Under the pavement the dirt is dreaming of grass. Wendell Berry Our current crisis of place is pervasive yet largely unacknowledged. We see it everywhere, but we only talk about it tangentially, through the language of real estate or commuting time or the soullessness of strip malls. We live, or strive to live, in increasingly unaffordable yet somehow fragile micro-households (the US average household size … Continue reading Our Crisis of Place
The point is, not every deficit serves the broader public good. Deficits can be used for good or evil. They can enrich a small segment of the population, lifting the yachts of the rich and powerful to new heights, while leaving millions behind. They can fund unjust wars that destabilize the world and cost millions their lives. Or they can be used to sustain life … Continue reading Making Sense of the Economy through the Lens of MMT
The tribal life doesn’t turn people into saints; it enables ordinary people to make a living together with a minimum of stress year after year, generation after generation. Daniel Quinn Lately, I’ve been mentioning BHBs a lot (Bigger Home Bases). But it’s been a long time, I think, since I laid out exactly how I envision getting these larger household formats into the public discussion. … Continue reading The BHB Project: Breaking Through to a New Way of Life
In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, ‘Now shut up and obey me.’ People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business Max Weber Like many liberals, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to crawl inside the headspace of Trump supporters, attempting to figure out what, if anything, could … Continue reading Trumpism’s Big Problem: Trump
The art of living is always to make a good thing out of a bad thing E.F. Schumacher First things first: let’s remind ourselves of the (seemingly) unassailable nature of the current American plutocracy. The US has faulty, anachronistic electoral mechanics, which locks in the purely adversarial, two-party duopoly (mainly, we’re talking about single-rep, winner-take-all Congressional districts, and winner-take-all allotment of electoral college votes, except … Continue reading Dissolving the Plutocracy from Below
Whether we accept it or not, this will likely be the century that determines what the optimal human population is for our planet. It will come about in one of two ways: Either we decide to manage our own numbers, to avoid a collision of every line on civilization’s graph — or nature will do it for us, in the form of famines, thirst, climate … Continue reading Population Panic & The American Micro-Household
Our society will always remain an unstable and explosive compound as long as political power is vested in the masses and economic power in the classes. In the end one of these powers will rule. Either the plutocracy will buy up the democracy, or the democracy will vote away the plutocracy. Irving Fisher Under Trumpism, we have entered a new age, but it’s a peculiar … Continue reading The Weirdness of American Crony Plutocracy
If you alone found out what the lie was, then you’re probably right—it would make no great difference. But if you ALL found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed. Daniel Quinn Last time, we looked at how the US is being ruled by dangerous but fundamentally unserious despots. What is it that allows so many millions of … Continue reading The Rule of the Unreal
The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Aldous Huxley As we enter the cornered-rat stage of “Trump 2.0; The Re-Deadening,” with his poll numbers tanking and the economy swirling down the drain, each day brings new outrages and tramplings of our republic. As the “Breaking News” emails continue to flood inboxes across the country, liberals have developed a Pavlovian … Continue reading The Tyranny of Unserious Despots
Knowledge forbidden?Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their LordEnvy them that? Can it be a sin to know?Can it be death? Milton As a whole, humans are still operating inside of our own species, telling stories about human conquests over nature and over each other. This is the stuff of history: what territory was taken, which dynasties usurp other dynasties, what great things have been invented, who … Continue reading Out of Eden (and back)
