Articles from Skepticlawyer

Self-refuting scholarship

One of the signs of the increasing intellectual conformity of the academy, particularly the social science and (even more) the humanities, is the rise of scholarship that treats voting the “wrong” way as a pathology, to be explained pathologically.

In the US, analysis of voting Republican is increasingly treated in this way. Even more since Donald Trump won the Republican nomination and then the Electoral College and so the US Presidency. Brexit has received similar treatment.

Working class alienation as a driver of political polarisation

This is based on a comment I made here.

The US has a legislated two Party system. (Left-cynics say that if the Soviet Communist Party had divided itself into two wings who disagreed on abortion, it would still be in power.)

Firms, Cities, States: who has open borders and why?

This is based on a comment I made here.

Econblogger Robin Hanson notes that firms and cities have open borders and argues that:

So if nations act differently from firms and cities, that should be because either:

Montesquieu and the US: explaining the US’s Presidential aberration

That pioneer political scientist Montesquieu‘s theory of the separation of powers was both a very odd take on the English system of government (which he claimed it to be) but also very influential in the drafting of the US Constitution.

Giving something away for free is not a sign of it having value

The progressivist war against citizenship took another big leap forward with the British Labour Party decision committing the Party to giving the vote in general elections to all UK residents.

The urban rural divide in the US and other complexities of polarisation

Former libertarian, now progressive, Will Wilkinson has a report up on the rural urban divide in US politics (pdf), connecting the concentration of economic production in a service economy in megacities, sorting by migration and internal movement, and cognitive patterns (particularly pertaining to

Silver is the monetary metal with proven historical resilience

This is based on a comment I made here:

Milton Friedman suggested that the pre-1873 mix of silver standard, gold standard, and dual standard countries was possibly more stable than having almost all the major countries on the gold standard. I think he is correct: that international monetary order certainly lasted a lot longer.

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Self-refuting scholarship

Working class alienation as a driver of political polarisation

Firms, Cities, States: who has open borders and why?

Montesquieu and the US: explaining the US’s Presidential aberration

Giving something away for free is not a sign of it having value

The urban rural divide in the US and other complexities of polarisation

Silver is the monetary metal with proven historical resilience

Save us from historically tone deaf academics living in intellectual bubbles

Clades not clusters: about the folk theory of race

How to play intersectionality

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