Academic social scientists overwhelmingly vote Democratic, and the Democratic hegemony has increased significantly since 1970. Moreover, the policy preferences of a large sample of the members of the scholarly associations in anthropology, economics, history, legal and political philosophy, political science, and sociology generally bear out conjectures about the correspondence of partisan identification with left/right ideal types; although across the board, both Democratic and Republican academics favor government action more than the ideal types might suggest. Variations in policy views among Democrats (...) is smaller than among Republicans. Ideological diversity (as judged not only by voting behavior, but by policy views) is by far the greatest within economics. Social scientists who deviate from left‐wing views are as likely to be libertarian as conservative. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAdam Smith infused the expression ‘impartial spectator’ with a plexus of related meanings, one of which is a super-being, which bears parallels to monotheistic ideas of God. As for any genuine, identified, human spectator, he can be deemed impartial only presumptively. Such presumptive impartiality as regards the incident does not of itself carry extensive implications about his intelligence, nor about his being aligned with benevolence towards any larger whole. We may posit, however, a being who is impartial and who holds (...) higher levels of intelligence and of benevolence, and then converse over what her sentiments would be about the matter under discussion. It is natural to conceive of a being who is unsurpassable in such qualities, who is morally supreme, and who naturally takes the definite article the without having been definitized by the writer. Signal passages, new to edition 6, suggest that Smith formulates the man within the breast as a representative of the always present and everywhere morally supreme impartial spectator. When Smith speaks of the man within the breast as ‘the supposed impartial spectator’, we interpret ‘supposed’ as sup-pos-ed, not sup-pos’d. (shrink)

The party registration of tenure‐track faculty at 11 California universities, ranging from small, private, religiously affiliated institutions to large, public, elite schools, shows that the “one‐party campus” conjecture does not extend to all institutions or all departments. At one end of the scale, U.C. Berkeley has an adjusted Democrat:Republican ratio of almost 9:1, while Pepperdine University has a ratio of nearly 1:1. Academic field also makes a tremendous difference, with the humanities averaging a 10:1 D:R ratio and business schools averaging (...) 1.3:1, and with departments ranging from sociology (44:1) to management (1.5:1). Across all departments and institutions, the D:R ratio is 5:1, while in the “soft” liberal‐arts fields, the ratio is higher than 8:1. These findings are generally in line with comparable previous studies. (shrink)

OVERVIEWWe ambitiously reexamine Smith’s moral theory in relation to Hume’s. We regard Smith's developments as glorious and important. We also see them as quite fully agreeable to Hume, as enhancement, not departure. But Smith represents matters otherwise! Why would Smith overstate disagreement with his best friend?One aspect of Smith’s enhancement, an aspect he makes very conspicuous, is that between moral approval and beneficialness there is another phase, namely, the moral judge's sense of propriety. With that phase now finding formulation, Smith, (...) if only implicitly, generates a spiral of beneficialness and propriety, a spiral shown in Figure 7 in the present paper. We consider Figure 7, illustrating the spiral, to be the most important arrival point in the present paper; it highlights the non-foundationalism of Smith's ethics. But to arrive at the spiral, we must engage in extensive exegesis.In Part IV of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith presents a foil against which he develops his own theory, a foil supposedly representing Hume. According to the foil, moral approval derives from ‘utility.’ But, in multiple ways, the foil is misleading. We provide an interpretation of Hume, notably his four-factor account of moral approval, before examining Smith's representation of Hume.One twist is that Smith used the words utility and useful differently than Hume did – Smith quietly stretched them to include species of agreeableness, thereby obscuring the importance of agreeableness in Hume’s theory.Another, more significant problem is that Smith allows the impression that in Hume moral approval derives quite determinately from beneficialness. In fact Hume conveys the interpretive and sentimental spaciousness of the operations that generate moral approval; here, Hume even speaks repeatedly of ‘proper sentiments’, thus almost using the term propriety himself.But the propriety phase in Smith opens up to a key facet of Smith’s development on Hume: He poeticizes a locus of sympathy not emphasized in Hume – namely, that between the moral judge and her own man within the breast; that locus enters the theory in addition to the sympathies emphasized in Hume, not in lieu of them. We distinguish lateral sympathy, which is important in Hume’s thought, and vertical sympathy, which is especially characteristic of Smith’s more inner-directed and allegorical thought. Smith embraces Hume’s lateral sympathy and enhances moral theory by adding formulations that elaborate vertical sympathy.Next, we come to something of a twist in the whole matter: We show that – as Smith well knew all along! – propriety is a species of agreeableness! Smith’s propriety phase represents another dimension within which such agreeableness lives: Smith’s vertical dimension thus gives rise to a spiral representing the diachronic development of the judge herself. It is a spiral of beneficialness and propriety: Each propriety phase in the next loop of the spiral engenders a species of agreeableness now as a part of beneficialness.Smith's developments on Hume, then, involve the following three facets: formulation of the propriety phase; the poetic elaboration of vertical sympathy; the diachronic spiral of propriety and beneficialness.The three facets come together, especially in Ed. 6 of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The whole development goes beyond Hume, but, really, is agreeable to Hume – though Smith himself portrays his developments as disagreeing with features of Hume's moral theory.We speculate that Smith was more or less aware of all that that we say, including the absense of any really substantive disagreement. Why, in that case, would Smith have proceeded as he did? We address that question at the end of the piece. Our speculations suggest a method in the madness. (shrink)

