Comments on: Virtue and Trust: Insufficient but Necessary

By: Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:37:29 +0000

awsome article men

By: Cindy P Dennis

Cindy P Dennis — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:15:10 +0000

Excellent, entertaining, useful reading, Thanks !!

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By: Pages tagged "necessary"

Pages tagged "necessary" — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:36:42 +0000

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By: GU

GU — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:40:15 +0000

If you study corporate governance, you come to realize that large corporations have many of the same problems as big government. High agency costs almost by definition entails not maximizing shareholder returns. There is already a large group of influential scholars who don't think that corporations have a duty to maximize shareholder value, even though most corporate charters, not to mention the law, mandate it. Imagine all the “stakeholder” theories of corporate duty that would surface if there was a corporation that was a super powerful quasi-government!

If we are going to model our government on a form of business organization, it ought to be a partnership.

By: x_trapnel

x_trapnel — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:33:36 +0000

Good points.
This reminds me, Will: I'd been tossing around the idea of trying to start a blog-based reading-group/discussion on Brennan & Pettit's "The Economic of Esteem," perhaps as a double-header with Gary Miller's "Managerial Dilemmas." Any interest, Will or Readers of Will?

By: Steve Horwitz

Steve Horwitz — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:19:34 +0000

Will, I do think it's a matter of strategy and emphasis. My point was not to dismiss all government everywhere because of folks like Blago (I have plenty of other arguments beside him to do that ). My point was simply the juxtaposition of a string of recent corruption cases (Jefferson in LA too) that seem to involve influence peddling and the like at the very same time we are handing over MASSIVE new powers to those very same folks. Blago et. al. wouldn't be so notable in this regard if we were enacting a new leash law on city council, but when we're talking trillions and nationalization, it behooves us to remember that the higher up the political food chain we go, the more likely it is that folks have a comparative advantage at behaving in ways that aren't so civically responsible. The worst do tend to get on top, a la Hayek.

By: mk

mk — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 03:27:59 +0000

Will, I'm glad you're trying to break down some barriers here and find a middle way. Conversations like this is how real inter-ideological cooperation starts. Maybe you can be the Obama of blogging — without an ideological home, you deploy language that both sides can understand, and then everyone realizes how much they really have in common!

“And yea, how foolish were we all to toil at our ideological fortifications, as a young lad who raises parapets fashioned from the cushions a sofa!” is what we will say, when that day comes. We will all say that exact sentence.

By: Dain

Dain — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:17:00 +0000

But it remains that we WANT good government, and public-spiritedness helps.

Of course the hardcore anti-statists believe that government is the antithesis of society! For them, public-spiritedness demands unceasing criticism of the state, perhaps especially on the warm and fuzzy sounding stuff like the welfare state.

Actually, given the propensity for adulation of authority figures and the evolved psychological satisfaction derived from the "People's Romance," I think that public-spiritedness probably does demand deference to the modern equivalent of tribal chiefs, "fairly" rationing out goods and services in the spirit of the hunter gatherer band.

Which renders libertarian individualists rather counter-cultural as well. Fellow Feeling? It's so conservative!

By: TGGP

TGGP — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:06:05 +0000

The anarcho-capitalists seek to make public spiritedness irrelevant by eliminating any government power that could possibly be abused. Mencius Moldbug, heavily inspired by Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism, proposes to make public opinion irrelevant by investing absolute power in a for-profit corporation whose incentive rests on maximizing shareholder value, which in term rests on property values or rent.

Emphasizing, truly, that the system can’t possibly work without some level of virtue and trust is a good way to reassure skeptics that you haven’t declared jihad on fellow feeling and are out to wring the inefficiency from our institutions by wringing out the humanity.
Shouldn't the most important criterion be whether or not that statement is true?