Ill Fares The Land
In "Ill Fares The Land," Tony Judt, one of our leading historians and thinkers, reveals how we have arrived at our present dangerously confused moment and offers the language we need to address our common needs, rejecting the nihilistic individualism of the far right and the debunked socialism of the past. To find a way forward, Judt argues that we must look to our not so distant past and to social democracy in action: to re-enshrining fairness over mere efficiency.
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What Hacker News says
- >"The response to violence is never violence, it's always to de-escalate it. Only six shots were fired by Japanese police nationwide [in 2015]," says journalist Anthony Berteaux. "What most Japanese police will do is get huge futons and essentially roll up a person who is being violent or drunk into a little burrito and carry them back to the station to calm them down."
How telling. Reminds me of the cop who quit the police force after witnessing drug crime escalation as a direct result of increased criminalisation[0][1]
There was another article on the FT that questioned why Japan has not fallen prey to far-right extreme populism[2]. The explanation is, of course, extremely nuanced but one thing that doesn't seem to be discussed much in mainstream media is the positives of having a highly homogeneous country.
Nations which are ethnically homogeneous are also typically culturally homogeneous and this is conducive for high levels of social trust. See nations like Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. The ideas of social trust are discussed in Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt[3] (a book recommendation I picked up on here). Of course, it is not immediately constructive to say multicultural countries like the USA or UK should instigate mass deportation and ethnic purging, but it bothers me that it seems like even discussing the issue of ethnic homogeneity (not purging!!!) straddles the border of being taboo.
For instance, would it not be productive to discuss how to achieve high levels of social trust in a culturally colourful society? Nations like Singapore seem to have made some steady progress in this dimension...
[0]https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/26/neil-woods-u...
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12365667
[2]https://www.ft.com/content/987dddda-bbe2-11e6-8b45-b8b81dd5d...
[3]https://www.amazon.com/Ill-Fares-Land-Tony-Judt/dp/014311876...
- This is the talk [0]. It was interesting, although in the talk he only addressed the issue of erosion of jobs quite briefly. He spent more time how AI was augmenting/disrupting a variety of industries. It was more of a penny drop moment for me than an in-depth discussion on that particular topic.
The talks were filmed so they may be accessible somewhere, though I know the speaker writes on the subject so his writing may be more readily accessible.
As a free tip/shameless preach a book which has impacted me greatly recently is Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt[1]. The more people that read this book, the better.
[0] http://conferences.oreilly.com/strata/hadoop-big-data-eu/pub...
[1]https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143118765/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=...
- Get hold of a copy of Tony Judt's Ill fares the land. It has references to the correlation between inequality and many measures of 'problems' and tries to make the case for a causal link. Also explains philosophical background.
- Also not the poster, but study after study finds that education and income inequality is correlated with everything from crime rates (unsurprisingly, poor people are more likely to commit, or at least get caught committing, crimes) to mental health (the less money you have, you are likely to be mentally ill and less likely to have access to good care). Then there's obesity (again, the rich are more likely to eat healthy food) and other similar physical health issues.
Some of that is a consequence of education (for instance, nutrition) or income (mental illness) but all of those are seriously worsened by inequality resulting from our education system. If you're interested, The Spirit Level (http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp...) and Ill Fares the Land (http://www.amazon.com/Ill-Fares-Land-Tony-Judt/dp/0143118765...) both contain great discussions of this.
- Tony Judt outlines some observations on the dynamics between social trust and cultural homogeneity in "Ill Fares the Land".
I guess the differences between America and Denmark are one manifestation of these differences
- >It's just not an important epidemic.
"Aye,there's the rub..."
Men are more likely to succumb to alcoholism[0]
Men are more likely to succumb to gambling problems[1]
An estimated 84% of homeless are male in the UK[2]
Alcoholism and gambling are some choice indicators of inequality that Tony Judt liked to reference in Ill Fares the Land[3]. The gender disparity is well documented at the top (e.g. Gender diversity for C-level) but this is the 1% of the 1%. I'm not denying that the lack of diversity is alarming but these men are the men that bested many other men. However the fact that there is a lack of diversity on both sides of the spectrum seems to be an inconvenient truth that most prefer to avoid.
[0]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15533281
[1]https://www.responsiblegambling.vic.gov.au/newsroom/media-re...
[2]https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/may/07/men-ge...
