It’s a quirk of human nature that a crisis can bring people together, bring out our best, and give our lives meaning. Sure, it can also bring out the worst in some damaged people, but we can acknowledge their existence then continue to ignore them as insignificant.
Tag: society
No, the Politicians Didn’t Save Us From COVID-19
Politicians don’t start parades. They notice parades that we regular people have spontaneously organized, then run as fast as they can to the front of those parades, hoping to be seen “taking charge.”
Setting an Example
My parents gave me the gift of deciding many critical issues on my own. They told me there were religions, and it was my responsibility to either choose one or reject all or to cherry pick among several. They never asked me to select a political bent, although they were both dyed in the wool Democrats, but my Dad was a dixiecrat, prejudiced, and fiscally conservative, while my Mom was a Bostonian liberal, who broke the color line on Chattanooga city buses. I was watching them.
Commentary on State Capacity and State Priorities
“Caplan’s point is a good and striking one. His conclusion is fairly extraordinary, though: He is apparently claiming that all (or a plurality) of the major decision makers in the American government are power-hungry demagogues who deliberately decided to channel money into stimulus rather than research because they are bad people.”
Making One More Coronavirus Prediction
I’m going out on a limb to make another coronavirus prediction. You can decide for yourself, with hindsight, how my previous predictions have held up — and hindsight will get clearer as more time passes.
Bruce Benson: The Evolution of Law (48m)
This episode features a lecture by academic economist Bruce Benson from 1997. He talks about the origin and subsequent development of legal systems. He starts by reviewing Franz Oppenheimer’s distinction between two means to wealth- economic and political- and theorizes about the development of cooperation in society and the creation of systems of private property.
Harvard Magazine Calls for a “Presumptive Ban” on Homeschooling: Here Are 5 Things It Got Wrong
As a Harvard alum, longtime donor, education researcher, and homeschooling mother of four children in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I was shocked to read the article, “The Risks of Homeschooling,” by Erin O’Donnell in Harvard Magazine’s new May-June 2020 issue. Aside from its biting, one-sided portrayal of homeschooling families that mischaracterizes the vast majority of today’s homeschoolers, it is filled with misinformation and incorrect data. Here are five key points that challenge the article’s primary claim that the alleged “risks for children—and society—in homeschooling” necessitate a “presumptive ban on the practice”.
On Authority
Our society has a sickness. No, not COVID-19, but a lack of real authority. I’m not talking about the chattering heads in State and national capitals, the authoritarians.
Government-Supremacist
A government-supremacist is an extreme statist. Not just someone who believes governing others to be a legitimate human endeavor but someone who assumes that political government is superior to and naturally above society and the individuals in a society.
After the Pandemic: Back to School, or Forward to a Better Future?
One major silver lining in the United States is that the nation’s patchwork of government-operated daycare centers / day prisons / drone worker boot camps, aka “public schools,” have temporarily shut down as part of the effort to slow the spread of the disease.