“That’s the thing about books.
They let you travel without moving your feet.“
—Jhumpa Lahiri
Welcome summer, also known as reading season for many of us. What will you be reading this month?
Over the last year, and in conjunction with our newest sister site AdamSmithWorks, we've started expanding our efforts to include reading groups. We've offered both online and virtual reading groups, and we couldn't be happier with the results. (See the bottom of this newsletter for info on our next online group.) We've met lots of new people and forged closer connections to those we knew but a little previously.
Success with these endeavors has unintended consequences, of course. Our June Reading Group with Professor Steve Horwitz is on a waiting list. So we're using this newsletter to give you, our most loyal readers, early access to our June/July Virtual Reading Group.
Please consider joining us for three one-hour sessions on Humor and Harmony in Bastiat's Economics, led by Professor Lynne Kiesling. The sessions will be held on Tuesdays, June 30, July 7, and July 14 from 5-6 pm EST. Space is limited, and we will open registration online next week, so act fast. Use this link to register.
We hope you'll share what you're reading with us, and we hope to "see" you soon. We'll be sharing reading recommendations with you all summer long on EconLog where we hope you'll join us in the Comments, as well as on social media. As always, you can drop us a line at [email protected]. We love to hear from you.
EconLib Feature Articles, June 2020
The Case for a “Hodgepodge” of
State-Based Covid-19 Rules May be
JUST What the Doctor Ordered by Richard B. McKenzie
"Resisting the pressure to nationalize the “coronavirus war” has a straightforward reason: States and local communities differ, most prominently in population density. But there is a much stronger reason to defer to state and local governments: When so much is unknown about a highly contagious disease, the country needs opportunities to try a variety of policy remedies, just as it needs to test medical remedies (vaccines and antibody therapies) for nonvictims, especially those in frontline healthcare jobs. Read More.
Intellectuals caught in the middle by Arnold Kling
"The success of Donald Trump in his run for the Presidency in 2016 surprised and dismayed many conservative intellectuals in the Republican Party. In Never Trump, Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles describe their plight.
What role should intellectuals play in our political system? Conservatives have difficulty answering this question." Read More.
Liberalism and Laissez-Faire in Albert Schatz’s Economic and Social Individualisme:
A Liberty Classic Review by Pierre Lemieux
"Schatz and Hayek share many ideas. Schatz also claims to defend the empiricist and anti-rationalist version of classical liberalism: “The spontaneous order of societies answers to reasons that Reason does not know,” he writes. They both see subjective ideas as social facts that guide individual actions. They both criticize “social justice.” They both reject social constructivism and rationalist “natural rights.” Schatz speaks of “the empty concept of ‘natural rights,'” which the 18th-century school of the Physiocrats and many French 19th-century economists defended.
But the two thinkers are more different than they appear at first sight..." Read More.
"Our world is full of people talking lately. Here are some people speaking–sometimes across the centuries. To me, the awareness that others have felt the many things I have felt lately and have struggled with the many things that challenge me these days makes me feel less alone, even while socially isolated." Read More.
Author and teacher Robert Pondiscio of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute talks about his book How the Other Half Learns with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Pondiscio shares his experience of being embedded in a Success Academy Charter School in New York City for a year--lessons about teaching, education policy, and student achievement. Listen Here.
