Once upon a time there was a great king. He ruled his kingdom with wisdom and economically literate policies, and prosperity followed. Seeing this, t…
Armies Seize Territory. Empires Seize Language. | Jason G. Butterfield | Offprint
What renaming a lake tells us about sovereignty, and the normalization of ownership
Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development
Under anarchy, uncoordinated competitive theft by “roving bandits” destroys the incentive to invest and produce, leaving little for either the population or the bandits. Both can be better off if a bandit sets himself up as a dictator—a “stationary bandit” who monopolizes and rationalizes theft in the form of taxes. A secure autocrat has an encompassing interest in his domain that leads him to provide a peaceful order and other public goods that increase productivity. Whenever an autocrat expects a brief tenure, it pays him to confiscate those assets whose tax yield over his tenure is less than their total value. This incentive plus the inherent uncertainty of succession in dictatorships imply that autocracies will rarely have good economic performance for more than a generation. The conditions necessary for a lasting democracy are the same necessary for the security of property and contract rights that generates economic growth.
William Blake: the scourge of the tyrants
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Democracy, Sovereignty, and the Throne Speech That Wasn’t
We have to go back to go forward. Our power to do that is shrinking.
Implicit Feudalism — Rushkoff Archive
Too many of us think it doesn’t matter when a platform like X/Twitter has a single, all-powerful owner. Most of our online worlds are simply run by what we hope are benevolent dictators. After all, we figure, if we don’t like what they’re doing or allowing, we can just leave, right? But in most cases we’re just jumping from one rich dude’s idea for how the world should be to another rich dude’s idea for how the world should be.
Game of Thrones
Seven noble families fight for control of the mythical land of Westeros. Friction between the houses leads to full-scale war. All while a very ancient evil awakens in the farthest north. Amidst the war, a neglected military order of misfits, the Night's Watch, is all that stands between the realms of men and icy horrors beyond.
Lawrence of Arabia
During World War I, English officer Thomas Edward 'T.E.' Lawrence sets out to unite and lead the diverse, often warring, Arab tribes to fight the Turks.
The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution o…
"The very notion of the domination of nature by man ste…
Against the brainrot
Reading the Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen Platt (highly recommended), I was particularly impressed by the rules of life of Zeng Guofan, the conqueror of Taipings.
Power/knowledge : selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 : Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984
xi, 270 pages ; 22 cm
Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different. twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398573453312
Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different. twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398573453312
