Independent Review articles from January 2006

Independent Review archives from January 2006

Defining disease: the gold standard of disease versus the fiat standard of diagnosis.
January 1, 2006... Illness and healing are as old as civilization. For millennia, the shaman or priest aided persons suffering from all manner of human adversities, only some of which we now regard as diseases. Distinguishing between sin and sickness, between...

The monopoly nonproblem: taking price discrimination seriously.
January 1, 2006... One of the most important distinctions that economists teach is that between competition and monopoly, or, more accurately, that between price takers and price searchers. The distinction is pervasive. It shows up in the simple diagrammatics of...

Adoption of State lotteries in the United States, with a closer look at Illinois.
January 1, 2006... State lotteries, now widely accepted, once had a seedy reputation. In the late nineteenth century, reformers successfully argued that lotteries were "morally corrupting; they were often operated dishonestly; and they created serious social...

An ancient stateless civilization: bronze age India and the state in history.(Harappa)
January 1, 2006... Few sorts of "public goods," including basic "law and order," have not somewhere, sometime been privately produced. (1) Nonetheless, the idea persists that imposed systems of "legitimate" violence have been essential to the long-term...

Who says money cannot buy happiness?
January 1, 2006... Economists have discovered, or so they think, that money doesn't buy happiness. This idea, however, is hardly a new discovery, even for economists. Adam Smith discussed people's limited ability to achieve happiness by acquiring material wealth...

Francis Wayland: preacher-economist.(PREDECESSORS)(Biography)
January 1, 2006... One of the nineteenth-century's great but long-forgotten works of political I economy was not written by a politician or an economist, but by a Baptist minister. Francis Wayland was born in New York City in March 1796 and died in Providence,...

Watchman, who watches thee? Donors and corruption in less-developed countries.(REFLECTIONS)
January 1, 2006... The status of the professional economist, political scientist, or other social scientist is deeply committed, by training and by the need for security and advancement, to the official concepts, problems, and theoretical structure of his...

Michael Walzer on Just War Theory's "critical edge": more like a spoon than a knife.
January 1, 2006... In Arguing about War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), Michael Walzer presents a collection of essays treating topics that have been widely discussed in the post-9/11 period. These essays, which Walzer terms "political acts,"...

Privatization and piratization in post-communist Russia.(Critical essay)
January 1, 2006... Marshall I. Goldman is the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Professor of Russian Economics (Emeritus) at Wellesley College and has been a member of .the Wellesley faculty since 1958. He is also associate director of the Davis Center for Russian and...

On Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations": A Philosophical Companion.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... On Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations": A Philosophical Companion By Samuel Fleischacker Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. Pp. xvii, 329. $39.50 cloth, $19.95 paperback. Adam Smith's writings have recently undergone a...

Bananas and Bsiness: The United Fruit Company in Colombia, 1899-2000.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Bananas and Business: The United Fruit Company in Colombia, 1899-2000 By Marcelo Buchcli New York: New York University Press, 2005. Pp. xi, 239. $45.00 cloth. For more than one hundred years, the United Fruit Company (UFCO) has been for...

America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire. By Claes G. Ryn New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2003. Pp. xiii, 221. $34.95 cloth. Near the end of the eighteenth century, a democratic tide swept across France,...

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War By Andrew J. Bacevich New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. x, 270. $28.00 cloth. As Andrew Bacevich notes in the introductory section of The New American Militarism,...

Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred By John Lukacs New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. Pp. 256. $25.00 cloth. I don't know if historian John Lukacs watches television. If he does, one hopes that he wasn't watching the June 8,...

Fear: the foundation of every government's power.(Etceteras ...)
January 1, 2006... Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.--Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" (1) All animals experience fear--human beings, perhaps,...