Category: Books

The new Christopher Buckley novel Boomsday concerns a blogger — Cassandra — who proposes that a cash-strapped, demographically-burdened society pay old people to do themselves in.  The elderly are to kill themselves for tax breaks.  In Swiftian fashion we can improve this idea by convexifying the choice.  Let’s make it a risk and subsidize sky-diving for the non-working elderly. 

There are two positive externalities from the resulting deaths; first, a bequest of material wealth passes to other individuals, second, the deadweight loss of taxation falls.  The negative externality from the death falls upon other family members and friends; whether the would-be victim internalized those costs in the first place is difficult to calculate.  Have I mentioned that economics has few good ways of modeling two-way altruism and keeping the standard welfare theorems intact?  Distribution and efficiency are no longer separate, but hey that’s the real world.

Here is a New York Times review.  Buckley is one of the most entertaining public speakers I have heard, hire or go hear him if you can.

I knew as a libertarian that it was imperative to be tolerant of alternative lifestyles.  Until I walked into that convention hall, I had no idea how many alternatives there were.

Ed Crane on the first Libertarian Party convention in 1972.  From Radicals for Capitalism.

¨…may I advocate classical-liberal limited government, so that my son may advocate anarcho-capitalism, and that my grandson may plan to build new artificial countries in the ocean.¨

from Radicals for Capitalism.

1. Ice, by Vladimir Sorokin.  A totally lurid, highly sexed, contemporary Russian, pre-apocalyptic mix of science fiction and horror.  I finished it.

2. The Once and Future King, T.H. White.  Oddly absent from Law and Literature syllabi, I’m teaching this in my next class.  This is many people’s favorite book.  It’s written in a simple manner, but it cumulates in an oddly beautiful way.

3. What economists should learn from sociology, not to mention Arnold Kling on me, and Brad DeLong on Milton Friedman.

4. How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It, by Patricia Love and Steven Stosny.  The claim: talking about relationship problems is an inherently shameful activity for the man and thus it will fail; the couple should just read this book and do what is best.

5. Econoblog with Ed Glaeser and Daron Acemoglu, on democracy and economic growth.  If Greg Mankiw can debate Jacqueline Passey, Ed can cite Borat as evidence in a dialog with a world-class economist.

6. Invading Mexico: America’s Continental Dream and the Mexican War, 1846-1848 by Joseph Wheelan.  If you wish to embarrass your friends (and yourself), ask them whether they would in retrospect support the U.S. conquest of territory from Mexico.

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man to beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

– W.H. Auden

Bookslut will tell you "not," but you would be missing something special.  Most generally, revel in the language, the fun, and the set pieces.  Don’t look for deeper meanings, in my view there ain’t none, and for the better.  My specific tips:

1. V: Published when Pynchon was 24.  Read it once, straight through, without trying to make sense of it.  Then read it again.  Companion to V. is a useful supplement.

2. The Crying of Lot 49.  Short, fun, and somewhat scrutable.  It is a common introduction to Pynchon, although Pynchon himself dismisses its importance.

3. Gravity’s Rainbow: The masterpiece.  It doesn’t matter if you don’t finish it, the story falls apart in any case.  Even reading the first fifty pages yields a high return.

4. Vineland: This short novel came after a 17-year hiatus.  It has its defenders, but I find it unreadable and unpleasant.

5. Mason & Dixon: I love the 18th century, so you might think I could get into this one.  Pam Regis tells me it has to be read aloud.

6. Against the Day: The new 1200-page monstrosity.  How to read it?  Lean it against your sofa, and wait until your wife starts complaining about it, thereby prompting you to pick it up and get it out of the way…

The bottom line: Pynchon is about the highest-IQ author out there, a mixed blessing.  Start with Gravity’s Rainbow, or V, and hope for the best.

#15 in a series of 50.

Here is Brian on CatoUnbound, and here is Brian’s wonderful new book.  My provocative response will be up Monday; Brink Lindsey, Tom Palmer, and Virginia Postrel will be part of the symposium as well.

In 1999, a poor Colombian told me that his eighty-two years had finally dulled his fear of violence, which had tormented him because he had been robbed many times, once they’d cut his belly open — I requested his opinion of the rich — He clenched his fists and said: Oh, they don’t do nothing for the poor people!

The ones who had harmed him were poorer than he — and still he hated the rich.

That is from William Vollmann’s intermittently fascinating Poor People.  Here is an earlier post on Vollmann.

Should your library consist mostly of read books, or of unread books?  The avid and loyal MR reader will already know we are adjusting for "number of books read" in posing this query.

If you own mostly read books, you use your library for reference and remembrance.  Your collection is like Proust’s madeleine.  If you own mostly unread books, your library yields exciting discovery but also lots of clunkers.  Each step to the shelf offers a chance to redefine your life and your loves in unexpected ways, or perhaps crashing disappointment.

My (small) personal library is virtually 100 percent already read books, plus Gone With the Wind and Shantaram, both of which I am saving up for long plane trips to distant climes.  But I think of my real library as the local public library, which is still mostly unread books.

If you are one of those Austrian economists who believes in the all-importance of unquantifiable Knightian uncertainty, I hope your shelves are full of unread books (we now, by the way, have the means to make this otherwise murky concept operational).  Otherwise you are livin’ a dirty, stinkin’ lie.  Karmic retribution will be swift and, yes, certain.

For further musings on this topic, see Nassim Taleb’s new The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, a stimulating look at surprise.

Boo!

Here.

Full explanation here.

Pointers are from BookSlut and Yana.  What words do you wish to purge from your library?

1. Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice, edited by Ed Stringham.  712 pages of debate about libertarian anarchy, just about everything intelligent written on the topic, and then some.  The book has two essays by yours truly on why libertarian anarchy cannot avoid reevolution back to government; you’ll also find them on my home page.

2. Daniel Drezner, All Politics is Global: Explaining International Regulatory Regimes.  An underexplored topic in public choice, Dan shows it still all boils down to national politics.  Here is chapter one.

3. Dan Simmons, The Terror.  One of his best books, a thrilling Arctic adventure, well-paced, 769 pp., but ultimately not conceptual.  My decision to stop reading at p.200 or so marks a watershed in my life.

4. Christoph Peters, The Fabric of Life.  A German vacationer witnesses a murder in Istanbul and delves into seamy society to figure out what happened.  It is so hard to get a translation into English published these days that a rule of reading only translated contemporary literature is one of the better filters.  Recommended.

5. Rebecca West, The Fountain Overflows.  Reader’s feast of subtle and penetrating observations, dysfunctional family, etc.

6. Spence on Schelling, via Greg Mankiw.

7. Maybe I’m Amazed.

Radicalis for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, by Brian Doherty.  I hope to write more on this book for Cato, and they get first dibs on my thoughts.  But you all should know the book exists and is likely to prove the definitive history of its topic.

Here is Bryan Caplan on the book, which by the way even covers me.