American foreign policy to the left; Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract to the right.

“What concerned Plato… was that inequality drove citizens apart and made their mutual friendship virtually impossible” – @laywilliams.bsky.social on why arguments against inequality do not boil down to mere “envy” of the rich #LSEInequalitiesBlog

1) I've argued that Plato was a great economic egalitarian. But he also warns in the Republic to beware of would-be tyrants who promise grand egalitarian reforms. Tyrants don't offer these out of genuine concern for the poor. They promise reforms merely to win popular support for tyranny.

Are there checks on presidential power in 2026? The Constitution contradicts Trump’s belief that he’s limited only by his “own morality.” Read @laywilliams.bsky.social latest here: goodauthority.org/news/trump-s...

This is so very correct.

The love of ease, to secure rents, the temptation to predation, pleonexia ... these human foibles don't disappear just because there are also positive-sum pathways to wealth. And this is especially true with inherited wealth.

Is inequality functional...is it really important for the proper alignment of incentives in society (with no attempted quantification of the optimal levels)? That is my favorite Panglossian response.

The Founders would disagree strenuously and forcefully. See this by @laywilliams.bsky.social.

"Let them eat . . . one piece of broccoli." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I wrote this essay to remind readers of Madison's insistence in Fed. 10 "that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control" on the government. That's the basic justification for checks and balances. The president's assurances to the contrary are not assuring.

Received a response to my @lseblogs.bsky.social piece today in the form of a public letter from Prof. Donald J. Boudreaux. I appreciate the engagement, of course, and will post a response somewhere soon.

Emphasizing the obvious perhaps, but the president's recent declaration that he is constrained only by his "own morality" contradicts Madison's observation in Fed no. 10 that “neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control” on gov't powers." My essay in Good Authority.

Slightly less than one year in office before this administration has compelled the defensive movements of German troops.

Hard to shame the shameless, but worth a shot.

I agree that this is an absurd position, but I don’t think it’s rare. I hear this view casually adopted by folks all the time. That’s why I think it’s important to explain its absurdity.

1) I have a new piece in the @lseinequalities.bsky.social blog today. Here I'm responding to the many who have suggested that all objections to inequality come from envy of the rich and "successful."

The best president at giving citizens the bird in the history of America. Some say, he's even better at it than Lincoln!

It’s notable that the only thinkers defending the claim that objections to inequality are just about envy are three (rich) economists & a (rich) psychologist. I.e. nobody of any note in the relevant field - political philosophy. Nobody doing work on this topic would think any of them worth reading.

We have absolutely had days like this because of federal presence at school dismissals in my town.

Precisely!

Are those who object to inequality simply voicing their envy of the rich? If so, we must dismiss the principled arguments of Plato, Jesus, Hobbes, Mill and Marx, argues @laywilliams.bsky.social #LSEInequalitiesBlog buff.ly/FR7N6jn

Mianus River!

1) I have a new piece in the @lseinequalities.bsky.social blog today. Here I'm responding to the many who have suggested that all objections to inequality come from envy of the rich and "successful."

I say this with no intended irony whatsoever: I love it when students I taught two decades ago mail me their self-published 400+ page manifestos and treatises.

Philosopher A.P. Martinich telling it like it is.

I read Plato's Symposium for the first time at a state university in Texas. Remarkably, it made me neither gay nor trans (though that hardly matters). It did help me fall in love with the beauty of ancient texts of Western Civilization and learning more generally. This shouldn't be controversial.

Promoting the Evanston Township High School Jazz Festival! A great opportunity to see the incredible Sean Jones and support local talent development at the same time. If you're in Chicagoland, strongly encouraging you to come! www.onthestage.tickets/show/evansto...

The final set of corrections to the galleys just went in. I guess whether I (or you) like it or not, the book is coming on March 10, 2026. Pre-order info here: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Honored to have my book listed among @durlauf.bsky.social's top 10 "especially valuable" books of the past three years.

For years, conservatives have insisted that we respect the "wisdom of the Founders." Well, here is their man directly contravening the considered wisdom of the most revered of Founders, James Madison, in his celebrated Federalist No. 10. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/u...

First read of 2026

All the sensible people around the world need to come together on this issue at put an end to the insanity. This stuff has no place in a decent world.

Congrats to the Texas Legislature and their lackeys in state university administrative posts -- they are finally succeeding in canceling Western Civilization!

As E.E. Schattschneider once quipped, the "heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent."

So many essays of this nature, but they all focus on INCOME inequality rather than WEALTH inequality. Look at all of the canonical thinkers on economic inequality (e.g., Plato, Rousseau, Mill, etc.) -- none of them focus on income. They all focus on wealth.

Winter 2026 term—let’s do this!

Cover reveal. It's about how & why colonies/states controlled international & domestic migration until 1888, why in the late 19th c the feds took over, & what it was like for politically disfavored groups to live under that arrangement of power. You can't understand voluntary migration history 1/

One hundred times over, this. I'm all about reading great books, and no one should assume they amount to some kind of indoctrination program. The point is to get students thinking about the big questions, which is what these books excel at. Every college student deserves this.

The administration is suing a professional jazz musician . . . for $1 million. Maybe Miles Davis was a millionaire? The rest of millionaire jazz musicians can be counted on one hand. Maybe they'll confiscate his piano in their effort to "defend the arts"?

Yes, this!: "this isn't a crisis in teaching; it's an attack on learning" I'm finding that I don't have just to change assignments. I have to **abandon my entire teaching strategy**, which has always been built around scaffolded independent projects across the semester.

Big "yes" to this, which I sketched in my last book. Pleonexia (insatiable greed) is relentless for its victims. The Book of Ecclesiastes offer a lovely metaphor for this -- "chasing the wind" (trying to grasp something that can never be attained).

Whereas this student is being empowered for making vague and unsubstantiated references to Biblical authority, I was once placed on TPUSA's Professor Watchlist for specifically citing Biblical authority in a paper outlining the Bible's concerns about concentrated wealth. You can't win.

Came across this tribute to my beloved dissertation supervisor online this week. It captures many of his attributes that made him a brilliant teacher.

Of all the issues raised about the concentration of wealth in my last book, I confess, this one had not occurred to me.

In Elites and Democracy, @hdrochon.bsky.social explains why elites always rule democracies—and why recognizing that reality can help us respond to the crisis of democracy today. Available January 6 (3 March UK pub). Preorder your copy today: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... #PoliticalScience

“We are hastening the transition to an economy where all the good jobs have been eliminated and you’ll need to fight others to get a job in a poultry factory, that is, if you want to eat!” Good campaign slogan, no?

Honored that the distinguished economist @brankomilan.bsky.social has included my book among his favorite reads in 2025!

We can have an infinitely better education environment (and a much cheaper one) if only we have the courage to expel this technology.

For those keeping score this holiday season.

As Tocqueville suggests in the Ancien Régime, the greater the perception of inequality, the more it stirs active resistance.