When what’s on your shirt is more salient than successfully landing a probe on a comet, the processes that built modern freedoms and… — When what’s on your shirt is more salient than successfully landing a probe on a comet, the processes that built modern freedoms and prosperity are in reverse. Most species have dominance (top-down status) as their dominant status strategy. Homo sapiens are distinctive in developing two other status strategies as social…

Opinions that mark one off as one of the smart-and-the-good can have a disastrous effect on policy and organisations. — Opinions that mark one off as one of the smart-and-the-good can have a disastrous effect on policy and organisations. In her review of Andrew Doyle’s recently published book arguing the case for free speech, novelist, lawyer and commentator Helen Dale makes the following observation:

And bad things come from pretending it was. — And bad things come from pretending it was. A friend forwarded me this email: Never Forget: Holodomor Memorial Day In 1932 and 1933, 7 Million (estimated) Ukrainians were massacred by genocidal famine ordered by the Bolshevik government. Many were Christians. Students do not learn about the Holodomor in middle school…

What vanguard capital is and why it is bad for your organisation. — What vanguard capital is and why it is bad for your organisation. Many people within academe claim to be Marxists. Many people within academe, or with degrees, draw on intellectual ideas that have developed from Marxism. Yet, the (surely worrisome) record of actual Marxist regimes does not resonate with them. …

Bullshit and lies that feed identity politics and turning away from the politics of bargaining to the politics of domination. — Bullshit and lies that feed identity politics and turning away from the politics of bargaining to the politics of domination. Bullshit: statements made for rhetorical effect without regard for the truth. Let’s start with the claim that the various changes in favour of broadening women’s participation in society is an…

Ever since their inception, states have dominated the extraction of surplus. — Ever since their inception, states have dominated the extraction of surplus. Two concepts that, in their anti-commerce forms, get in the way of understanding social dynamics are commodification and alienation. Regarding commodification (turning things into objects of exchange) we have been exchanging goods outside our immediate groups for perhaps as…

Property law rests on conventions that evolved before it and that can operate without it, or even against it. — Property law rests on conventions that evolved before it and that can operate without it, or even against it. Black markets, markets in illegal goods and services, demonstrate that state recognition and protection of property rights are not required for a market to operate. Black markets exist where the state…

The problem with using a distorting social lens. — The problem with using a distorting social lens. A common trope of commentary, both inside and outside the US, for some years now (even before the Trump-apocalypse) was that the Republican Party had shifted rightwards. The trouble is, this is mostly not true. The views of Republican voters has changed…

The evolutionary science behind why humans are so weird. — The evolutionary science behind why humans are so weird. Part 1 of this investigation into the evolution of human mating touched on why ageing happens, the discovery advantages of sexual reproduction and how our genus evolved a cooperative subsistence strategy that selected for big brains. …