Liberty in Context
Ilya Somin posts a long, thoughtful response to Kerry’s Reason essay arguing that caring about liberty implies caring about cultural as well as political limits on liberty. I suspect Ilya may be missing Kerry’s point. Ilya writes: Kerry’s argument could benefit from greater precision on several key issues. First, some cultural issues might well be an appropriate object of concern for libertarians as thinking individuals, but not a proper focus for libertarianism - which is, after all, a political ideology, not a comprehensive guide to the good life.

Inequality at Cato Unbound
The conversation about economic inequality is in full swing over at Cato Unbound. Here’s my reply to Kenworthy, my reply to Nye, and the first part of my reply to Anderson. And be sure to check out all the panelists’ most recent posts.

Technology Technology, Institutional Technology, and Global Warming
In response to my exchange with Ryan Avent (see Ryan’s reply here) Matt Yglesias says: For basically Popperian reasons I don’t think it makes sense for political pundits to spend a lot of time debating the relative difficulty of developing different hypothetical future technologies. Instead, I

Inequalities in Health Care
In a post on “Paying for Health” the philosopher Daniel Little writes: It seems a bitter but unavoidable truth that there are very substantial inequalities in the provision of health care in our society. One person’s likelihood of surviving a devastating cancer may be significantly less than another person’s chances, simply based on the second person’s ability to pay for premium health care services. Further, it seems unavoidable that these extreme inequalities are flatly unjust in any society that believes in the equal worth of all human beings. An

For More Responsible Climate Politics
Ryan Avent writes: I think it would be irresponsible not to continue studying the issue and looking for potential geoeingineering fixes, but I think that anyone suggesting that we should abandon the effort to cut emissions in favor of a geoengineering approach has not thought the matter through. It should be considered the last ditch effort, only pursued seriously when it is clear that emission cuts will not prevent catastrophic warming. I’ve thought the matter through, but I still don’t understand this ordering of priorities.  I understand the strategic political motivation to make