Articles about society

The Identity Trap – Yascha Mounk

Mounk makes the case here for classical liberal values, untainted by what he sees as the distorting effect of identity politics. It’s convenient to treat people as members of their identity groups, according to their racial characteristics, gender, etc. But this is only ever going to be a rule of thumb, an approximation to what we really want. For example, affirmative action policies are probably better than nothing, but we shouldn’t just then sit back and think our job is done. We don’t really want to give people benefits based purely on their identity groups; instead we want to base it on each person’s individual needs. This is much harder of course! We should recognise that identity group-based policies are just a rough-and-ready first attempt; they are not the best solution.

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Angrynomics – Lonergan and Blyth

People are always angry about something. These days they are either angry about vaccination, or angry about people who are angry about vaccination. But until recently, they were angry about things like worsening financial inequality, immigration, and lack of action on climate change. These things are affected by economic policies and events, and this book puts forth analyses and ideas to address some of the anger.

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X + Y — Eugenia Cheng

X + Y: A mathematician's manifesto for rethinking gender, by Eugenia Cheng

It seems to me that the world is set up in such a way as to give men an unfair advantage. (Lucky me.) And not just because they are men — more because the world is set up so that certain kinds of behaviour are favoured, and those behaviours are more common in men than in women. There are behaviours that are thought of as typically masculine or feminine, but talking about them in those terms just reinforces the stereotypes that we should try to abolish. As soon as we say “men are like this”, someone else will reasonably say “not all men!” and we end up with an argument instead of progress.

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Free Speech — Timothy Garton Ash

This is a considered and level-headed approach to free speech. Ash avoids the platitudes and black-and-white dogmatism of the more extreme woke and anti-woke thinking. Instead, he tries to go back to first principles: about what is good and bad about free speech and what happens when it gets pushed too far in various directions. He discusses what the rules concerning free speech should be, and also the laws (they aren’t necessarily the same). In the end he distills it down to ten principles:

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Bike helmets should be optional


I think everyone agrees that riding is always safer with a helmet. But here’s a (the?) argument for making helmets optional:

1. If helmets are optional, then more people will cycle.
2. And there will initially be more cycling casualties

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Hello World — Hannah Fry

“Algorithms” will save the world, or possibly destroy it. This book is a good survey of how computerised algorithms are used and misused, and how they can be harnessed so their power can be used for good rather than evil.

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The Lies that Bind — Kwame Anthony Appiah

This is an enlightening discussion of what identity is and how it works, both in history and in the present day. Appiah weaves explanations together with history, anecdotes and analysis. He also adds some personal stories and perspectives from his own quite interesting background. 

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Social credit

There was an interesting exchange in the NZ Herald recently. The NZ Initiative, a conservative “think tank”, published a report basically saying that it is bad for governments to fund deficits by printing money. (I told you they were conservative.) The NZ Social Credit Association responded with a full-page ad in the NZ Herald setting out their view of Modern Monetary Theory and how it could work in practice.

Bryce Wilkinson, one of the senior NZ Initiative fellows, then published an opinion piece in the newspaper trying to discredit the Social Credit article. Shortly after that, Chris Leitch of the Social Credit Association published another response.

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Confessions of a Heretic — Roger Scruton

“The Scrutonizer”*, real name Roger Scruton (or more correctly and impressively, Sir Roger Scruton) is an English conservative (but not Conservative) philosopher. He is no right-wing loony though — his views tend to be very carefully considered and sensible. This book collects a number of his thoughtful yet somewhat fierce essays.

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Get it Together — Zoe Williams

I love this book. It’s a heartfelt, clear-eyed, inspiring clarion call for everyone to get together to make the world more livable. Her ideas are all so practical and achievable that I actually feel hopeful that they could really happen.

If more people read this book, the world would be a better place.

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