Years and years ago, I read this essay by British Libertarian J. C. Lester someplace online. The credit here says 2001; either my memory is deceiving me or that date is in error, as I distinctly recall reading it on a computer I last used in 1997. Anyway, it’s old. Lester argues that people who [...]
All posts tagged bureaucracy
No representation without taxation?
Posted by acilius on November 14, 2010
http://losthunderlads.com/2010/11/14/no-representation-without-taxation/
Designed to fail
The June 2010 issue of the ultra-conservative Chronicles magazine contains this paragraph, in a column by Philip Jenkins: The concept of “designed to fail” was formulated back in 1979 in an influential study by leftist scholar Jeffrey Reiman entitled The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison. Following Marxist theory, Reiman argued that the goal of [...]
Posted by acilius on May 29, 2010
http://losthunderlads.com/2010/05/29/designed-to-fail/
Four bureaucracies
I’ve always been interested in the power of bureaucracy. The word “bureaucracy” is often used to mean an inefficient organization, but if that’s all bureaucracy really was it would never have become the most pervasive form of social organization in the modern world. In fact, bureaucracies are the most efficient of organizations. We become frustrated [...]
Posted by acilius on April 7, 2010
http://losthunderlads.com/2010/04/07/four-bureaucracies/
A great artificial man
In the introduction to Leviathan, English thinker Thomas Hobbes famously compared the state to a “great artificial man, or monster, composed of other men, with a life that might be traced from its generation under the pressure of human needs to its dissolution through civil strife proceeding from human passions.” The nerves and sinews of this artificial man, [...]
Posted by acilius on February 21, 2010
http://losthunderlads.com/2010/02/21/a-great-artificial-man/
Bioethics as a profession
ALDaily named its link to this article about the profession of bioethics “How are these people experts?” A quote: Is it politically desirable for society to credit a designated group called “bioethicists” with expertise in resolving the most difficult moral questions? If so, what is it that gives ethicists a more legitimate claim to wisdom about [...]
Posted by acilius on February 10, 2010
http://losthunderlads.com/2010/02/10/bioethics-as-a-profession/
Liberty and Bureaucracy
The Rebecca Solnit piece linked below, together with some recent conversations I’ve had with LeFalcon and VThunderlad, have got me thinking about what we twenty-first century types mean when we use words like “freedom” and “liberty.” I’m wondering if we can’t update Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts of Liberty” a bit. Perhaps when we moderns talk about freedom, we are talking about [...]
Posted by acilius on September 12, 2009
http://losthunderlads.com/2009/09/12/liberty-and-bureaucracy/
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