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Law and liberty: an inverse relation (and the $64 question)
Happy New Year! Today, I will review Chapter 2 of Paul Sagar’s 2022 book Adam Smith Reconsidered. This chapter — titled “Domination, Liberty, and the Rule of Law” — is the most lengthy part of Sagar’s work, but it is … Continue reading
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PSA: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell should overturn the bogus outcome of the Detroit-Dallas game
For once, I agree with Antonio Brown! See also here. (Or are the conspiracy theories true, i.e. are the outcomes of pro games scripted?)
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Digression re: commercial society and Smith’s four-stages of history
Happy New Year’s Eve, loyal readers! Here, I will review Chapter 1 of Adam Smith Reconsidered, which is titled “Commercial Society, History, and the Four Stages Theory”. In brief, from what I can tell, Professor Sagar has two goals in … Continue reading
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The Real Das Adam Smith Problem?
This is part 1 of my review of Adam Smith Reconsidered. To begin, two things about the Introduction to Paul Sagar’s beautiful book caught my attention: (1) Professor Sagar’s striking but simple solution to something called “Das Adam Smith Problem” … Continue reading
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Coming soon: full review of *Adam Smith Reconsidered*
Thus far this week I have written up and posted several short reviews (i.e. “micro reviews”) of some of the works that I have been reading this holiday season. The last book on my list, however — Paul Sagar’s new … Continue reading
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Micro review of *The Revolutionary Temper*
Given my previous work on Adam Smith and his extended visit to the City of Light in 1766 (see especially here and here), I decided to give Robert Darnton’s new book The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789 a go. Darnton, a … Continue reading
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Homage to Richard Posner
Yesterday, my colleague and friend Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr), a law professor at U.C. Berkeley, posted a series of melancholic tweets in honor of my intellectual mentor Richard Posner. As it happens, yours truly had the honor of meeting Judge Posner, … Continue reading
Of lotteries and prefaces: two probability puzzles
I concluded my previous post with a reference to two important probability puzzles: one is called the lottery paradox; the other, the paradox of the preface. What are these logical problems? Why are they important? And can they be solved? … Continue reading
Micro review of Franz Huber’s survey of subjective probability
By way of background, I should disclose off the bat that I am a huge fan of the subjective approach to probability pioneered by Bruno de Finetti and Frank Ramsey, especially the idea that a person’s “priors” about the world … Continue reading
prior probability 