In a whiny blog post at 200 Proof Liberals addressed to his provost, Jason Brennan claims that you can’t enforce a contract which gives one side unilateral and unlimited power to change the terms of the contract. The context is a “compact” that Georgetown’s administration has imposed on students, faculty, and staff regarding the spread of COVID-19. Continue reading
Author Archives: Irfan Khawaja
The ABC’s of Occupation
This article in The New York Times is typical of a distinctive genre of American journalism on Israel and Palestine: vaguely pro-Palestinian in tone, vaguely critical of Israel by intention, but notably weak on the alphabet-level basics–literally the ABCs–of occupation. Continue reading
“Freedom, Indeterminism, and Fallibilism”
My friend Danny Frederick asked me to post this conspectus of his new book, ‘Freedom, Indeterminism, and Fallibilism,’ now out from Palgrave.]
In my new book, Freedom, Indeterminism, and Fallibilism, published in the series ‘Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism,’ I employ the notions of indeterminism and fallibilism to give an account of the nature and value of freedom. There are chapters on free will, rationality, being a person, moral constraints, and political authority. Here I offer a sketch of that theory of freedom. Continue reading
Moneytalks (1): Essential Workers, Inevitable Death
It’s reasonable to be skeptical of the idea that a single semester’s worth of students is representative of general trends in the larger population. But for whatever it’s worth, this New York Times article really rings true for me. Though focused on Latinos in California, the pattern it describes seems to apply to the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area as well. The headline reads: “Many Latinos Couldn’t Stay Home. Now Virus Cases are Soaring in their Communities.” Continue reading
Sometimes a Fantasy Is All You Need: The NCAA Tackles COVID-19
A recent article in The New York Times illustrates the magical thinking that prevails in the NCAA, and indeed, throughout much of higher education, on the topic of the coronavirus:
When Kansas State opened the doors to its athletic facilities, welcoming its football players back to campus starting the first weekend in June, administrators breathed a sigh of relief once the first batch of coronavirus tests came back.
The first wave of athletes spent a week in quarantine before voluntary workouts, as all players were required to do, and the scorecard was pristine: 90 tests, zero positives.
Another six players straggled in a day or two later and were swabbed. Again, no positives.
Then by June 12, the final group of 24 arrivals–largely freshmen–was tested. But just a week later, Kansas State shut down its workouts until at least mid-July after two positive cases in that final group morphed into four and then eight before leaping to 14, as nearly half the team needed to be checked again.
With its announcements on Saturday, Kansas State became the first school from a Power 5 conference to shut down football activities. Two other Football Bowl Subdivision schools did the same after outbreaks among their athletes, with Houston making the decision on June 12 and Boise State on Monday.
“Tears of Gaza”
I just saw the 2010 Norwegian documentary, “Tears of Gaza,” a film about the Israeli military operation “Cast Lead” (2008-9). I don’t think of myself as a particularly squeamish person, but though the movie is only about 84 minutes long, it took me seven or eight sittings to get through it.
Epistemic and Ethical Justification: A Puzzle
Here’s a puzzle for the philosophers out there, a request for your intuitions.
- Suppose that we accept a minimal moral realism according to which moral propositions are bivalent on a correspondence theory of truth.
- Now suppose that I’m epistemically justified in believing that p, where p is a moral prescription of some kind–an injunction to take a particular action. It doesn’t matter what the action is.
Puzzle: Does being epistemically justified in believing that p entail that I am morally justified in taking the action enjoined by the prescription? Or is the moral justification a separate issue? Put another way, is it coherent to say that I am epistemically justified in believing that p, but not morally justified in taking the action recommended by p? Continue reading
Libertarian Bloggers Are Failing Us
From Marginal Revolution:
Our regulatory state is failing us
CA requires 664 hours of training to become a Police Officer, but 1,600 hours of training to become a cosmetologist.
That is from Sheel Mohnot, sources at the link.
The 1,600 hours of training required to become a cosmetologist are the 1,600 that are required to remain one for the duration of one’s career. Are the 664 hours of training required to become a police officer the number that are required to remain one for the duration of a career in law enforcement? For instance, are there mandatory in-service certification/continuing education requirements in cosmetology as there are in policing? If not, how meaningful a comparison is this?
The “sources at the link” regarding cosmetology say:
5. Are continuing education credits needed to maintain a license?
No. The Board does not require continuing education credits to maintain a license.
Whereas here are the California requirements for police officers. Here are the ones for New Jersey. New Jersey is now proposing a licensure requirement for police officers over and above basic training. Some police departments require a BA; some require it for advancement within the department, and many aspiring police officers get a BA so that they can go to other parts of law enforcement past the municipal police department. None of that is true of cosmetology.
Not sure why so many jabs at “the regulatory state” have to consist of misleading talking points that don’t inform, but simply give the appearance of winning The Clever Derby. Consumer demand?
COVID-19 Narratives (8): Pizza and Public Works in a Pandemic
Pizza and Public Works: Making Ends Meet in a Pandemic
Anonymous DPW Guy from Monmouth County, New Jersey
I’ve been privileged to able to work during the COVID-19 pandemic. You might think that “privileged” is the wrong word, since anyone going out to work during the pandemic is probably at risk of getting infected. But “privilege” seems like the right word to me: millions of Americans are unemployed right now, unable to support their families. Unlike them, I have two jobs–one in public service, and the other in the food industry, both regarded as “essential” by the government, both state and federal. Continue reading
Hayek at the Hospital: The Use of Knowledge in Hospital Discharge Decisions
A live update from The New York Times on the COVID-19 situation in Peru:
Peru has more than 170,000 confirmed cases, despite taking the virus seriously early on. The president, Martín Vizcarra, ordered one of the first national lockdowns in South America. Though the official virus death toll stands at around 5,000, Peru had 14,000 more deaths than usual in May, suggesting that a growing number of people are dying at home as hospitals struggle to handle a flood of cases.
So should the Peruvians be taking to the streets to express outrage at the incompetence of all those heads of households where excess mortality has taken place? Or alternatively, should Peru’s hospitals just have warehoused up to 14,000 post-acute COVID patients in the excess space they had as they were struggling “to handle a flood of cases”? Continue reading
