Tag Archives: Tyler Cowen

Tyler Cowen

Many believers in animal rights and the relevance of animal welfare do not critically examine their basic assumptions […]. Typically these individuals hold two conflicting views. The first view is that animal welfare counts, and that people should treat animals as decently as possible. The second view is a presumption of human non0interference with nature, as much as possible. […] [T]he two views are less compatible than is commonly supposed. If we care about the welfare and rights of individual animals, we may be led to interfere with nature whenever the costs of doing so are sufficiently low.

Tyler Cowen, ‘Policing Nature’, Environmental Ethics, vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer, 2003)

Tyler Cowen

[A]n informed cosmopolitanism must be of the cautious variety, rather than based on superficial pro-globalization slogans or cheerleading about the brotherhood of mankind. […] [I]ndividuals are often more creative when they do not hold consistently cosmopolitan attitudes. A certain amount of cultural particularism and indeed provincialism, among both producers and consumers, can be good for the arts. The meliorative powers of globalization rely on underlying particularist and anti-liberal attitudes to some extent. Theoretically “correct” attitudes do not necessarily maximize creativity, suggesting that a cosmopolitan culture does best when cosmopolitanism itself is not fully believed or enshrined in social consciousness.

Tyler Cowen, Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures, Princeton, 2002, p. 18

Tyler Cowen

Most individuals hold worldviews that exaggerate their relative importance. Real estate agents feel that most people should own homes, bankers see the relative merits of finance, and academics believe in the vital importance of scholarly writing. Cultural creators are no exception to this rule. They believe not only in the importance of art in general, but in the special importance of their era and genre. Competitors, and cultural change, threaten this importance.

Tyler Cowen, In Praise of Commercial Culture, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1998, pp. 188-189