CHRIS MOONEY has an interesting piece in the Boston Globe on Tyler Cowen and globalization. Excerpt:

It’s no cliche to observe that the 40-year-old Cowen – author of 1998’s ”In Praise of Commercial Culture” and director of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center – is what he eats. Cowen’s guide opens with the proclamation, ”Restaurants manifest the spirit of capitalist multiculturalism.” On a similar note, his books celebrate the dynamism and creativity that market forces introduce into the arts and culture. Cowen champions such detested entities as Hollywood, megastores, and Brit pop while sharply criticizing snobs, purists, and government subsidies to arts organizations. ”There’s no National Endowment for the Arts that subsidizes good food,” he told an interviewer last year. ”Yet we have a wonderfully diverse selection.”

True enough.