Sublime

The small-world networks found everywhere, described in the Watts-Strogatz paper, have an intriguing feature. They are both unusually robust and unusually fragile. They are robust against random attacks or random failures. Which is why random server outages, for example, have little effect on internet traffic. But they are especially vulnerable to

So too we can expect the vitriol to die down when Trump leaves office and an uneasy calm to exist. Then, following the election of 2028, a new explosion, as the incoming president’s radical policies—from the standpoint of the prior half a century—come under attack. But this vitriol will be simply the surface of the deep structural changes. For the

The issue now and during the next decade is access to the center of gravity of the technocracy, the leading universities that not only teach subjects but train you in the social rituals that allow you to belong to the technocracy. Those universities are increasingly closed to those who didn’t descend from this group.

technical sophistication,

La tension majeure qui traverse la démocratie oppose la liberté à l’égalité, dont la poursuite peut basculer dans la passion délirante, conduisant le peuple à préférer la servitude à l’inégalité. Le danger peut être d’autant plus grand que la montée de l’individualisme s’accompagne d’un désintérêt pour le bien commun et que l’industrialisation et l

I think that Europe provides valuable insight. One example is our attachment to economic security for the many. In the US, the workers’ safety net has been methodically dismantled over the last decades. As for China, its singular political system provides little room to implement the kind of social compromise that once reconciled classical liberals