235. EVERYTHING GOOD COULD STILL EXIST - On The Internet Without Capitalism
Read More“The most powerful idea we can ever hear is this: if we took away money right now, everything that exists would still exist.“
232. WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER - On Not Wanting To Win
Read More“Winning is important to people only because capitalism has made it so. Winning is a means, in our rigged and unfair system, for some of our intentionally limited resources or opportunities to be granted to the victor(s). Winning means access to prizes previously forbidden or inaccessible. But it’s important to acknowledge that prizes are a social construct made meaningful only because of their manufactured scarceness or the inequalities we’ve chosen to allow in the distribution of the resources from which the prize comes.“
230. CHRISTMAS SHOPPING - In Defence of Chainstores
Read More“This is not a defence of capitalism, nor a defence of the current order, but it is a defence of the notion that perhaps the proliferation of corporate chain-stores everywhere, which once made me mourn the quirky individuality of the independent high street, is not necessarily a bad thing.“
203. IN THE DARK - Medicine, Epistemology and Economics
Read More“I wonder if the economics of medicine are too-often overlooked, even in countries with a decent free public healthcare system. I wonder how many people have lived or died because of investigations presenting as questions of epistemology - how can we possibly know what is going on in this body? - which are actually questions of finance - can we justify the expenditure it would take to find out?“
162. PRACTICAL ETHICS - When Do Economies Become Unethical?
Read More“I am interested in the question of whether the practical compromises economies necessarily demand on our actions are, in fact, immoral, and whether such immorality makes these economies not only unfit for purpose, but unfit to such a capacity that we actually have a moral duty to replace them?“
155. THE IMPERMANENCE OF VALUE - Fluctuating Perspectives on Worth
Read More“Philosophers might ask: if value changes all the time, is there really such a thing as value at all? If we can’t pin it down - define it - then is it really anything? Is there anything eternally valuable and undeniably valuable to all? But even in philosophy value fluctuates based on who is doing the valuing. To some thinkers that question is important. Personally, I see no value at all in finding an answer to that question and would rather set my mind to other things.“
123. THOUGHTS ON STRIKING - Why We Need More Striking, Not Less
Read More“As philosophers we can smell fallacious argument a mile off. We know an ad hominem attack when we see one, attacking the person (or people) rather than the actual idea. When it comes to discourse around striking in this country, it seems that fallacy and fear-mongering abound. And I would suggest that if you can’t counter the actual arguments of the unions you should be supporting their strikes, maybe even joining them, rather than complaining about them or attacking their industrial action.”
122. DUPLICATING SUFFERING - Economics and Ethics When Experimenting With Animals
Read More“a possible case could be made for accepting certain, limited, forms of animal experimentation but not within the current economic system because it is structurally set up to maximise, rather than minimise, the possible duplication of unnecessary suffering due to prioritising intellectual property rights over the rights of non-human (and human) animals.“
74. COOPERATION IS GREATER THAN COMPETITION: Lessons in Anarchism and Mutual Aid from Professional Wrestling
Read More“By working together instead of against each other, as anarchists since Kropotkin have argued, everybody wins and the seemingly zero sum game is exposed for the capitalist con it always has been.“
57. IT’S HARD TO FOLLOW THE LOGIC ON COVID 19 - Though It's A Little Easier If You Follow The Money
Read More“As a philosopher it’s hard to follow the logic around Covid policy because in many cases there simply isn’t any. There is only the illusion of logic. A symbolic nod to a vague sense of health and safety which doesn’t dare follow its own argument to a conclusion for fear of what that conclusion might say.“
43. CAPITALISM IS NOT BETTER, JUST EASIER - A Student Considers The Lazy Appeal of a Flawed Economic System
Read More“This is the fundamental foundation of capitalism. It is not the ‘freedom’ of the (not so free) free market or the liberality you get from a government or the ethical right to keep what is yours – it is the simplicity in caring for oneself. “
41. TO CLAP OR TO CRY FOR CARERS? - On The Importance of Being Able To Hold Two Ideas In Our Heads At Once
Read More“By clapping, was I supporting the myth, the propaganda, and the lies which have put so many unnecessarily in harm’s way during this crisis? From the unprotected nurse to their dying patient, infected because they couldn’t stay home for fear of losing their job - each a victim not of Covid-19, but of our political system?”
37. ELEMENTARY LOGIC - Why UK Schools Must Close Now
Read More“In the name of public health, but also sense and logic, we must close all UK schools now.”
22. THE VALUE OF FREE - Why Are We So Distrustful of Getting Something For Nothing?
Read More“Imagine giving a friend a brand new MacBook for their birthday. It is highly likely they will assume the computer is somehow broken, secondhand, or stolen before they would simply accept that you have spent that much money on them and expect nothing in return. Because when something that good is given away for free, for no reason, it makes no sense in a world where everything has a price and where we have been socialised into a worldview that says money has ultimate value and should be collected, even hoarded, as much as possible. To give something of value away for free is the action of a crazy person. Sensible citizens only part with something of value if it will bring them something of more value in return. At least, that is the story we have been conditioned to tell ourselves.”
13. WHO AM I MEDITATING FOR? - A Brief Consideration of the Mindfulness Industrial Complex
Read More“As someone interested in critical thinking and intellectual analysis I have significant objections to the idea of a completely mindful life, and rather suspect the ascendency of mindfulness as a practice to cure all ailments in the modern day has a lot to do with its overall lack of threat to the status quo.”
10. IN DEFENCE OF WASTE - On the Essential Inessential
Read More“It is now my belief that the inessential, the waste, may be the most important thing in life for ensuring our true wellbeing. Furthermore, it may also ultimately have a knock-on effect of improving the productivity and efficacy of the essential.”