Politics and Science

            The US needs less loyalty to party. In the 1990s, the House of Representatives, controlled by Republicans, voted to impeach the President. The Senate, controlled by Democrats, did not vote to remove him from office. Everything is clear in hindsight, but a President having an affair and lying about it should be impeached and removed from office. But Democrats were loyal to their party, despite the objections of the other party. I am not a conservative Republican, but I can imagine how in their morality, President Clinton’s actions would have bothered them.             Now, Democrats are potentially going to impeach a Republican President. And Republicans are being loyal to their party. In the future, there should be an agreement between the political parties that they will impeach if the other party objects. There are different moral frameworks, and not all moral framewo...

Recommended reading on the FBI: Crossfire Hurricane by Josh Campbell A Higher Loyalty by James Comey Secrets of the FBI by Ron Kessler The Bureau by Ron Kessler The Threat by Andrew McCabe

            In communism, the state owns all property. Imagine a country in which all assets were taxed at one hundred percent. This would effectively be a communist system, since the government would own all property. Private property would cease to exist, and all property would be public. Conversely, imagine a state in which there are zero taxes. The state would cease to exist because it would have no revenue. All property would be private, and there would be no public property. Clearly, communism and anarchy are two poles of one continuum. On one end of the continuum, there is no private property and all public property, on the other end, there is no public property and all private property.             Thinkers on both ends of the continuum have idealized each. In practice, societies have to determine where they want to fall on the spectrum. Some private property should be respected s...

Recommended Reading from my list for 2019: Firefighting by Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulson The story of the Great Recession, and how Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulson worked to prevent a depression. United by Cory Booker A memoir of Cory's time in Newark, New Jersey to his Senate run. The Dictator's Handbook by Bueno de Mesquita and Smith. How non-democratic governments maintain power, despite not being elected. The Back Channel by William Burns A memoir from the US State Department, from the fall of the Soviet Union to the Iran Nuclear Deal. Grit by Angela Duckworth The science behind people who pursue long-term goals. Leadership in Tumultuous Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin Short biographies of the lives of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. Highly readable and engaging. World Order by Henry Kissinger A whirlwind tour of world history. How Democracies Die by Levinsky and Ziblatt. Modern accounts of how democracies ...

            Bridgewater takes two ideas from philosophy, the panopticon and Socratic dialogue, and implements them in the real world. First, at Bridgewater, employees are recorded and the videos can be watched for future analysis. This is similar to David Hume's idea of the panopticon from the 1700s, in which convicts are placed in a prison in which a guard could watch any prisoner at any time. A key difference between the two is that in the panopticon, convicts do not have a choice of participating, while at Bridgewater, employees are free to leave at any time. Second, Bridgewater espouses a theory of communication called “radical transparency.” This radical transparency is a style in which people are direct, honest, and civil with each other, while questioning and probing. The level of transparency is similar to a Socratic dialogue, in which one person questions the other until the other is left flummoxed, written by Plato in the 400s BCE...