1. On Hayek’s Road to serfdom, via Megan McArdle.
2. Boston Review symposium on Africa, very good.
3. Will Wilkinson continues his excellence.
4. The world’s most impressive subways and yes Tokyo is #1.
5. Extended version of BSG interview with Ron Moore, interesting throughout.
I believe Moscow’s metro is better than the others.
And it doesn’t seem that the article actually ranks them, so it’s not true that “Tokyo is #1″.
The relatively new Taipei metro I think is better than Tokyo. Singapore also has a nicer subway.
Hong Kong’s metro easily wins:
“The Hong Kong MTR has the distinction of being one of the few subway systems in the world that actually turns a profit. It’s privately owned and uses real estate development along its tracks to increase revenue †¦ and ridership. It also introduced “Octopus cards” that allow people to not only pay their fares electronically, but buy stuff at convenience stores, supermarkets, restaurants and even parking meters. It’s estimated that 95 percent of all adults in Hong Kong own an Octopus card and they generate more than 10 million transactions each day.”
The octopus cards are extremely convenient, the trains are fast, on-time, and frequent. It’s also much cleaner than many of the big city metros, especially New York, Paris, and Washington.
Let me sing the praises of the Moscow Metro as well- clean, well run, almost never any problems, trains never more than 5 minutes apart, usually 2 minutes or less, beautiful stations, cheap, etc. It’s also huge. It’s so much better than New York that it can’t be compared. (I’m pretty sure that more escalators in new york don’t work than do, but I’ve almost never seen one not work in Moscow and since there are usually three at a station there is a back-up if one doesn’t work.)
I found it very thought provoking and interesting, though I do think he got a lot wrong. The weirdest bit for me began when he said “although he acknowledges that the state can legitimately serve social needs, he contradictorily views collective benefits as incompatible with individual freedom”
Why would “serving social needs” imply that freedom isn’t lost? There is nothing contradictory in those two claims. Or is it about the legitimacy?
In any case, I think he has sidestepped the question about voluntary versus coerced, and also blurred or minimized the arguments underlying Hayek’s distinction regarding what is or isn’t legitimate function of the state (which, admittedly, he didn’t really go into in Road to Serfdom, but the author clearly read other works).
He discusses the evolutionary ideas but doesn’t tie them back in. Perhaps if he did he might see why some functions of government are less dangerous than others.
It’s been a little while since I read Road to Serfdom, and Larner has some interesting points, but I feel like I’d have to sit through more of his columns to actually see what he’s arguing in favor of when he digs into Hayek (and/or his followers).
Yes, I think that voluntary collectives are completely acceptable to Hayek’s point of view. I don’t know where in the book he would have railed against that. Is Larner arguing therefore that Hayek’s position against coerced collectivism (in any form) has less weight?
I guess I just fail to see how the contemporary Left (and actually, Right) is any less in favor of coercion than that of Hayek’s era, since the issue du jour with which the Left is currently enamored is the idea of forcing me to buy health insurance from Uncle Sam’s Health Insurance Company, or else.
Hayek was indeed an idealist, democracy is far messier than anyone’s philosophy of it, and Hayek’s having influence on the Right doesn’t the movement a clone of his ideas in any way.
Larner’s got some decent points about Road to Serfdom and the Right in general, but his apparent belief in a new, improved Left makes him look rather silly.
Larner seems to have built a well-detailed strawman. Strawmen seem to mature more quickly when raised by ideologues.
I wonder if there’s a lefty bias to the general phenomenon of strawman arguments. It was Marx who saw the world as polar forces engaged in struggle. There is little acknowledgment that one might NOT be a supporter of the popular opposite to a view which one attacks.
To oppose government is not necessarily to support anarchy. To mistrust collectivism is not necessarily putting total faith in individualism. Opposing coercion is not necessarily licensing any and every voluntary action.
It is also commonly forgotten that lefty/righty or liberal/conservative are linguistic abstractions. Useful abstractions, but lacking detail. It is a strength of Hayek’s concept of emergent order that we sort out the particulars and details as relevant to our lives, even as academics lump us into broad groupings.
As a Dynamistic Coherentist, I’m almost a universal opposite. I don’t fully agree with nobody.
Leftists have gone from wanting a planned economy to wanting a regulated economy. As far as Road goes, there is no difference.
If you have to buy cabal alz, please come to our company.
Did I see this kind article before?
Comments on this entry are closed.