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On the morning of January 1, I was in Malacca visiting my grandmother. She owns a rubber estate nearby and so, I decided to visit it. It was a productive visit, methinks:
There are several other photos from the estate that I want to share but I shall not post it today. But soon.
Every new year, here they come: resolutions.
Come and share your resolutions with me!
I managed to finish up a book on new year’s eve. It might be an odd way to celebrate the eve to you yappies but I am not to blame for that. Eid fell on Sunday and so, though I had the free will not to, I decided to tag along with my family to visit my grandma in Malacca.
Finishing up a book on new year’s eve allowed me to start reading a new one on January 1 itself. I bought three new titles into my collection earlier; of the three, I decided to start with Beinhocker’s The Origin of Wealth. Initially, I thought it would be dry but the first chapter truly attracts me. It starts with a history of economics.
This is what I learn from the first chapter: economics is called a dismal science by Peter Carlyle not because the discipline is all about doom and gloom. Specifically, as it is commonly thought, the term was a reaction to Malthusian theory which suggests that with exponential population growth vis-Ã -vis geometric food production growth, population would collapse sooner or later.
As mentioned in the notes of The Origin of Wealth, the term “dismal science” was coined by Carlyle in his work, Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, to mock the “alliance of economists and abolitionists”. Carlyle was a proponent of slavery while liberal economists were standing on the other side of the river, fighting for abolition of slavery. It really has nothing to do about economics having a pessimistic worldview.
Developing a deliberately paradoxical position, Carlyle argued that slavery was actually morally superior to the market forces of supply and demand promoted by economists, since, in his view, the freeing up of the labor market by the liberation of slaves had actually led to a moral and economic decline in the lives of the former slaves themselves.
So, next time, be careful on how you use the term “dismal science”. It might not mean what you meant within the original context it was used.
If it had not been for the earthquake, I had wanted to listen to the Rose Bowl online. Alas, the earthquake severed the the internet in this part of the world and thus, prevented me from listening to the game.
Perhaps, it was a blessing because Michigan lost to USC 32 – 18 in the Granddaddy of Them All:
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — There were no Heismans or national titles up for grabs in this one for Southern California. It was hard to tell, though, given the way Dwayne Jarrett, John David Booty and that suffocating USC defense played.
Jarrett, the sensational USC receiver, caught 11 passes for 205 yards and two touchdowns to help the eighth-ranked Trojans finish their season with a statement Monday in a 32-18 Rose Bowl romp over Michigan.
When was the last time Michigan won a bowl game?
I cannot remember.
The NYT describes the Rose Bowl record of the Wolverines and the Trojans:
PASADENA, Jan. 1 — No game in college football’s postseason has more historical resonance than the Rose Bowl. Southern California’s 32-18 victory against Michigan on Monday maintained two long-standing hallmarks of this prestigious event.
No team has won this game more than the Trojans, who raised their Rose Bowl record to 22-9 since their first appearance in 1930. And no team has lost this game more than the Wolverines, who fell to 8-12 since their first trip here in 1902, the first time the game was played.
Bah! I just hope the Buckeyes would screw Florida through and through in the national championship.
At the heart of libertarianism is liberty. From liberty arises spontaneous order.
Spontaneous order is an idea that says order will arise naturally amid chaos. The way I see it, spontaneous order really happens when a society organizes itself to confront an issue. The term society that I am using here comprises purely of civil society with not participation of the state.
In its purest sense, I strongly believe spontaneous order is part of anarchism.
Spontaneous order does not always work though. When spontaneous order does not work, it is a situation which I think could be described as market failure. Of all models, anarchism is the one most susceptible to market failure. This is the reason why the state of anarchism is unstable. While it may exist at one point in time, it will eventually succumb to some sort of stable order, be it autocratic or democratic, voluntarily or otherwise.
While I have that sorted out in my mind, I am currently trying to figure whether laws enacted by a state is part of spontaneous order. Could actions by a state or any authority with policing power be part of spontaneous order?
I believe it could, with a restriction. The establishment of the state, at least the democratic ones, is spontaneous order.
Emergence of a democratic state is a result of cooperation between free individuals to establish order. For a democratic state, all decisions by state originate from the individual citizens that form the state. Therefore, transitively, any decision by the state resulting from cooperation of free individuals is spontaneous order.
The legitimacy of the reasoning however depends on the democratic nature of the state. The democratic aspect is also one of the factors that legitimize the state’s existence. Any violation of any democratic process invalidates the legitimacy of the reasoning as a whole. That invalidation in turn makes any state’s decision after the violation as non-spontaneous order.