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The Scrooge McDuck model of obscene wealth, as propagated by inequality activists |
Friday, 27 December 2024
Billionaires Are Not As Rich As We And They Like To Pretend
Monday, 16 December 2024
The Case Against Bottle Deposits
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A common sight in Europe: poor person searching bare-handed through garbage bins in search of deposit bottles |
They are mistaken.
While bottle deposit systems are superficially attractive they are a horrendously expensive way to do not much good, while also creating degrading and fundamentally worthless work for the poor. They are not the outcome of a real commitment to reducing humans' environmental impact but of our flawed human psychology. The fundamental political attraction of bottle deposits is twofold. They appeal to voters' underlying presumption that inflicting something mildly annoying on ourselves must be an effective means to address a problem, because the constant annoyance itself keeps in our mind that we really are doing something about it. (This resembles the folk-theory of medicine: If it tastes nasty it must be doing us good.) And bottle deposits appeal to governments' preference for getting something for free, since all they have to do is pass a law requiring that lots of other people organise and carry out a lot of fiddly work. It's a tax, but not one they have to justify and defend.
Monday, 9 December 2024
Artificial Wombs: A Technological (Partial) Solution To Gender Injustice and Global Fertility Collapse?
Sunday, 1 December 2024
Why Is Trump's Administration So Packed With Losers? They Will Be Loyal
Thursday, 17 October 2024
Hard Drugs Have Become Too Dangerous Not To Legalise
Drug overdose deaths have more than doubled in America in the past 10 years, mainly due to the appearance of Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. These drugs combine incredible ease of manufacture with potency in tiny amounts and dangerousness (the tiniest miscalculation in dosage makes them deadly).
This continues a general and no longer surprising trend. The global war on drugs has produced a strong selection effect for drugs which are easy to manufacture and smuggle but at the cost of being much more dangerous for consumers. There is no reason to expect this trend to alter. Moreover, Fentanyl leaks – it appears as an additive in all sorts of other illegally bought drugs, like Xanax, surprising and killing consumers who had no idea what they were getting.
The best thing we can do about this – and hence the right thing to do – is to legalise all hard drugs so that consumers have a real choice about the dangers they subject themselves to.
Tuesday, 9 July 2024
Conscript The Old!
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Source: hotpot.ai |
Putin's invasion of Ukraine has reminded everyone of how dangerous a world we live in. As rich countries scramble to rebuild militaries dismantled by post-Cold war complacency, one of the other problems of national success has become apparent: young people have better things to do than play soldier.
My solution: conscript the old instead
Monday, 27 May 2024
Israel Should Have Fought This War Very Differently, But Thousands Of Innocent Palestinian Civilians Were Always Going To Die
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Source: Hotpot.ai |
Objectivity is the attempt to apply the same moral standards in the same way to all sides. In my view the recent ICC indictments of leaders of Hamas and the Israeli government reflect an attempt to do just this. It is obviously true that Hamas started this war, and that it deliberately committed many atrocities against civilians, but that fact doesn't make any and all actions by the Israeli military justified.
Here I want to focus on a point that many passionate critics of the war seem to be missing. This is the mistaken belief that there was some way for this war not to result in the deaths of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians. Once Hamas launched its initial attack, it was inevitable that Israel's government would use military means to try to prevent it from doing such things again. Since Hamas is deeply embedded in a heavily populated urban environment, mass civilian casualties were inevitable (and probably expected and intended by Hamas).
Saturday, 4 May 2024
Could The Threat of Information War Deter China From Attacking Taiwan?
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Source |
Sunday, 28 April 2024
Political Correctness: How The Few Try To Rule Over The Many
The goal of this form of politics is the manufacturing and maintaining of 'pluralistic ignorance' where members of a group mistakenly believe that most other members disagree with them. As a result, a well-organised minority is able to dominate the group as a whole by convincing them of a fictitious shared consensus supporting their rule or values. Taken separately, many individuals may recognise that they don't agree with what is being done in their name. But at the same time they believe they are one of a very few who think this, and so they go along with the thing they disagree with.
How is this rule of the few established and maintained? It is essential that the majority never realise that their views are in the majority, or they will withdraw the grudging acquiescence on which the minority's precarious rule relies. Therefore on certain issues, silence must fall. By one means or another, members of the majority must be dissuaded from speaking truthfully about what they believe in places where others might hear them, believe them, and say 'Yes - #metoo!' For such a cascade of personal disclosures would quickly unravel the delicate fabric of the fictional consensus.
Friday, 19 January 2024
Israel's Crimes Do Not Deserve This Much Attention