Category: politics
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The failure of neo-liberalism and the UK riots
In “The London Riots and the Triumph of Neo-Liberalism,” the economist Branko Milanovic concludes, The problem is that the neo-liberal revolution has failed to explain what to do with those who do not prosper in the new system and yet adopt its values. The young men and women robbing stores are not, as some believe,…
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Change your mind, change your well-being. It’s that simple. No, it isn’t.
Last night the subway was a beast. The air was hot, stagnant, bloody. Passengers bumping, kvetching. Connections glutted and tedious. Trains inching forward. You say the subway was not the beast. It is my conception of the subway that is beastly. Change your mind–DIY-style–and you change the problem. Belching into rose petals. Problem goes away.…
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Some good news about social business
The first item: The social scientist Dan Ariely argues that “prosocial incentives” work better than incentives that benefit the individual only (higher salaries, competitive bonuses). According to Ariely, one important experiment shows that “we can reap the greatest benefits when we spend money on others, and even more when we spend money on close others.”…
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Dougald Hine on the UK riots
At New Public Thinking, my friend Dougald writes with great insight about the UK riots. For example, The genuinely radical response to something like #riotcleanup is not to knock it down, but to broaden out the story, to take it deeper. Rather than abuse people for their desire to take positive action and to make…
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On a ‘very different’ St. Benedict for our time
Let us read the final paragraph of Alasdair MacIntyre’s radiant book together: It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 