Knowledge consists of the triad: information, interpretation, and judgement. Much of modern political economy has miscarried by proceeding as though knowledge were merely “information” that is, as though interpretation were symmetric and final. Economic prosperity depends greatly on new knowledge or “discovery” of profit opportunities that translate into social betterment. These discoveries are often a transcending of the working interpretation, not merely the acquisition of new information. The evolution of interpretations is key to appreciating voluntarism as a maxim for policy. (...) Smith, Hayek, and Kirzner taught that bad public policy is partly the result of not knowing better, not of evil or greed. Economists may justify their efforts and their salaries chiefly by teaching citizens to know better. Such is the economist’s calling.La connaissance consiste en une triade : information, interprétation, et jugement. Une bonne part de l’économie politique moderne a échoué en assimilant la connaissance à l’information, ce qui revenait à dire que l’interprétation était symétrique et ultime. La prospérité économique repose dans une grande mesure sur l’émergence de nouvelles connaissances ou la “découverte” d’occasions de profit porteuses d’améliorations sociales. Souvent ces découvertes transcendent l’interprétation courante et non seulement l’acquisition de nouvelles informations. L’évolution des interprétations est essentielle pour évaluer le volontarisme en tant que maxime pour la politique. Smith, Hayek et Kirzner nous ont enseigné que des politiques publiques inappropriées résultent en partie d’une déficience de connaissances plutôt que de mauvaises intentions ou d’avidité. Les économistes peuvent justifier leurs efforts et leurs salaires essentiellement en apprenant aux citoyens à s’enrichir de connaissances. Telle est la vocation de l’économiste. (shrink)

Thomas Schelling has described how each of us is made up of conflicting impulses. The art of managing these impulses Schelling dubs ?egonomics?. The idea of egonomic calamity underlies paternalism (or, breaking convention, what I call ?parentalism'). The paper argues for laissez?faire in matters egonomic. The rationalizations I give for this libertarian sentiment are old ones, such as accentuating the dignity of the individual and letting the individual learn from example and from his own experience. Also I note, as H. (...) L. Mencken did, that parentalist measures often have unhappy unintended consequences, sometimes are counter?productive, and rarely are borne of sincere good?will. (shrink)

At lunch one day a colleague and I had a friendly argument over occupational licensing. I attacked it for being anticompetitive, arguing that licensing boards raise occupational incomes by restricting entry, advertising, and commercialization. My colleague, while acknowledging anticompetitive aspects, affirmed the need for licensing on the grounds of protecting the consumer from frauds and quacks. In many areas of infrequent and specialized dealing, consumers are not able, ex ante or even ex post, to evaluate competence. I countered by suggesting (...) voluntary means by which reputational problems might be handled and by returning to the offensive. I said that in fact the impetus for licensing usually comes from the practitioners, not their customers, and that licensing boards seldom devote their time to ferreting out incompetence but rather simply to prosecuting unlicensed practitioners. I mentioned cross-sectional findings, such as those on state licensure, prices, and occupational incomes. Overall, I characterized the professional establishment as a group of dastardly operators, who set the standards, write the codes, and enforce behavior to enhance their own material wellbeing - in brief, as venal rent-seekers. (shrink)