Pluralistic: To save the news, ban surveillance ads (31 May 2023)


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Pluralistic: Ian McDonald's "Hopeland" (30 May 2023)


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Monopolizing turds


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Ideas Lying Around

Milton Friedman was a monster, but he wasnā€™t wrong aboutĀ this.

A workbench with a pegboard behind it. from the pegboard hang an array of hand-tools.
btwashburn/CC BYĀ 2.0

Only a crisisā€Šā€”ā€Šactual or perceivedā€Šā€”ā€Šproduces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.

-Milton Friedman, 1972

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Pluralistic: Steven Brust's "Tsalmoth" (27 May 2023)


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Pluralistic: How (and why) Biden should overcome the Supreme Court to end the debt showdown (26 May 2023)


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Pluralistic: To save the news, shatter ad-tech (25 May 2023)


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Pluralistic: Justice Warriors (22 May 2023)


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  • Justice Warriors: Matt Bors', Ben Clarkson's and Felipe Sobriero's scorchingly brilliant, viciously funny, dystopian sf graphic novel.
  • Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
  • This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018
  • Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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Rich Peopleā€™s Gain is Worth Less Than Poor Peopleā€™s Pain

A new way to think about utilitarianism, courtesy of the Office of Management andĀ Budget.

A faded, halftoned image of the US Capitol Dome, surmounted by a balance scale. The lower part of the scale is weighed down by a towering Oliver Twist figure, porridge-bowl extended in supplication. He is raising up a scale holding a fan of caricature drawings of a business-suited plutocrat with a dollar-sign-emblazoned money-bag for a head.

Utilitarianismā€Šā€”ā€Šthe philosophy of making decisions to benefit the most peopleā€Šā€”ā€Šsounds commonsensical. But utilitarianism isā€Šā€”ā€Šand always has beenā€Šā€”ā€Šan attractive nuisance, one that invites its practitioners to dress up their self-serving preferences with fancy mathematics that ā€œproveā€ that their wins and your losses are ā€œrational.ā€

Thatā€™s been there ever since Jeremy Benthamā€™s formulation of the concept of utilitarianism, which he immediately mobilized in service to the panopticon, his cruel design for a prison where prisoners would be ever haunted by a watcherā€™s unseeing eye. Bentham seems to have sincerely believed that there was a utilitarian case for the panopticon, which let him declare his sadistic thought-experiment (thankfully, it was never built during Benthamā€™s life) to be a utility-maximizing act of monumental kindness.

Ever since Bentham, utilitarianism has provided cover for historyā€™s great monsters to claim that they were only acting in service to the greater good.

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Pluralistic: Dumping links like Galileo dumped the orange (20 May 2023)


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