anotherpanacea

Tag: status

  • Race, Income, and Elections: The White (Male?) Working Class

    Race, Income, and Elections: The White (Male?) Working Class

    In my last post before the election, I quibbled with Peter Levine’s strategic argument that Trump’s supporters might be momentarily richer than average, but only because they were older, maler, and whiter. I worried that it was a kind of mistake, even if it’s perhaps an analytic effort designed to enhance our ability and willingness to achieve strategic…

  • The View From Nowhere

    Update: As Scu points out, sharing this opens me up to the scrollover text (which doesn’t show on hotlink): “‘But you’re using that same tactic to try to feel superior to me, too!’ ‘Sorry, that accusation expires after one use per conversation.’”

  • Resetting the Moral Baseline to Resist Status Quo Bias

    Resetting the Moral Baseline to Resist Status Quo Bias

    While to many people the reformer and the abolitionist are indistinguishably radical, there is a disheartening tendency for reformers and abolitionists to fight rhetorical battles about the strategies and ends of the movement. Thus we are riven by rhetoric. To the abolitionist, this is because reform tends to reassert the status quo after superficial changes:…

  • Is the US an Oligarchy?

    Is the US an Oligarchy?

    Some things live forever in social media. In my circles, one article that comes up all the time is the Gilens and Page study of legislative influence that is often interpreted this way: “US No Longer an Actual Democracy” or “Princeton Concludes What Kind of Government America Really Has, and It’s Not a Democracy.” Part…

  • Prison Abolition, Reform, and End-State Anxieties

    Prison Abolition, Reform, and End-State Anxieties

    Recently I’ve been thinking about a book by Erin McKenna which I read as an undergraduate: The Task of Utopia: A Pragmatist and Feminist Perspective. I read it then because it promised to bridge the divide between my favorite genre, science-fiction, and my interest in philosophy. But the book profoundly changed me, and I’m always surprised…

  • Varieties of Inequality

    Varieties of Inequality

    I can think of at least six kinds of inequality: Inequality of income: different people receive different wages, either for different jobs or for the same job, as profits from capital investments, or as government subsidies, transfer payments, or private charity. Inequality of consumption: different people consume different products (i.e. the generic widget) in differing…