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September 5, 2019|Competition, Daniel Markovits, intelligence, Meritocracy

Meritocrats: The New Class Enemy

by John O. McGinnis|

Scene from Yale University on Commencement Day in 2015 (f11photo/shutterstock.com).
Daniel Markovits wonders whether the most successful people in the market are happy, but is government the answer?

January 30, 2018|Advertising, bureaucrats, Competition, Jurisdictional Competition, Markets, perfect information, regulation, ride sharing

Competition Can Improve on Apparent Market Failure

by John O. McGinnis|

Imperfect markets don't mean that regulation is the answer; competition often does a better job than bureaucracy at improving outcomes.

February 6, 2016|Classical Liberalism, colloboration, Competition, cooperation, law professors, selfishness, Technology

The Larger Lessons of Increased Collaboration Among Law Professors

by John O. McGinnis|

One of the most striking changes since I have been a law professor is the rise in the number of legal articles written jointly. This increase in collaboration is of more than academic interest because the reasons for it are leading to greater collaboration in other areas, too. The result will be greater prosperity and human flourishing.

First, joint authorship has grown with interdisciplinary scholarship. Increasingly, law is the subject of inquiry in other disciplines – economics, political science and psychology prominent among them.   But those with expertise in these areas frequently lack institutional knowledge of and practical experience in law. They can strengthen their arguments by partnering with law professors more sophistication about these matters, who, in turn get the advantage of more disciplined frameworks of social science. We see the same phenomenon in public policy, where different kinds of knowledge are more regularly pooled, resulting in a fuller, less one-dimensional view of the world.

Second, many law professors also team up in their research, even if neither have interdisciplinary backgrounds. The modern legal academy is marked by increased competition for both students and faculty. Standards for productivity and quality have clearly risen even in my two decades in the businesses. One way of competing better is to combine forces. 

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November 12, 2015|Competition, Testing, TSA, unions

For More Privatization and Less Unionization at the TSA

by John O. McGinnis|

I travel a lot and one of most unpleasant problems I encounter is the TSA. The lines are frequently long and the employees on occasion discourteous. But the most annoying aspect is that I have very little confidence that its procedures are well designed to keep us safe or that its personnel even assiduously follow these procedures. Over the summer confirmation of my fears came in the form of Homeland Security’s revelation that in over ninety percent of the instances, a “red team” designed to test security got through with some sort of dangerous contraband. Such failures should force us to reconsider the structure of TSA.

What the agency most needs is more private competition. Currently few passengers go through private screening. If the agency put more private contracts out for bid, the government could incentivize better results.   The contracts could include clauses that would reward companies for passing the tests that the government run screening has so miserably failed. More competition would also aid innovation and efficiency over time.  A centralized bureaucracy is unlikely to come up on its own with the all best ideas. At first, the government could continue to centralize various aspects of security, like background checks of screeners. But even those could be outsourced as if contractors could show that they had better methods.

The government should also reconsider unionization of TSA screeners currently employed by the agency.

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February 11, 2015|Anthony Foxx, Competition, Open Skies, Penny Pritzker, unions

The Battle for Open Skies

by John O. McGinnis|

An article in the New York Times this week described how domestic airlines are conspiring with their unions to weaken open skies agreements. These agreements permit American and foreign carriers access to one another’s markets on a reciprocal basis. They empower airlines to decide where and how often to fly internationally, based on market conditions, not national quotas or other irrelevant considerations. The result are good for airline passengers. Fares become lower, and more international flights go from more cities in the United States to more cities abroad.

The most troubling aspect of the article was that the Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker, and the Secretary of Commerce, Anthony Foxx, were entertaining the American airlines’ and unions’ request for restrictions on the entry of new foreign airlines into the American market. Their complaint is that deep pocketed airlines from the Middle Eastern countries, like the United Arab Emirates, were engaging in “unfair” competition and thus their flight plans needed to be blocked.

These Secretaries should have directed the airlines and their unions to take their complaints to the Justice Department, because competition laws are the best way to assess whether the foreign airlines are acting anti-competitively.

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Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

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The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

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James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

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Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

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Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

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Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

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America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

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About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

The opinions expressed on Law & Liberty are solely those of the contributors to the site and do not reflect the opinions of Liberty Fund.
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