Category Archives: Essays

In this article from The Economist, Lexington explains how most voters are incredibly ignorant when it comes to most issues. Even if voters are generally ignorant about the great majority of issues, this shouldn’t be a problem. That is precisely why we have a representative democracy — so that someone else can do the thinking, studying and evaluating for us. Nevertheless, voters are also irrational because the political issues upon which they base their votes, if implemented, actually go against their interests.

[There are] four biases that prompt voters systematically to demand policies that make them worse off. First, people do not understand how the pursuit of private profits often yields public benefits: they have an anti-market bias. Second, they underestimate the benefits of interactions with foreigners: they have an anti-foreign bias. Third, they equate prosperity with employment rather than production: Mr Caplan calls this the “make-work bias”. Finally, they tend to think economic conditions are worse than they are, a bias towards pessimism.

In other words, voter ignorance is not a problem in itself. The problem lies in the fact that voters’ irrationality causes them to elect politicians who will ultimately promote policies that will negatively affect the voters. And worst of all, the voters will never understand that it is their own idiocy that eventually causes them harm.

In any event, here is The Economist article in full: Continue reading →

Yesterday, I started a nice debate with my post on the Increase in Immigration and the Decrease in Crime. An unknown gentleman, named Mustapha (not to be confused with my friend from the post on changing names), entered the debate and gave a very interesting explanation on why he feels that immigrants (like himself — he is Nigerian American) eventually succeed in assimilating and overcoming racism by accepting “whiteness” while African Americans continue to struggle to find their place in white America.

Note that immigrants, be them from Europe (white) or from other parts of the world (Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere), have always suffered some form of racism/xenophobia in the first generations (including my father’s family as Italian Americans). Actually, I once had an Immigration Law professor who argued that America was essentially anti-Catholic, and that was why discrimination against immigrants has always been mainly directed towards Catholic immigrants (Irish, Italians, and Latin Americans).

Back to the debate: agree or not with his analysis, I think that Mustapha’s comments are well worth reading for anyone interested in the great complexities of race relations and their historic legacy, American cultural diversity, and the US as an immigrant-built nation. Here is his commentary: Continue reading →

Most people wrongly associate an increase in immigration with an increase in crime, regardless of the obvious fact that immigration is an economic phenomena. People leave their families and countries behind because of an economic opporunity abroad. If there weren’t any job opporunities in the recipient country, then there wouldn’t be immigrants. Thus, immigrants simply fill a specific demand in the recipient country for work.

So why do nationals always blame immigrants? Because people like to blame others for their own shortcomings. But the fact of the matter is that the great majority of crime is and has alway been committed by the home grown.

In an article that I was just reading in The Economist today about how crime continues to fall in America’s biggest cities, The Economist highlights the fact that one of the reasons is that immigrants are entering the cities while the lower income class Americans are moving out. According to The Economist Continue reading →

I received an email with this Robin Williams monologue about how the U.S. should deal with peace in the world by essentially telling the world to screw off and shutting U.S. borders. Of course, it is tounge-and-cheek, and I have not verified whether it is really attributable to Williams. Nevertheless, I think his argument is rather infantile and simplistic. It is the typical “if you don’t like it, then leave” response you get in every wealthy country around the world when someone complains.

So basically he argues that if foreigners complain about U.S. foreign policy, then the U.S. should stop doing all of those things that actually have a great benefit to the world. As I have said, this is rather silly. It is like an abusive father saying that if you don’t like the way he treats you, then you should support yourself; or an abusive boss who tells you that if you don’t like it, then get a different job. The U.S. needs to stop living in the past, for example, by saying that Europeans should thank us for World War II. Just because we do or did some good, doesn’t mean that we have carte blanche. I know you should not bite the hand that feeds you, but just because you give out a few small hand-outs, doesn’t mean that you are free from criticism.
In any event, here is Robin Williams: Continue reading →

My friends in Spain often accuse me of being blindly pro-American and only criticizing Europe. I always defend myself by saying that this is in fact not at all true. I critique what I see around me. After perhaps sounding too critical of the Mama’s Boy Society, I am going to highlight some of the problems associated with obesity in the United States.

At dinner on Friday night, Loic played with the idea of creating an online community for overweight people to be called AFatWorld (see video) where communities could use a WiFi scale (the La Fatera) and share their weight with their friends and other community members. Actually at the time, I was sitting at another table that was engaged in a much more interesting discussion on the success of Internet dating sites.

In any event, Felix Petersen, co-founder of Plazes, and I had a very interesting conversation about the politics of food. Continue reading →