What question keeps you up at night? By way of example, in the opening scene of the movie “The Social Network,” a fictional Mark Zuckerberg begins by asking, “How do you distinguish yourself in a population of people who all got 1600 on their SAT’s?” By comparison, Peter Thiel opens his book Zero to One (the first page of which is pictured below) with this provocative question: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”
Aren’t these really one and the same question?
Among many other beautiful things, ProtonPaperie of Merritt Island, Florida offers the coaster set pictured below, consisting of vintage ads from the 1908 Sears catalogue (via Etsy).
Credit: ProtonPaperie
The piece pictured below, which was created by the graphic artist Dex, features Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s distinctive silhouette through a mix of typography and illustration. More works by Dex are available here.
Image Credit: Dex
Have you ever been bumped off a flight or received shabby service from a commercial airline carrier? In our next class, we will take a break from “The Social Network” in order to debate United’s fateful decision (see memes below) to bump (or “re-accommodate,” in corporate lingo) several fare-paying passengers–and forcibly remove one of them–off United flight 3411 in order to make room for some United crew members. (By the way, our friend and colleague Eric Rasmusen has prepared an excellent overview of “The United Airlines Forcible Removal Affair”; you can read it here.) This infamous incident will allow us to revisit many of the substantive areas we have studied thus far in this legal and ethical environment of business course, including business ethics (e.g. is it ever unethical to bump a passenger off a flight?), sources of law (such as federal aviation regulations versus state common law), the law of contracts (especially section 25 of United’s contract of carriage), the law of torts (what duties does United owe to its passengers?), the law of agency (how can United be legally liable for the excessive force used by the Chicago Aviation Police?), forum shopping (is the plaintiff better off suing in Kentucky or in Illinois?), and the decision whether to settle or go to trial.
In the 1930s and 1940s, academic economists were engaged in the so-called “socialist calculation debate,” a theoretical quarrel that was not fully resolved until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. (Until then, some economists seriously believed that a command-and-control economy like that of the now-defunct USSR could outperform a free market economy.) Fast forward 80 years. Now, academic economists are squabbling over “empirical economics.” Our friends and colleagues Russ Roberts and John Cochrane, for example, have mounted a powerful attack against empirical economics, arguing that empirical models in economics lack any real predictive power, while on the other side of this empirical debate, fellow economists like Adam Ozimek and Noah Smith have argued with equal passion and vigor that their fancy models are useful. Like the socialist calculation debate of yore, only time will tell who’s right regarding the value of empirical economics, but in the meantime, it’s ironic that Ozimek and Smith’s arguments in defense of empiricism are themselves not empirical-based.
Take the quiz here. (Hat tip: the amazing Tyler Cowen.)
We are big fans of Richard Epstein’s book Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard University Press, 1995) for many reasons. Consider aviation. In place of this convoluted academic analysis, we would advocate for the following simple rule: carriers may not remove a passenger once he or she or it has boarded an airplane and taken their assigned seat. Otherwise, without such a simple rule, efficient Coasian bargaining isn’t possible. (If you have 22 minutes to spare, below is a short video of Professor Epstein lecturing on his ideas.)
Why are some chemical weapons like Napalm and Agent Orange okay to use (as long as the U.S. military uses them) but others off limits? If we are going to continue acting as the world’s policeman and all-around moral enforcer (with disastrous results), then we should at least stop using chemical weapons ourselves and stop being so sanctimonious and self-righteous.
1. 🇨🇺 Cuba: Fulgencio Batista (bad); Fidel Castro (way worse)
2. 🇮🇷 Iran: Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (bad); Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (way worse)
3. 🇻🇪 Venezuela: Rafael Caldera (bad); Hugo Chavez/Nicolas Maduro (way worse)
4. 🇮🇶 Iraq: Saddam Hussein (bad); ISIL (way worse)
5. 🇱🇾 Libya: Muammar al-Qaddafi (bad); ISIL (way worse)
6. 🇸🇾 Syria: you get the picture
Hopefully It’s Interesting.
In Conversation with Legal and Moral Philosophers
PhD, Jagiellonian University
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Submitted For Your Perusal is a weblog wherein Matt Thomas shares and writes about things he thinks are interesting.
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