Without … a place in the social order, a man [in a heroic society such as Homeric Greece or Saga Iceland] would not only be… Read More »Ends and Meanings (3): Alasdair MacIntyre virtue, mortality and story in heroic societies
A small stone-age tribe lives undetected in a remote forest in your country. They live sustainably off the land by hunting and foraging. The forest… Read More »Thought experiment: poverty and inequality without injustice
Recommended. Abstract We show that any cross-national measure of human material wellbeing that is (i) basics (not luxuries),(ii) general (uses indicators from multiple domains), and(iii)… Read More »“Empirically sufficient and empirically necessary” – Lant Pritchett on economic growth as the (only) key to poverty reduction
Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy is (apparently) “the third most cited book in the social sciences published before 1950, behind Marx’s Capital and The… Read More »Schumpeter on primitive accumulation and Marx’s guffaw
I’ve never read anything by Lant Pritchett that wasn’t interesting, and this brief blog article is no exception. It’s a good reminder that “broad based… Read More »Lant Pritchett on Poverty, Economic Growth and Charity
Aux armes, citoyens,To arms, citizens, Formez vos bataillons,Form your battalions, Marchons, marchons !March, march! Qu’un sang impurAbreuve nos sillons !Let an impure bloodWater our furrows!… Read More »Blood, Bones and Building; or, Love’s Labours
This podcast is well worth listening too – Sandel and Harris frame the problems with meritocracy well even of they don’t quite get to a… Read More »Michael Sandel and Sam Harris on meritocracy
I’ve been spending quite a few of my mornings running through the centre of Cambridge. A lot of it is beautiful – especially the colleges.… Read More »Time and money
The July Revolution is the triumph of right in the overthrow of reality. A splendid thing. Right overthrowing reality. Hence the magnitude of the 1830… Read More »Victor Hugo on right, reality and the morality of the past
Inequality isn’t my favourite hobby horse, mainly because: “Fair” and “equal [being / having the same]” are often (wrongly) assumed to be the same thing;… Read More »Astonishing wealth inequality graphic