Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. Some quick, immediate reaction: (1) I think Cowen throws out chum (that he knows will trigger either the libertarian right or the left) that he also thinks is fundamentally solid (even if flawed) for making his (more moderate…

I think we agree “defund” is a bad slogan as much as a bad idea. I’m seeing many thoughtful objections to it already for reasons that often parallel your own. sean s. LikeLike

In reply to sean samis. Part of my response to your comment is included in my response to Roderick, so you might want to read that, above. In general, I’m unconvinced that it’s useful to compare police certification to cosmetology requireme…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. I would dispute the generalization you’re making. Cosmetology can be more dangerous than you suggest, and policing less so. Here are liability issues that arise in cosmetology (meaning, cosmetologists incurring liab…

In reply to mlyoung57. I’ll address this when I respond to Roderick and Sean in a minute, but precisely because I agree with your opening sentence, I reject this: But I don’t think hours of required training for entry is irrelevant to showing th…

In reply to sean samis. I agree; the Hayek paper is often genuinely insightful. The point he makes about the sheer the distance between their social scientific models/normative theories and the real world is profoundly right. It just doesn’t have…

I have used this comparison between police and barbers myself. It’s not the strongest argument about LEO training, but it’s certainly pretty clear. A better comparison is to consider this data: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/…

When I ask advocates of “defund” what the heck they mean, it becomes complicated. This demonstrates it’s at best a badly crafted slogan and needs to be ditched. “Demilitarize” works better. It remains complicated but that …

Quote #1, the communist-sounding one, is from individualist anarchist Stephen Pearl Andrews. Quote #2, the individualist-sounding one, is from communist anarchist Pëtr Kropotkin. In the words of a famous, decidedly non-anarchist author: “Words are wis…