Introduction

As an introductory post, I’ll just lay out what I think this blog will be.  


I’ll make some observations about politics, sometimes prompted by current events and sometimes not.  Some posts will be complete, clear arguments, and some will be much less.
This blog is dedicated to progress in debate and decision-making, and will most likely feature conceptual analysis over empirics.


Conceptual analysis over empirics because I’m not trained in economics, political science, or statistics or math of any sort, but also because conceptual analysis is necessary to progress resolving political disputes, but is much less commonly made explicit than wonky empirical analysis.  For example, consider a common exchange on monetary policy: one advocates some inflationary policy so that higher prices will lead to increased production by those who want to take advantage of those higher prices, which requires additional labor and hence increases employment, but the other counters that inflation is theft. So the former is making an empirical claim that a certain policy will achieve some public policy goal, while the latter does not address the empirical claim, but makes an unempirical one that the policy is morally wrong.  They’re talking past each other, and not even speaking the same language.  So while empirical analysis of these political issues is necessary to progress in political deliberation, it is not sufficient; purely conceptual analysis is necessary too, in this case to evaluate moral claims which cannot be investigated empirically.   


Playing devil’s advocate and charitably applying the principle of charity will most likely feature as well, given that the bounds of possibility consulting reason with empirics are much broader than when they are narrowed with empirical data.  


In other words, this is a blog on political philosophy.  


Here goes.