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April 24, 2005
America, land of the free.
Here's some of the newest prison statistics.
Posted by djdamico at 6:06 PM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2005
The Purpose of Austrian Addiction
Austrian Addiction has been up for a number of months now and I think it's been going well thus far. I thought it was about time to present some thoughts about the general purpose and intentions of Austrian Addiction.
A few weeks ago I had lunch with a number of members of the GMU community including Tyler Cowen, Peter Boettke and visiting speaker David Freidman. After healthy portions of vietnamese cousine, shared opinons about the Lord of the Rings, and some general debates about economic theory, the topic of conversation focused around the recent phenomenon of the blogosphere. Boettke and Friedman, seemed less open to the idea of blogging than Cowen, the major advocate at the table and contributor of Marginal Revolution. Friedman seemed hesitant to start the hobby for fear of developing an addiction of the habit. Boettke shared the notion that blogs were not the equivalent to academic research and he viewed them as a distraction from more serious work.
Cowen offered an alternate perspective, one that I think is not only capable of getting more reknowned scholars on the web but also is more accurate at capturing the unrealized potential of web logging. Cowen simply implied that he viewed blogging, not as a substitute or distraction from academic work, but as a compliment to it. Friedman and Boettke seemed skeptical at first. Cowen explained how he had recently blogged a chapter of his upcoming book. Boettke asked flippantly, how many responses he received. Cowen replied, "hundreds!"
I couldn't agree with Cowen's take on blogging more. As far back as I can remember learning about the scientific process to compete in elementary and middle school science fares, it was always emphasized to me the importance of keeping a log, or journal, so that the procedure taken could be charted by others who later wanted to repeat your experiments. The social sciences may not need such rigourous historical documentation to reproduce experimental conditions, but the wealth of information that can be communicated through the blogosphere is only to the betterment of the overall spread of ideas.
A number of weeks ago I attended the Austrian Scholar's Conference at the Mises Institute, where a panel was dedicated to discussing the role of technology and the spread of ideas. The same debate of portraying blogging as a distraction v. contribution came up. I think the real problem boils down to a key difference that I may be the only person who makes. Live journals are different from blogs.
A live journal is the daily happenings and off the cuff comments of a person or group of people. The only unified topic of the site is the person or people who created it. Live Journals reveal lots of unlinked information about individuals, like what they ate for dinner, funny things their pet did lately, and serious opinions and ideology. A web log or blog, on the other hand should be a log of collectively relevent information of similar topics.
It is the latter conception that the Austrian Addiction will attempt to operate under. As I engage in research and writing projects, this site will host research sources, original writings, and comments organized according to those topics. I hope it serves to spread such interests to those who read the cite with as much entertainment and excitment as they have provided for me.
Posted by djdamico at 4:37 PM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2005
If you're good at the jumble you can protect society.
This Chicago news story is preposterous. It demonstrates how wasted tax dollars and union clout come at the expense of operations and quality standards. Typically all you hear is how the "private" prisons are busy beating and violating human rights. I doubt they're wasting their time and resources like this though.
Posted by djdamico at 6:35 PM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2005
Arnold's cititens have diverse preferences for prison operations, who would have thought?
This San Francisco Chronicle story shows how different people have different opinions as to what our legal system should look like and the way it should operate. Government provision is incapable of dynamically servicing these diverse preferences. Arnold is just left with the opportunity to seek votes and constituencies in politics and aim for the best.
Posted by djdamico at 4:42 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2005
My first citation...
In my own self indulgence, I like to google stuff I've been working on to see if it's been spreading. Successfully I found that my early graffiti draft was cited in "Graffiti and Urban Space" by Ilse Scheepers.
Posted by djdamico at 2:24 AM | Comments (1)
April 12, 2005
The Breadth and Scope of Libertarianism
My lecture, "The Breadth and Scope of Libertarianism, and the Role of Student Activism," was presented to the Loyola College Libertarians on MArch 15. It has been written up and published at LewRockwell.com.
Posted by djdamico at 10:27 AM | Comments (2)
April 10, 2005
CIP seminar and Benson's paper get attention.
The CIP seminar series was presented this semester in conjunction with Mercatus at GMU. It focused on the issues of providing security on the internet without government regulation. Skarbek recently blogged about one of the critical papers in the series by Bruce Benson. It was also discussed on the Mises Blog. I attended this presentation when Benson came through for the CIP project and was very impressed (all papers are available at the previous link. The entire series brought a few particular insights to mind.
1. I noticed how the broad notion of property right enforcement had permeating effects into trading on the internet(this point was focused on most closely in Stringham's piece). Without expost mechanisms available (cost effective) individuals are left with only ex ante deterant efforts to protect themselves from fraud, theft, and intrusion. This paralleled very closely with my line of research on prisons and privatization. Despite opting out availability in police and security provisions the state still maintains a monopolized hold on criminal enforcement and corrections which provides a disoriented institution of property throughout the entire market place.
2. The internet environment creates an ambiguous notion of property rights. Few of the papers distinguished between security and privacy on the internet. This allowed me to see the institutional parallel that may also exist between my prison research agenda and Stephan Kinsellas intillectual property rights work. In some objective sense, protection against invasions of privacy is impossible, since there is no way of completely compensating a victim of his privacy once information has been used for ill means.
Clarifying issues of property rights in cyberspace would give more objective methods for ruling on cases like this one.
I plan on writing a paper as a response to the entire series and focusing on these two insghts as I beleive they are inherent in the research but not as emphasized as much as others of the presented arguments.
Posted by djdamico at 5:26 PM | Comments (0)
April 4, 2005
More Taco Bell
Yet another reply from Rad Geek People's Daily. At this point we're going to have to agree to disagree on a few key issues.
1. Using the term slavery to apply to migrant working conditions. I do not think it's accurate, bottom line. Individuals are given the free opportunity to work (perhaps for a relatively low wage) or not. Choosing the former over the latter is still choice and not slavery. The violent references made by the media and the Boycott activists, may be true but I have no means of investigating their claims, and view them with scepticism at best.
2. The third definition of capitalism listed in the above post. I don't have a problem with boss powered employment for the same reason I don't view migrant labor as slavery. Ownerhsip is the means in which I view legitimate authority over the usage of property and resources.
I've enjoyed the debate greatly, but it doesn't seem like there's much more to say especially since the Boycott has come to an end. We'll have to wait and see what developes for Taco Bell and the migrant workers after the new policies take effect. Till then I rest easy knowing that I can still get delicious tacos for a reasonable price.
Posted by djdamico at 11:47 AM | Comments (2)