political philosophy
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On ‘The Dawn of Everything’ and the Future.
If farmers lived in miserable societies, how did they conquer the world?
A New History of Humanity, Against the Grain, Appiah, building walls, capitalism, China, Civilization, civilizations collapse, climate change, climate justice, collaboration, collapse of civilizations, competition, David Deutsch, David Graeber, David Wengrow, Digging for Utopia, economic systems, economics, efficiency, entropy, equality, European expansion, expansion, farming, first peoples, fishing with a frying pan, freedom, Graeber, growth, heat death, history of civilization, history of farming, history of technology, human evolution, human prehistory, hunter-gatherers, in praise of inefficiency, inequality, James Scott, John Smith, justice, Kwame Anthony Appiah, land management, Maggie Nelson, Matt Siegel, mutual aid, Naomi Klein, Native Americans, On Freedom, origin of civilization, origin of inequality, origin of patriarchy, paleolithic diet, patriarchy, pilgrims, political philosophy, prehistoric diet, prehistoric farmers, prehistory, prehistory of farming, property systems, review, technology, The Beginning of Infinity, The Dawn of Everything, The Secret History of Food, United States, Universal Paperclip, Utopian philosophy, Wengrow
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On re-watching The Matrix, twenty years later.
The Matrix was, and is, an incredible film … but now, after all the school shootings, it’s hard for me to watch.
Alan Greenspan, American gun violence, angry young men, Christianity, Colombine, ethics, fear, Grant Morrison, gun control, gun violence, guns, high school, inequality, matrix, moral certainty, morality, Pareto optimal, Pareto optimality, Parkland, political ethics, political philosophy, school safety, school shootings, school stress, social contract, stress, student safety, students against gun violence, students for gun control, The Invisibles, U.S. politics
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On alternate truths.
Sometimes the alternatives are jarring – you look and count a certain number, another person proffers a radically different amount. Surely one of you is mistaken. In the United States, there’s a rift between those who overestimate certain values (size of inauguration crowds, number of crimes committed by immigrants, votes cast by non-citizens, rates of…
45, almond milk, alternate truths, alternative facts, anarchy, animal welfare, capitalism, cashew milk, citizenship, civil liberties, crowd size, dairy industry, extremism, free market capitalism, government, government intervention, Henri Taijfel, overestimaters, political philosophy, politics, property rights, psych experiments, psychology, soy milk, Trump, underestimaters, us vs. them, vegan, veganism
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On fairness (and how we treat the utility monster).
How do you measure someone’s capacity for joy? And what does that say about our opiate epidemic?
animal welfare, Betham, competetive equilibrium, distribution of resources, distribution of wealth, economics, equality, evolution, fairness, heroin, heroin epidemic, human evolution, mass incarceration, Milton Friedman, moral philosophy, natural selection, negative externalities, opiate abuse, opiate epidemic, opportunity, Pareto optimal, Pareto optimality, political philosophy, survival of the fittest, tax policy, utilitarian, utilitarianism, utility monster, utility theory, War on Drugs
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On citizenship.
Without citizenship — without, as per Hannah Arendt, “the right to have rights” — people are buffeted by the political whims of whatever nation they might find themselves in. Syrian refugees, for instance, might expect a certain treatment based on their status as humans, but they aren’t officially documented Europeans. Even when they safely reach…
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, buying citizenship, climate change, cost of U.S. citizenship, deportation, Henry David Thoreau, human rights, illusion of meritocracy, inequality, New York Times book review, political philosophy, privilege, property rights, purchased citizenship, refugee crisis, Richard Bellamy, Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism, Syrian refugees, The Cosmopolites, the social contract, undocumented immigrants, unequal justice for the poor, Walden
Frank Brown Cloud 