Daniel B. Klein’s research while affiliated with George Mason University and other places

On regular issues of policy reform—presupposing a stable integrated polity— Hume, Smith, and Burke were liberal in the original political meaning of “liberal.” Thus, on policy reform, although they accorded the status quo a certain presumption (as any reasonable person must), the more distinctive feature is that they maintained (even propounded, most plainly in Smith's case) a presumption of liberty in matters of policy reform. But we need another conceptualization that treats their attitudes about establishing, reforming, and securing the wider structure of political institutions, political procedure, and political culture and character—matters of polity reformation. On polity reformation, they showed sensibilities for which “conservative” is apt (though such conservatism was not otherwise purely neutral). Hume, Smith, and Burke were basically in agreement in the matters treated here. They are polity conservatives. The article develops the two conceptualizations—policy reform and polity reformation—, an understanding of “liberal” applicable to policy reform, and an understanding of “conservative” (namely, a heavy presumption of the status quo) that may be applied to policy reform and to polity reformation. If we code the three thinkers as PLPC (policy liberals and polity conservatives), we may put the matter this way: It would be meaningful but wrong to code them instead PCPC (policy conservatives and polity conservatives). I call their outlook conservative liberalism. I deal disproportionately with Burke, to tussle with two sets of imagined interlocutors, one on Burke as liberal, and the other on Burkean insight on polity reformation.

Iain McGilchrist richly explains the right and left hemispheres of the brain, how each functions and what each tends to do. This paper serves, firstly, as a primer to McGilchrist’s fascinating exposition. Second, it offers a formulation that uses a spiral to structure the iterative and layered relationship. Third, it presents McGilchrist’s concerns about how modernity has enfeebled the right hemisphere, and how the left hemisphere is, at it were, running amok. Fourth, it considers some of McGilchrist’s political overtones. Sharing McGilchrist’s concerns, finally, I elaborate why they might lead us to look to classical liberalism as the best way to avoid the traps of the left hemisphere, to invigorate the health of the right hemisphere, and to cope with modernity.

We interpret Adam Smith on reputation, commutative justice, and defamation laws. We address two major questions. The first question concerns whether Smith thought that “one's own” as covered by commutative justice included one's reputation. Several passages point to the affirmative. But reputation is left out of Smith's “most sacred laws” description of commutative justice. Most importantly, so much of reputation—e.g., “Steve's work stinks”—does not fit Smith's description of commutative justice's rules (precise and accurate). Our reading makes use of older terminology from Pufendorf, Carmichael, and Hutcheson distinguishing “simple” and “intensive” reputation, and suggests that the “reputation” that sometimes appears in Smith's characterizations of “one's own” is of a simple variety (“Steve steals horses”) that potentially incites invasion of commutative justice's three staples—person, property, promises due. On that reading the “reputation” that comes under commutative justice, though not a staple, belongs to the penumbra around the three staples, just as incitement and endangerment belong to that penumbra. We also recruit Hume, who nowhere even hinted at reputation being a constituent of commutative justice. The second question is: Did Smith favor defamation laws (libel, slander) that reached beyond simple reputation, so as to cover some intensive-reputation detraction? Were Smith to favor intensive-reputation defamation laws (against, say, “Steve's work stinks”), we would have to count that as another exception made to the liberty principle. Smith's remarks are mixed, but we think he was rather inclined against aggressive or extensive laws of such kind. (Also, we draw a parallel to patent and copyright.) We also suggest that if Smith thought that wantonly telling malicious lies like “Steve's work stinks” was not in violation of commutative justice and, moreover, is best left perfectly legal, those are judgments that the liberal project's great prophet would hardly want to make plain, because indifferent readers would misunderstand them and adversaries would misrepresent them.

This is the editors’ introduction to a special issue of Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization on Adam Smith, David Hume, liberalism, and esotericism, consisting altogether of 14 articles. Following the important work of Arthur Melzer, we offer a brief introduction to esotericism, understood broadly to mean discourse that involves both a more obvious meaning (exoteric) and a less obvious meaning (esoteric). We remark on how esotericism on the part of Smith and Hume relates to their liberalism. Topics treated by the eleven articles on Smith include his replacing of Antimachus with Parmenides, the dynamism of liberalism, interest-rate caps, reputation as something covered by commutative justice, his use of Solon, his apparent advancing of a labor theory of value, his favor for the interests of the poor, his presentation of possibilities on schooling, the dialectics of the parable of the poor man's son, three levels of objects to consider a correspondence between beneficialness and propriety, and the responsibility of social elites in their influencing of fashion. Topics treated by the two articles on Hume include moderation and the liberal state in History of England and the intimate alliance between reason and passions.

The Publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.endend.2014.06.001. The duplicate article has therefore been withdrawn. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy.

Upwards of 70% of the Covid19 death toll in Sweden has been people in elderly care services (as of mid-May 2020). We summarize the Covid19 tragedy in elderly care in Sweden, particularly in the City of Stockholm. We explain the institutional structure of elderly care administration and service provision. Those who died of Covid19 in Stockholm’s nursing homes had a life-remaining median somewhere in the range of 5 to 9 months. Having contextualized the Covid19 problem in City of Stockholm, we present an interview of Barbro Karlsson, who works at the administrative heart of the Stockholm elderly care system. Her institutional knowledge and sentiment offer great insight into the concrete problems and challenges. There are really two sides to the elderly care Covid19 challenge: The vulnerability and frailty of those in nursing homes and the problem of nosocomial infection—that is, infection caused by contact with others involved in the elderly care experience. The problem calls for targeted solutions by those close to the vulnerable individuals.

Karl Mittermaier (1938–2016) completed a work in 1987 titled The Hand Behind the Invisible Hand: Dogmatic and Pragmatic Views on Free Markets and the State of Economic Theory, published for the first time in 2020. Here I treat Mittermaier's rich meditation, which I interpret as a pursuit of greater coherence in classical liberal thought. Mittermaier emphasises the moral, cultural, and institutional preconditions of a liberal market order, and argues that some of the preconditions depend on people feeling that they have reason to embrace such classical liberal principles. The preconditions, then, depend in part on the perception of coherence and appeal of the liberal order.

#WalkAway signifies walking away from the Democratic Party. The movement was launched in June 2018 by Brandon Straka, when he uploaded what became the prototypical video of an individual telling his or her story about walking away. During 130 days, 150 erstwhile Democrats provided video testimonials at Straka’s official YouTube channel. Of the 150 erstwhile Democrats, 23% report catching a lot of grief, plus another 16% report catching some grief, for questioning or deviating from leftist opinions. Most importantly, 70% suggest a civility gap between the left and non-left. These are lower bounds, since the testimonials are spontaneous monologues, not replies to questions. Many other observed features are reported, to deepen our thinking about ideological migration. However, filters involved in the sample must be borne in mind. A linked Excel file contains complete data.