archive

The larger the social group

A new issue of Civil War Book Review is out. Can the Democrats catch up in the super-PAC game? The Democrats have a distaste for the new rules of the campaign-finance game — but they are playing. From Capitalism, Michael J Hurd on why the neediest are also the greediest; an excerpt from How to Be Profitable and Moral By Jaana Woiceshyn (and Woiceshyn on self interest and the “common good”); and Brian Phillips on how Bernie Madoff was completely selfless. Nihilism is dead: On this most meaningless of anniversaries, Turgenev's Bazarov would not recognize the philosophy he launched. A review of Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society by Jim Manzi. Swarm theory seems to predict that the larger the social group, the better the resulting group decisions and behaviors; then, with over 300 million of us in the U.S., shouldn’t we only be making brilliant decisions? Horrors we hide: From slaughterhouses to sweatshops, modern society is constructed to let us ignore atrocities. Zine vs. Art: Is there room in the zine world for both the low-price, cut-and-paste zine and the glossy new commodities?