Things I read recently and liked

1. An excellent post from Bleeding Heart Libertarians on the "missing callous libertarians," with this nice commentary on Ayn Rand's views of the poor:

If libertarians really believed that, then it would seem hard to explain why so many of them are preoccupied with showing how markets, under the right conditions, end poverty.

Even Ayn Rand, of all people. In Atlas Shrugged, the most productive and innovative members of society–tired of being told they exploit everyone else–go on strike. The American economy collapses. This sends a clear message: the less talented need the more talented more than the more talented need the less talented. So far, there is nothing here to excite a high liberal or a person concerned with social justice.

But notice that Rand is at pains to show that the strikers only hasten an inevitable collapse. In Atlas Shrugged, socialist economies have been collapsing long before John Galt calls a strike. And Rand goes at great lengths to illustrate that the people who suffer the most from these collapses aren't her heroes (they all lead happy lives in the mountains), or the unheroic rich (they use their connections to exploit others), but instead the least talented and least advantaged members of society. So, in Atlas Shrugged, the bad guys try to exploit Rand's heroes, but Rand makes it clear that the innocent poor are the ones that suffer the most as a result. If Rand were utterly unconcerned for the poor, or anyone else––as she is often taken to be––why would she do this? As a mere reductio or taunt? (Rand, in thick Russian accent: “I couldn’t care less if the poor starve. But I know you socialists dislike it.”)

2. I suspect that Tom Vilsack is the anti-matter version of me. In response to Vilsack's claim that farm subsidies are necessary to make rural Americans feel better about themselves, Ezra Klein makes sensible points about economics. Perhaps this constitutes a glimmer of hope for the doomed liberaltarian alliance?

A partial defense of reading news

Bryan Caplan has an interesting and contrarian post up in which he encourages readers to forego reading news, based on a TED talk given by Rolf Dobelli.

I'm torn. As a teenager, I was much lessof a news junkie than my parents or most of the adults I knew. I was mostly interested in literary fiction and pre-1900 history, interests that were certainly intellectual but remote from most current events. My mother found this baffling. "How am I supposed to talk to you if you don't read the paper?" she might say. I would occasionally try to defend my habits by resorting to the same kinds of arguments that Bryan and Dobelli do.

That said, there are a range of types of news coverage out there. Some of the publications that Bryan cites -- The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker -- are fairly news-oriented. It seems odd not to call them news. I suppose his argument could be read as merely discouraging spending a great deal of time reading short-form, Associated Press style headlines. Even so, I at least often encounter a mix of both short, AP-style news stories and longer-form essays on the blogs I read. It would be difficult to forego one while giving up the other.

Also, knowing about current events serves a useful social function. News gives people who might not share much a common set of experiences to discuss, without forcing either party to reveal much that simply feels too personal. I, for one, find it harder to talk about my non-political intellectual interests with my friends. Many of my friends are familiar with what appeared on the front page of The New York Times yesterday. Fewer know very much about the status and power of women at the court of Louis XIV. I have to go over basics. Often, these conversations can generate into an unpleasant monologue. Even if the person professes to be interested, the exchange can feel terribly awkward.

Finally, the last quoted paragraph suggests that being a news junkie makes you dumber. I don't think that's quite right. As Pnin would hasten to point out, most people have little incentive to read lots of political news. There's simply not much chance that their behavior (whether by voting in elections or otherwise) will have much of an influence on politics. So it's entirely rational to spend as little time on these pursuits as possible. So many of the people who do consume lots of political news don't do so because they're trying to become more informed. Rather, many do because they see themselves as fans of either Team Red or Team Blue, and they enjoy rooting for their team.

So long as an individual news junkie understands this dynamic and tries to maintain a neutral, truth-seeker stance, she's probably safe from partisan media's sillier effects. Keep in mind also that the kind of person who enjoys having her views validated and shys away from conflicting perspectives can certainly do the same thing by reading books. In some ways, it's easier for the news junkie to encounter opposing views. It doesn't take me much time to read an 800 word piece in, say, The American Prospect. Reading an entire book by someone ideologically uncongenial is a much more daunting proposition and one I'm far less likely to undertake.

