This should not be happening in the richest country in world history.

What's the German word for the interminable period between the finalization of your book manuscript and when it comes out for the public to view and react to? I know the book isn't terrible, but have not a good sense beyond that. Soon. More here:

Kudos to the brave students of Marquette University, who know when they've been sold a bill of goods. No one wants AI on university campuses except for billionaires and the college administrators who see an opportunity for a cash grab.

#EUSocialForum - now the anti-poverty panel!

Excellent new piece in the @nytimes.com on how inequality happened in a small Wyoming town with obvious lessons more broadly for the republic.

"When the state is growing weak, the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of impunity." -- Rousseau, Social Contract, 2.5

Author copies just arrived! The book officially comes out on March 24, but now I have the first printed examples in hand for my presentation in The Hague tomorrow afternoon as part of the Radical Readings of the Philosophical Canon workshop

An excellent review of my "Visions of Inequality" Inequality Without Class To grasp where inequality is headed—much less to reduce it—we will need to look beyond the economic by Simon Torracinta dissentmagazine.org/article/ineq...

First new review in a while (in HAL: Open Science). Review by Dan-Andrei Năfureanu from the University of Bucharest. hal.science/hal-05511717...

Everyone needs to read this book. It explains how we have long known about the corrosive and disastrous effects of letting rich people get filthy rich. Since the beginning of civilization, our greatest philosophers have been shouting it from the rooftops. This is not new, yet we’ve not learned…

Even the @wsj.com op-ed page is coming to face facts about inequality.

It’s easy to think writing is mainly the transcription of ideas you already have—that is, until you try to write something worthwhile, and you find what you thought were saying transform into something far more interesting in the process. This skips that last step, and that is *not* an improvement.

Effective altruists: we should encourage people to get as rich as possible to give more money away. Billionaires: . . .

It's Presidents' Day. Here's a favorite bit from FDR's 1936 nomination acceptance speech. Let us hope we can elect someone on this platform once again. (Would also be nice to elect someone who actually reads great books.) www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/ac...

“Young people are quickly becoming so dependent on A.I. that they are losing the ability to think for themselves. And rather than rallying resistance, academic administrators are aiding and abetting a hostile takeover of higher education.”

If my students are any indication, they are completely over the hype and fully sick of this constant assault from the tech companies. They are hungry for real conversations about important matters with -- get this! -- real people. No one wants to discuss the meaning of life with a bot. Sorry, bros!

I think the greatest gift college professors in the humanities can give to students right now is a seminar room where, for 80 minutes twice a week, nothing that happens to them is a sales pitch for an AI product.

"[T]he rich man holds the Law in his purse." -- Rousseau, Letters Written from the Mountain (#9).

Big congratulations to @ladyprofessor.bsky.social and @fthames.bsky.social on their new book!

@brankomilan.bsky.social has been writing excellent stuff lately. He is now pushing for a “tax on greed.” Worth reading! open.substack.com/pub/branko2f...

Nice piece in @brankomilan.bsky.social's Substack about inequality and envy. Highly recommended!

Given that my dog occasionally enjoys eating paper and rocks, saying "even a dog would love" this recipe is not really much of an endorsement. (Am I wrong, @unlawfulentries.bsky.social?)

Of all the classes I took as an undergraduate, the three semesters I took of Music History were among those that have contributed as much to my everyday happiness as any. Hardly a single day passes without me benefitting from them.

He's getting really close... 2026 may well be the year the world sees its first trillionaire. A trillionaire is someone who owes 1.000.000.000.000 dollar. Or, the equivalent of one million very nice flats/houses, each worth one million dollars.

Then @laywilliams.bsky.social put to rest the idea that intellectual and moral arguments against wealth inequality are rooted in envy, a common conservative talking point www.liberalcurrents.com/is-it-all-ju...

Here's a prayer straight from Scripture: "woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry” (Luke 6: 24-25).

This is a really nice piece, in the middle of i hope a productive discussion about inequality: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/is-it-all-just-envy/ I like liberal currents!

Definitely not just envy! It's been an absurd rhetorical strategy employed by defenders of the oligarchy, as they continue to dismantle this democracy.

Adam Smith was no right-winger

This, by David Lay Williams, is excellent on many fronts! Here is one: “when we struggle with problems today that resemble those of the past…it strikes me as foolish simply to discount the treasure of long-cherished wisdom.” Yes! And new wisdom surely comes of struggling with theirs.

Pleased to have this new piece today in @liberalcurrents.com.

Characteristically excellent stuff from @laywilliams.bsky.social on objections to inequality. (Also observes @betteridgeslaw.bsky.social.)

One of those truly unserious libertarian talking points is that the intellectual concern about inequality just stems from envy of the rich. David Lay Williams today responds to Don Boudreaux on this

Excited for this!

I’ve written a new piece for @liberalcurrents.com in response to an open letter from the economist Donald Boudreaux. I address ways in which criticisms of egalitarianism err. It’s not enough to accuse them of envy or economic illiteracy. There are serious moral, social, and political concerns.

the ancients didn't have the type of society that could have billionaires, but they would've understood the epstien cult well enough on its own terms & that also helps us understand them - what they meant by terms like tyrant www.politicalphilosophypodcast.com/pt

As with many similar accounts, I ask the question: What, exactly, do these people mean by “western civilization”???

Increasingly, it seems, many young people are seeing AI (and through so much propaganda from Silicon Valley, politicians, business leaders, and school administrators) for what it really is: a tool that simultaneously destroys the environment and human minds.

Now that all of the pieces in our symposium in honor of Kirstie McClure are available online from Philosophy and Global Affairs, here's a little thread with each of the pieces. (1/8)

From the prominent Catholic philosopher Eleonore Stump. www.facebook.com/eleonore.stu...

Office music this morning

If you're living somewhere outside the USA, one thing you can do is pressure your leaders to boycott World Cup and Olympic events here.

From many years of in-person research @yarrowaxford.bsky.social knows more about Greenland than just about anyone not presently living in Greenland. Read her take on the disastrous diplomacy unfolding with regard to the island.

“Something about how these systems are built makes them structurally vulnerable to authoritarian amplification” www.nbcnews.com/tech/securit...

There are two kinds of people: those who see Thucydides's Melian Dialogue (and its aftermath) as a warning, and those who see it as granting permission.

I've been occasionally mocked for thinking Plato was right about a lot of things. That's happening less these days. (Plato's Republic, Book 5 on the left, NY Times editorial today on the right.) www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Just don't try to teach Plato in your "Great Books" programs!

You can have Trump or Madison. You can't have both. My latest for @goodauth.bsky.social.

MLK speaking to us from the grave. From Beyond Vietnam (1967).