In the current debates on gay marriage, you can easily get the impression that the only arguments about marriage made before, say, 1970 were based on either religious or natural law traditions. While putting together my online bibliography, I came across this 18th-century essay, from a philosophical point of view I find far more congenial.
AS marriage is an engagement entered into by mutual consent, and has for its end the propagation of the species, it is evident, that it must be susceptible of all the variety of conditions, which consent establishes, provided they be not contrary to this end.
A man, in conjoining himself to a woman, is bound to her according to the terms of his engagement: In begetting children, he is bound, by all the ties of nature and humanity, to provide for their subsistence and education. When he has performed these two parts of duty, no one can reproach him with injustice or injury. And as the terms of his engagement, as well as the methods of subsisting his offspring, may be various, it is mere superstition to imagine, that marriage can be entirely uniform, and will admit only of one mode or form. Did not human laws restrain the natural liberty of men, every particular marriage would be as different as contracts or bargains of any other kind or species.
Taking an emprical approach does not imply endorsing every form of marriage--as those who read the whole essay will discover.
The Library of Economics and Liberty, a.k.a. EconLib, in which this appears is a great online resource, including both current essays and a well-presented full-text library of classic books.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 20, 2003 • Comments
Here's a cool local story on using stem cells from umbilical cord blood to save the life of a kid with a rare genetic defect:
"Corben has a very rare genetic disease that we call Wiskott Aldrich syndrome," pediatric hematologist Dr. Carl Lenarsky said.
The deadly disease only strikes baby boys, and only affects three of every one million births.
"Most children with Wiskott Aldrich die before they're teenagers," pediatric hematologist Dr. Stanton Goldman said. Victims die from either bleeding or infection.
After the diagnosis, the Campbells prepared for the worst. "My husband thought we were going to pick out a casket," Holly Campbell said. "We were scared."
However, doctors offered some hope in the form of a cord blood transplant.
"Corben's body is fine, except for his blood cells, so what we need to do is give him a new way of forming blood cells," Lenarsky said....
For a week, Corben received chemotherapy to destroy all the bad cells in his body, which created empty space inside his bone marrow.
During chemo, Corben lost hair, and became irritable while being confined to the hospital room. But his parents and doctors felt the side effects were a small price for life.
"Stem cell transplant has a real chance of a real complete cure," Lenarsky said.
The procedure worked: "Corben developed new bone marrow and a new immune system that functions perfectly."
Umbilical cord blood stem cells may not have the full potential of embryonic stem cells, but there are plenty of diseases they can be used to fight right now.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 20, 2003 • Comments
Dan Drezner has an excellent roundup of links, long quotes, and his own analysis on what may turn out to be the biggest story of the week: the multilateral pressure building to contain North Korea.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 20, 2003 • Comments
In a San Jose Mercury News column, Joanne Jacobs compares her freelance finances to Arianna's and speculates on tax deductions to come:
Just imagine Huffington's deductions for 2003: Since her campaign is designed to give her publicity, which will promote her books and commentary, the whole thing can be written off as a business expense.
I wrote this a couple of days ago but forgot to change "draft" to "publish," so it never appeared. That sort of thing never happened when I rolled my own HTML.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 20, 2003 • Comments
Forget Jared, here's a better fast food diet tip: McDonald's mighty tasty grilled chicken caesar salad with balsamic vinaigrette dressing has only 250 calories if you leave off the croutons, which aren't that great to begin with. Who ever thought McDonald's would serve salads with arugula and balsamic vinaigrette dressing? It's another sign of the aesthetic age.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 20, 2003 • Comments
Brad DeLong provides a clear-eyed analysis of the latest economic panic. For those who haven't been paying attention, high-tech pundits have suddenly decided we're doomed because of "outsourcing"--a.k.a. hiring engineers in other countries. Read the whole thing. Here's a sample:
Remember: few would be worried about "outsourcing" if the U.S. unemployment rate were still close to four percent, rather than at the above six percent level that it is. To the extent that a structural cure is being proposed for what is really a macroeconomic problem, do not expect it to end well. And remember: a network-design job artificially kept in Sacramento when it could be done more cheaply in Singapore produces extra income for a network engineer in Sacramento, but has costs as well: in a diminished capital inflow that reduces construction and the earnings of construction workers, in higher costs for businesses installing their networks that shows up in lower salaries they pay their workers, in lower earnings and stock prices for HP. Given the all-thumbs hand the U.S. government has to try to guide industrial development through tools other than maintaining the infrastructure of a market society and the provision of basic research and other public goods, it is hard to imagine that the costs to the country as a whole will not greatly outweigh the benefits.
Sometimes I feel like we're reliving the late '80s/early '90s fad for "declinism," as though nobody had learned anything about how economies work in the intervening years. Every time there's a recession, pundits discover the "end of work." (Looking for the American middle class? Try "red America," where you don't have to make six figures to buy a house and educate your kids.)
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 19, 2003 • Comments
LAT style reporter Booth Moore, whose article on Hamid Karzai's style was a source in TSOS, quotes me, among others, on style in the California gubernatorial race and politics more generally.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 18, 2003 • Comments
Eugene Volokh discovers that the omitted verses of his childhood lullaby are mighty martial.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 18, 2003 • Comments
From my sister-in-law, Pam Postrel:
I had one this morning. I went into a new cafe in Pasadena to have some breakfast and write stuff for work. I pulled out my brand spanking new 17" PowerBook (long story, but I got a really good deal on it that I couldn't pass up and it arrived on Monday) When the cashier, who was clearly not a computer geek and seemingly not a local student, brought my food over, she gasped when she saw my new paramour powered up.
"That is the most beautiful laptop I've ever seen!" she exclaimed with genuine awe.
"Ain't it?" I replied.
As a matter of fact, I told Evie [her daughter] this morning that I was so in love with it I thought I might marry it. Look and feel, indeed.
The American Express people call that the "clerk double-take" when it happens--as it has to me several times--with the AmEx blue card.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 18, 2003 • Comments
RealClear Politics has put together a great page following the coverage and polls of the California recall election--links to everything (including newspapers' recall pages) in one page.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 18, 2003 • Comments