Haidt, moral intuitions, and organs

I wrote once before on this blog about my puzzlement at a question on Jonathan Haidt's moral intuitions test that asks about whether one would be comfortable accepting a blood transfusion from a criminal. Now I find an op-ed in the NYT about states' unwillingness to let executed prisoners donate their organs. Most of the ostensible reasons for the ban given in the column don't seem to make sense. I wonder if something like the moral intuition described in the Haidt test is the real culprit? If it is, let me once again register my bafflement at this form of moral reasoning.

Very good sentences

Tyler Cowen on the British "Big Society":

1. It is nice to have a conservative movement which is pro gay rights and reasonably socially liberal, while still fiscally conservative.

2. Their person in charge of naming should be fired and sent to study Orwell. The words "Big" and "Society" make each other sound much worse. I would have preferred "The Small Non-Society," "The Small Society," or "The Big Non-Society," or "The Medium-Sized Hook-Up," among other options.

The only worse name I can think of is Big Society Bank.

"American bears are, for the most part, more assertive and autonomous than English bears."

Andrew Sullivan has a post up linking to comparisons of bears in English and American popular culture. Unfortunately, its analysis leaves out the Bulgy Bears, three minor but nonetheless charming and wonderful characters in Prince Caspian in C.S. Lewis's Narnia series. Among other things, they feed Prince Caspian honey and help fortify him for the journey ahead.

The eldest of the Bulgy Bears also informs Caspian that, by tradition, bears always served as marshals of the lists. Peter smiles and says that he cannot understand how the Bear could have remembered that when so many other things have been forgotten, but that he is indeed right. A dwarf protests that the Bulgy Bear is likely to suck his thumb and go to sleep in front of the enemy. But Peter stands fast and tells him that he trusts the Bear to fulfill his duty. The Bear does suck on his paw during battle and thus looks uncommonly silly, but the Narnians nonetheless win their battle. The whole story always struck me as kind of charmingly Burkean (as opposed to annoyingly Burkean), and the Bear's devotion to liberty over Miraz's totalitarianism is of course admirable. All in all, a fine example of a spirited British bear -- and one whose politics Andrew Sullivan perhaps ought to approve of more than I do.

Mod Squad

Items of clothing that have caught my eye recently include this modish square patterned skirt and this dress, which I first found recently elsewhere in navy and yellow but which has since vanished from the Internet, but not before 'twas mine.

Thoughts on the Atlas Shrugged movie

The first novel of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is "set in a universe like ours, but different in many ways." That is, there are plenty of familiar landmarks -- there's a city of London, an Oxford University, and also some Scandinavian countries and a Texas. Yet it's not the same. In some ways, the clothes and mannerisms of the characters seem a throwback to the Victorian era in our own world, but that's not quite right either. The technology is off -- e.g. there are airships and electric (what Pullman calls anbaric) lights, but no silent films or streetcars.

I bring this up because I think it's helpful to think of the novels of Ayn Rand as set in a universe that's like ours, but different in many ways. As in Pullman's imaginary world, there are geographic landmarks common to both worlds -- New York City; Colorado; Washington, D.C. Yet again, the technology presented doesn't seem to fit neatly into any particular historical era; it's in some ways too modern to fit in the world of the 1940s or 50s, when Rand was writing, yet it doesn't seem quite right as futurist dystopia either. And, once you accept the "universe that's like ours, but different in many ways" starting premise, it gets easier to live with some of the goofiness that Rand's critics have long lamented. You can just sit back and enjoy her stylized universe for what it is.

Given all this, I share Tyler Cowen's misgivings about the aesthetics of the new Atlas Shrugged movie. It is probably not good that I imagined this thing as film in my head about a dozen times as teenager. But you can watch the trailer below and judge for yourself. Finally, but see the reactions of Barbara Branden.