The Econoclast

That Dirty S-Word

An anti-masker holds up a sign — “Covid is about Socialist Control.” Betsy DeVos calls free college education “a socialist takeover of higher education.”[1] They’re mental and strategic twins. Don’t like something? Call it “socialist.” Instant photo-op. Instant sound byte.

Reparations [8]: Global Accountability- Part 3

Reparations for slavery, to be carried out under international human rights law, offer an historic opportunity for the USA’s national healing of its racial troubles, but the founding myth of American exceptionalism stands in the way.

Reparations [7]: Global Accountability — Part 2

Proposals for reparations for American slavery often focus on centuries-old circumstances, legal issues, and cultural attitudes, proposing compensation to the descendants of slaves for ancestral harm suffered. This view treats slavery as something…

Reparations [6]: Global Accountability — Part 1

“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world,” George Washington famously wrote in his farewell address. The phrase has long been used to justify “unilateralism” or “isolationism” in US foreign…

Reparations [5]: Moral Compulsion

There is no hope for reparations if the topic is left to business and politics as usual — to the customary manner in which decisions are made, national affairs are conducted, pundits and media outlets clamor for sensationalism, social media serves up clickbait, religion…

Reparations [4]: The Essential Doubt

And so you see I have come to doubt
 All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you.

Reparations [3]: The Airtight Legal Case Against Them, and the Moonshot That Would Make Them Possible

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade… not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the…

Reparations [2]: Slavery, Human Capital, Le Déluge, and Paying the Piper

Reparations [1]: Economics and a Whole Lot More