Books by GISME Faculty2020Why It's OK to Want to Be RichRoutledge Press
Finger-wagging moralizers say the love of money is the root of all evil. They assume that making a lot of money requires exploiting others, and that the best way to wash off the resulting stain is to give a lot of it away. In Why It's OK to Want to Be Rich, Jason Brennan shows that the moralizers have it backwards. he argues that, in general, the more money you make, the more you already do for others, and that even an average wage earner is productively "giving back" to society just by doing her job. In addition, wealth liberates us to have the best chance of leading a life that's authentically our own.While writing that the more money one has, the more one should help others, Brennan also notes that we weren't born into a perpetual debt to society. It's>OK to get rich and its's OK to enjoy being rich, too.Good Work if You Can Get It: How to Succeed in AcademiaJason BrennanJohns Hopkins University Press
Do you want to go to graduate school? Then you're in good company: nearly 80,000 students will begin pursuing a PhD this year alone. But while almost all of new PhD students say they want to work in academia, most are destined for disappointment. The hard truth is that half will quit or fail to get their degree, and most graduates will never find a full-time academic job. In Good Work If You Can Get It, Jason Brennan combines personal experience with the latest higher education research to help you understand what graduate school and the academy are really like.This realistic, data-driven look at university teaching and research will make your graduate and postgraduate experience a success. Good Work If You Can Get It is the guidebook anyone considering graduate school, already in grad school, starting as a new professor, or advising graduate students needs. Injustice for All: How Financial Incentives Corrupted and Can Fix the US Criminal Justice SystemJason Brennan and Chris Surprenant
Routledge Press American criminal justice is a dysfunctional mess. Cops are too violent, the punishments are too punitive, and the so-called Land of the Free imprisons more people than any other country in the world. Understanding why means focusing on color—not only on black or white (which already has been studied extensively), but also on green. The problem is that nearly everyone involved in criminal justice—including district attorneys, elected judges, the police, voters, and politicians—faces bad incentives. Local towns often would rather send people to prison on someone else’s dime than pay for more effective policing themselves. Local police forces can enrich themselves by turning into warrior cops who steal from innocent civilians. Voters have very little incentive to understand the basic facts about crime or how to fix it—and vote accordingly. And politicians have every incentive to cater to voters’ worst biases. Injustice for All systematically diagnoses why and where American criminal justice goes wrong, and offers functional proposals for reform. By changing who pays for what, how people are appointed, how people are punished, and which things are criminalized, we can make the US a country which guarantees justice for all. The Liberal Approach to the Past: A ReaderMichael J. Douma
What do we mean by liberalism or liberal history? It seems that every scholar in the social sciences would like define liberalism in their own way. Certainly, there is plenty of room for differences of opinion on this matter. But defining any “-ism” requires circumscribing a set of beliefs, or drawing lines in such a way as to connect ideas which we believe form a coherent tradition. Liberal history is primarily concerned with ideas and with the reasons why individuals act as they do in the past. Liberal historians prefer to study themes of power and liberty, particularly as they relate the rise and fall of political systems that protect liberties and individual rights. As the selections in this reader show, the liberal approach to the past is generally skeptical of laws of history and suggestions of historical determinism. 2019Thinking Through UtilitarianismAndrew Forcehimes and Luke SemrauHackett Publishing Thinking through Utilitarianism: A Guide to Contemporary Arguments offers something new among texts elucidating the ethical theory known as Utilitarianism. Intended primarily for students ready to dig deeper into moral philosophy, it examines, in a dialectical and reader-friendly manner, a set of normative principles and a set of evaluative principles leading to what is perhaps the most defensible version of Utilitarianism. With the aim of laying its weaknesses bare, each principle is serially introduced, challenged, and then defended. The result is a battery of stress tests that shows with great clarity not only what is attractive about the theory, but also where its problems lie. It will fascinate any student ready for a serious investigation into what we ought to do and what is of value.![]() Cracks in the Ivory TowerJason Brennan and Phillip MagnessOxford University Press Academics extol high-minded ideals, such as serving the common good and promoting social justice. Universities aim to be centers of learning that find the best and brightest students, treat them fairly, and equip them with the knowledge they need to lead better lives. But as Jason Brennan and Phillip Magness show in Cracks in the Ivory Tower, American universities fall far short of this ideal. At almost every level, they find that students, professors, and administrators are guided by self-interest rather than ethical concerns. College bureaucratic structures also often incentivize and reward bad behavior, while disincentivizing and even punishing good behavior. Most students, faculty, and administrators are out to serve themselves and pass their costs onto others.2018In Defense of Openness: Global Justice as Global FreedomJason Brennan and Bas van der VossenOxford University Press A spirited challenge to mainstream political theory from two leading political philosophers, In Defense of Openness offers a new approach to global justice: We don't need to "save" the poor. The poor will save themselves, if we would only get out of their way and let them.Jason BrennanPrinceton University Press
The Form of the FirmAbraham A. SingerOxford University Press What are we to make of the power that corporations wield over people in modern society? Is such power legitimate. Many think so. To many businessmen and economists, as well as the general public, firms are purely private and economic entities, justified in using all legal means to maximize profit. In The Form of the Firm, Abraham Singer contends that such a view rests on a theoretical foundation that, while quite subtle, is deeply flawed. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, corporations are not natural outgrowths of the free market. Instead, Singer invites us to see corporations as political institutions that correct market inefficiencies through mechanisms normally associate with government - hierachy, power, and state-sanctioned authority. Corporations exist primarily to increase economic efficiency, but they do this in ways that distinguish them from the markets in which they operate. Corporations serve economic ends, but through political means. Because of this, Singer argues that they also must be structured and obliged to uphold the social and political values that enable their existence and smooth-running in the first place: individual autonomy, moral and social equality, and democratic norms and institutions.Thomas MulliganRoutledgeWhat Is Classical Liberal History?Michael J. Douma and Phillip W. Magness, eds.Lexington Press The book contrasts the classical liberal view on history with conservative, progressive, Marxist, and post-modern views. Each of the eleven chapters address a different historical topic, from the development of classical liberalism in nineteenth century America to the history of civil liberties and civil rights that stemmed from this tradition. Authors give particular attention to the importance of social and economic analysis.Michael J. DoumaRoutledge
2016Jason BrennanPrinceton University Press
In this trenchant book, Jason Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results—and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government—epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable—may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out.
2015Markets Without LimitsJason Brennan and Peter JaworskiRoutledge
2014![]() Compulsory Voting: For-and-AgainstJason Brennan and Lisa HillCambridge University Press
Why Not Capitalism?
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