Sorry. I won’t make this into the “what’s new at Cato Unbound” blog, but I do want to use whatever platform I have to get good altitude from our launch issue.
So, let all be aware that Alex Kozinski, the funniest man in the federal judiciary, and maybe the smartest (if Posner gets abducted by aliens), replies to Buchanan today.
A taste? Regarding the nondiscrimination amendment:
In effect, we’d have Bush v. Gore going on 365 days a year, all over the country. As a prescription for curtailing governmental action, this would surely work. But it would also remove much of the power of government from elected officials and give it to un-elected federal judges. The push to appoint judges sympathetic to the government’s current policies will be strong, and we will look on the “mild” confirmation battles of the past as the good old days.
I haven’t been very impressed with any of the respondants thus far. The first guy had the weak “back to the drawing board” non-argument you pointed out earlier. And Kozinski seems to make a very simple “what is seen and not seen” error in assuming the New Deal policies are ok because we’re doing alright. A steadily growing economy is always going to be the “best” in its history at any given moment. This doesn’t mean much. What about the speed of growth? Might we grow faster absent certain policies and wouldn’t that be good? Kozinski seems to miss this.
I really don’t know anything about Kozinski, this is the first time I’ve heard of him or read anything he’s written. But this failure to recognize opportunity costs, from the smartest man in the judiciary, is bothersome. Maybe he left out any discussion of opportunity costs for the sake of brevity, but claims like those he made about the US economy being the strongest and freest in history sort of scream for such a discussion I think.
Maybe you’ll like Niskanen better.
I haven’t been very impressed with any of the respondants thus far. The first guy had the weak “back to the drawing board” non-argument you pointed out earlier. And Kozinski seems to make a very simple “what is seen and not seen” error in assuming the New Deal policies are ok because we’re doing alright. A steadily growing economy is always going to be the “best” in its history at any given moment. This doesn’t mean much. What about the speed of growth? Might we grow faster absent certain policies and wouldn’t that be good? Kozinski seems to miss this.
I really don’t know anything about Kozinski, this is the first time I’ve heard of him or read anything he’s written. But this failure to recognize opportunity costs, from the smartest man in the judiciary, is bothersome. Maybe he left out any discussion of opportunity costs for the sake of brevity, but claims like those he made about the US economy being the strongest and freest in history sort of scream for such a discussion I think.
Maybe you’ll like Niskanen better.