The Weakness of our Strength (Which is Ultimately a Weakness): Scott Boras Edition

Reading up on free-agent signings in preparation for the upcoming baseball season, I’m struck by how poorly the über-successful super-agent Scott Boras played his hands the past few months. He’s managed to put some of his older players in terrible contract situations (Jason Varitek, Manny Ramirez, and others), losing them millions of dollars because he [...]

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Branding Life redux

As many of you know, I’m fascinated by the ways in which the language of capitalism– and a kind of provisional contractual mobility associated with capitalism– have become ubiquitous in the language of postmodern culture. It’s become increasingly difficult to talk outside the market, even to name experiences that were long thought to be sanctuaries [...]

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Prosperity and Optimism

Two headlines are worth a look for readers of this blog. First, one article reports that income inequality in America is accelerating: average incomes for people in the bottom fifth of the American income distribution have dropped 2.5% in the last eight years, whereas incomes in the top [...]

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MacIntyre and Political Responsibility

Rod Dreher has linked to Alisdair MacIntyre’s comment just before the 2004 election defending his decision to vote for neither Presidential candidate. It generated little comment at the time, but there is the start of something important in his statement. As befits a moral philosopher, MacIntyre sees with perfect lucidity that the current American [...]

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Freakapologists

Over the last several days, sharp writers like Reihan Salam, Megan McArdle and others have raised their voices to denounce those foolish New Yorkers who admit to experiencing a certain schadenfreude at the parlous state of Wall Street fortunes, openly rooting for the possibility that New [...]

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