Rather, it is simply to state the fact. Being good is predicated on our sense of who we are, and who we are is shaped, predominantly, by the nature of our relationships
Source : Guardian
Author: kaushik
Don’t Worry, America: China is Rising But Not Catching Up – Harvard – Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Because of the one-child policy, China will soon suffer the most severe aging process in human history. The ratio of Chinese workers per retiree will plummet from 8:1 today to 2:1 by 2040. The fiscal cost of this swing in dependency ratios alone may exceed 100 percent of China’s GDP. The American working-age population, by contrast, will expand by 17 percent over the next 40 years. America’s fiscal future may not be bright, but it is brighter than China’s
Source : Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Why libertarians must deny climate change, in one short take
Quote of the week – on society
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible
– Oscar Wilde
Utopia
He is an unskilful physician that cannot cure one disease without casting his patient into another. So he that can find no other way for correcting the errors of his people but by taking from them the conveniences of life, shows that he knows not what it is to govern a free nation.
by Sir Saint Thomas More
Living in the End Times
When we are shown scenes of starving children in Africa, with a call for us to do something to help them, the underlying ideological message is something like: “Don’t think, don’t politicize, forget about the true causes of their poverty, just act, contribute money, so that you will not have to think!”
by Slavoj Zizek
Democracy and Education: an introduction to the philosophy of education
There is always a danger that increased personal independence will decrease the social capacity of an individual. In making him more self-reliant, it may make him more self-sufficient; it may lead to aloofness and indifference. It often makes an individual so insensitive in his relations to others as to develop an illusion of being really able to stand and act alone—an unnamed form of insanity which is responsible for a large part of the remediable suffering of the world.
by John Dewey
23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism
You may think I am too extreme. However, this is what we do all the time with other products – drugs, cars, electrical products, and many others. When a company invents a new drug, for example, it cannot be sold immediately. The effects of a drug, and the human body’s reaction to it, are complex. So the drug needs to be tested rigorously before we can be sure that it has enough beneficial effects that clearly overwhelm the side-effects and allow it to be sold.
by Ha-Joon Chang
The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844
The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, is far better off under the present arrangement than under the old slave system; it can dismiss its employees at discretion without sacrificing invested capital, and gets its work done much more cheaply than is possible with slave labour, as Adam Smith comfortingly pointed out.
by Friedrich Engels
Quote of the week
It used to be that work was based on a legacy of the reforming of the industrial revolution, 9-5 work with overtime etc. In the last 10 years many of us have taken the leap into a digital working future, which instead of freeing us from this rigid work structure has in fact made working into a 24 / 7 working week and has allowed it to invade every part of our lives. How can we take a step back and regain some balance? The articles in this week’s collection all look at that problem and deal with in very different ways.
– KP
To describe a problem is part of the solution. This implies: not to make creative decisions as promoted by feeling but by intellectual criteria. The more exact and complete these criteria are, the more creative the work becomes. The creative process is to be reduced to an act of selection. Designing means : to pick out determining elements and combining them.
– Karl Gerstner
Collected Reading 