Solomon's Cairn

After the winners of the ACX Book Review Contest were announced, I took a closer look at the gold medalist, Lars Doucet's review of Henry George's Progress and Poverty . Reading it, I was surprised to find the outline of a birds-eye political philosophy which didn't make me want to tear my hair out. I brought this up with family, and immediately got stuck on whether or not Bitcoin counted as Wealth in the Georgist framework, as expected.  So before I read the text itself, I wanted to jot down some early thoughts. Much of this post is taken directly from Doucet's review.  First, I'll need to examine George's definition of Wealth, why money doesn't fit the bill, and what it means for money to be a claim on wealth, and whether digital currencies are closer to dollars or gold bars. This has less to do with Georgism and more with settling a personal argument. Second, before Georgism, the high-level political philosophy which made the most sense to me was David F...

In the odd moments I peek out of my bubble and into the battlefield of the Culture War, I find myself fascinated by the turns of phrase, standard arguments and stylistic choices common to each army. Then the shells come flying my way and I jump back in the trench. But between those moments, I wonder at those cultural tics. Birds on a wire in Cataluña One such phrase, which I primarily see used by Blue forces, is, 'my truth.' Besides being in the title of an upbeat 2004 single and a 2020 sexual abuse documentary, it's fairly common to hear as an affirmation, especially in the context of 'living my truth', or as an exhortation to 'speak your truth.' It looks to have been given a boost in 2018 by  Oprah , although it's much older, and Google Ngram tells me that we're at a local maximum for its use in texts, so I can say with some confidence that the phrase is in the ascendant.  It took me a little while to notice I had an emotional reaction to the phra...