Eric Crampton • Apr 16, 2014 •
An Eleanor by any other name might be as smart, but would have worse odds of winding up at Oxford. A snippet from Greg Clark's work on names and surnames:*It isn't that the name itself is particularly powerful, or destructive; rather, the sorts of people who wind up naming their daughters Eleanor are very different, on average, from … Read More
Eric Crampton • Feb 09, 2014 •
In the Lockean framework, private property can be appropriated from the commons through the mixing of labour. If you mix your labour with the untilled soil, leaving as much and as good yet for others to till, then that tilled soil is yours. You have homesteaded it.*And so we come to parking spaces in snowy places. Normally, you appropriate a … Read More
Eric Crampton • Nov 09, 2013 •
I'd joked about the class-entrenching function of etiquette a couple of years back.Etiquette rules, like the downward fork tines rule, that deliberately hobble the person making the display have a signalling value: it's the peacock's tail. Folks who've been able to spend hundreds of hours practicing how to eat in a deliberately hobbled fashion are then able to demonstrate … Read More