Alexis De Tocqueville – Samir Chopra

Tocqueville On Slaves, House Of Cards, And Miami

In his classic Democracy in America, in the section “Situation Of The Black Population In The United States, And Dangers With Which Its Presence Threatens The Whites”, Alexis Tocqueville wrote: [I]n a certain portion of the territory of the United States…the legal barrier which separated the two races is tending to fall away, but notContinue reading “Tocqueville On Slaves, House Of Cards, And Miami”

Regulation, Social Norming and Tocqueville’s ‘Majority’

There is a well-known model of behavior modification, a taxonomy of sorts of regulatory mechanisms, due to Lawrence Lessig, which lists four modalities of regulation: the law, the market, social norms and architecture. The law provides punitive sanctions, actively restrains by making visible its power, and points in the desired direction; the market provides economicContinue reading “Regulation, Social Norming and Tocqueville’s ‘Majority’”