I’ve been thinking a lot about Emily Hobhouse lately. The British welfare activist who, in 1901, denounced the British army for their treatment of enemy civilians at war. Hobhouse was the first civilian to decry the government for creating the…
In 1947, the Austrian philosopher Frederick von Hayek organized a gathering of economists, historians and philosophers at a Swiss spa at the base of Mount Pelerin, to discuss the state of the world following World War 2. The group called…
I had the chance to sit down and have an interview with Brian Wong, the founder of the Oxford Political Review. Our chat took us on a wild journey through modern media, digital platforms, online polarisation and the ongoing COVID-19…
The year is 2014 and Tony Abbott, the Australian Prime Minister, announces a series of cuts to public spending across healthcare, education and unemployment benefits. Modeled off of the austerity programs sweeping Europe at the time, the cuts aimed to balance the…
In a years’ time, several books will come out chronicling the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, asking several key questions: what went right, what went wrong, what policy succeeded and what failed? Among the core contenders, Bernie Sanders stands out as…
For years, I’ve been reading and writing about the looming threat of automation, A.I. and new technologies, including their capacity to wipe out traditional jobs. The bulk of this writing was compiled into a book Essays in A.I. released a…
Lifetime employment has long been the cornerstone of corporate governance in Japan. College graduates at large firms have traditionally been guaranteed employment until retirement. These graduates, almost exclusively men, are guaranteed job security in return for complete loyalty to their…
In Political Liberalism, John Rawls argues that, “political power is always coercive power backed by the government’s use of sanctions, for government alone has authority to use force in upholding its laws” (Rawls 1993, p. 136).[i] In saying as much, Rawls is echoing a commonly held belief: that the state has the power to coerce its citizens, and this coercion prevents citizens from breaking the law. In most modern states, citizens are routinely threatened with arrest and incarceration if they do not abide by the state’s legal system. The language of “authority” is often used to justify this coercive action (Goffman 1982; Morris 2004, p. 196; Weber 1947).[ii]
During a recent Q and A event, American presidential nominee Bernie Sanders was confronted by a young man and asked a question that typifies the political apathy of modern youth. The young man was previously asked by a friend in…
In the late 1950s, Frederick Herzberg conducted surveys on what we now term “The Greatest Generation,” those who fought during WWII. Selecting a group of factory workers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Herzberg asked “what do you like and dislike about your…