David_J_Balan

Our House, My Rules

People debate all the time about how strictly children should be disciplined. Obviously, this is a worthwhile debate to have, as there must be some optimal amount of discipline that is greater than zero. The debate's nominal focus is usually on what's best for the child, with even the advocates for greater strictness arguing that it's "for their own good." It might also touch on what's good for other family members or for society at large. What I think is missing from the usual debate is that it assumes nothing but honorable motives on the part of the arguers. That is, it assumes that the arguments in favor of greater strictness are completely untainted by any element of authoritarianism or cruelty. But people are sometimes authoritarian and cruel! Just for fun! And the only people who you can be consistently cruel to without them slugging you, shunning you, suing you, or calling the police on you are your children. This is a reason for more than the usual amount of skepticism of arguments that say that strict parenting is necessary. If there were no such thing as cruelty in the world, people would still argue about the optimal level of strictness, and sometimes the more strict position would be the correct one, and parents would chose the optimal level of strictness on the basis of these arguments. But what we actually have is a world with lots and lots of cruelty lurking just under the surface, which cannot help but show up in the form of pro-strictness arguments in parenting debates. This should cause us to place less weight on pro-strictness arguments than we otherwise would.* Note that this is basically the same idea as Bertrand Russell's argument against the idea of sin: its true function is to allow people to exercise their natural cruelty while at the same time maintaining their opinion of themselves as moral. One example of authoritarianism masquerading as sound discipline (even among otherwise good parents) is the idea of "My House, My Rules." I've even

42Nov 2, 2009

David_J_Balan

Message

275

17y

A Valuable Asset in Your Intellectual Portfolio is Not the Same as a Good Guide

Haven't posted in quite a while. Suppose you have a big, complicated question that you're not sure of the answer to, and you want to seek an adviser to guide you. One kind of adviser is someone whose opinion, by your lights, constitutes strong evidence regarding the answer; on the...

Aug 21, 20117

Hayekian Prediction Markets?

I think I basically get the idea behind prediction markets. People take their money seriously, so the opinions of people who are confident enough to bet real money on those opinions deserve to be taken seriously as well. That kid on the schoolyard who was always saying "wanna bet?" might...

Feb 15, 201010

How Much Should We Care What the Founding Fathers Thought About Anything?

A while back I saw an interesting discussion between U.S. Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia. Scalia is well known for arguing that the way to deal with Constitutional questions is to use the plain meaning of the words in the Constitutional text as they would have been...

Feb 11, 2010-6

Disclosure vs. Bans: Reply to Robin Hanson

A little while back I wrote a post arguing that the existence of abusive terms in credit card contracts (such as huge jumps in interest rates for being one day late with a payment) do not satisfy the conditions for standard economic models of asymmetric information between rational agents, but...

Jan 4, 20109

Mandating Information Disclosure vs. Banning Deceptive Contract Terms

Economists are very into the idea of mutually beneficial exchange. The standard argument is that if two parties voluntarily agree to a deal, then they must be better off with the deal than without it, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed. And if the terms of that deal don't harm any...

Dec 20, 200930

Morality and International Humanitarian Law

International humanitarian law proscribes certain actions in war, particularly actions that harm non-combatants. On a strict reading of these laws (see what Richard Goldstone said in his debate with Dore Gold at Brandeis University here and see what Matthew Yglesias had to say here), these actions are prohibited regardless of...

Nov 30, 20093

Rooting Hard for Overpriced M&Ms

The other day I went to get some productivity-enhancement M&Ms from the candy machine at work. When I opened my wallet, I didn't immediately see a $1 bill. Then I looked some more and I found one, and I was happy! But of course that doesn't make any sense. If...

Nov 28, 20096

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David_J_Balan

David_J_Balan

David_J_Balan

Our House, My Rules

Mandating Information Disclosure vs. Banning Deceptive Contract Terms

Chomsky, Sports Talk Radio, Media Bias, and Me

Joint Distributions and the Slow Spread of Good Ideas

David_J_Balan

A Valuable Asset in Your Intellectual Portfolio is Not the Same as a Good Guide

Hayekian Prediction Markets?

How Much Should We Care What the Founding Fathers Thought About Anything?

Disclosure vs. Bans: Reply to Robin Hanson

Mandating Information Disclosure vs. Banning Deceptive Contract Terms

Morality and International Humanitarian Law

Rooting Hard for Overpriced M&Ms

Our House, My Rules

Mandating Information Disclosure vs. Banning Deceptive Contract Terms

Chomsky, Sports Talk Radio, Media Bias, and Me

Joint Distributions and the Slow Spread of Good Ideas

A Valuable Asset in Your Intellectual Portfolio is Not the Same as a Good Guide

Hayekian Prediction Markets?

How Much Should We Care What the Founding Fathers Thought About Anything?

Disclosure vs. Bans: Reply to Robin Hanson

Mandating Information Disclosure vs. Banning Deceptive Contract Terms

Morality and International Humanitarian Law

Rooting Hard for Overpriced M&Ms