The Merits of Slack

There are two meanings we generally assign to the word slack. First, we can understand it as a form of laziness or being negligent. If we say a company has slack safety procedures, we express that these are insufficient and that not enough attention and effort is dedicated to these. There are few merits in …

Who controls the economy?

The economy shapes much of our lives. It determines what job we can or cannot get; it determines what we can buy or cannot buy; it determines where we live; it determines what healthcare we can get; frankly there is little in our lives which is not influenced by the economy. With something so important …

The Survival of Humankind: Should We Be Working Towards It?

Given that there does not appear to be a way open to us to determine what the purpose of life is, and therefore no way to know what is ultimately good and bad, it is only natural that there is some disagreement among us what it means to live a virtuous life. However, there seem …

Velvety Chains: Social Values That Bind

Today I came across an article by Steve Biddulph and one paragraph therein really struck a chord with me: There is something happening, in the new century, to the way we live, which again is harming our basic humanity. Every economy tends to enslave, and ours is the most effective of all, since the chains …

The Economy and Happiness

By many measures, there has been tremendous progress in key well-being indicators for all of mankind. There is less poverty, less hunger, less violence and more prosperity than there has ever been in human history. We live in times of plenty not just for the few but for the many. To a large degree, this …

On Preventing the Extinction of Mankind

Few will disagree that the continuation of our species as a noble goal to pursue. It just feels inherently plausible to us. But I think that we should nonetheless reflect upon whether this is really such a worthwhile and important goal to pursue. Some say that we may be the only species in the universe …