving the milk supply, promoting vaccinations and antibiotics,
• “It is not right to say that auto crashes …[are] a smaller problem.... false. In 1966, there were 50,894 traffic fatalities; in 2010, there were 32,788.... U.S. population grew by 55 percent,.... The number of deaths per million miles driven dropped from 5.5 to 1.1.... I suppose we could cut traffic fatalities to nearly zero—establishing a national 5 mph speed limit... we have progressed enough
• Swartz questions whether it is “acceptable to lose just one precious child”; on the other, Lenore Skenazy argues that saving that last life may involve costs that outweigh the benefits. Such a debate is not between facts and “myths”—it concerns values.
• Applying Cost-Benefit Engineering to a Kid’s Life Is Just Wrong By Anthony Green
• The Audacity of Seeking to Prevent the Preventable By Anthony Green
• Trying to Outlaw Fate By Lenore Skenazy
• Values and Consistency By Joel Best
• This Is How a Concerned Citizen Thinks By James A. Swartz

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