Tort Reform And Epistemic Closure
There's been a lot of talk in the political blogosphere lately about whether conservatism is suffering from "epistemic closure." Epistemic closure is a term that has become shorthand for the closing of the conservative mind - the idea that conservatives are recycling the same ideas over and over when they should be inventing new policy solutions. The debate about whether conservatives are suffering from "epistemic closure" has prompted some soul-searching by conservatives about whether they've simply curled up like hedgehogs in response to challenges to their belief system.
And it seems like we've seen plenty of challenges to that belief system lately, especially the conservative belief in free market fundamentalism. On Wall Street, we've seen unchecked markets lead to grotesque executive compensation schemes, where traders taking massive short-term risks earn massive bonuses and pass the long-term costs of their risks onto shareholders and the government. In our health care system, we've seen how unrestrained markets leads to insurance companies freezing out people who are the most in need of health insurance and doctors running up the bills, instead of being incentivized to promote preventative care.
Epistemic closure was much on my mind recently when I went back to read "The Litigation Explosion: What Happened When America Unleashed The Lawsuit," a nearly two-decade old book by Walter K. Olson, a think tank fellow who recently departed the Manhattan Institute for Cato and who does a lot of work in the field of tort reform. What made me read a twenty year old book by a policy wonk, a title obscure enough that I was able to buy a used hardcover copy on Amazon.com for ninety-eight cents?
