What We Owe The Future – A review by Tim Harford
Tim Harford's lukewarm review of William MacAskill's book.
If he is right, how could I justify giving £10 to a food bank today when I could set up a charitable trust, let the money accumulate centuries of compound interest before lavishing the proceeds on future generations? Are we morally obliged to live at subsistence levels to maximise the resources available for investment and research so our great-great-great-great-grandchildren will thrive? Such questions have been discussed and analysed at great depth in the literature on climate change. It is surprising to see them waved away with a few sentences here.
Is it that surprising, really?
The White House Conference: They Pulled It Off! - Food Politics by Marion Nestle
“We must stop giving breadcrumbs and start building bakeries.”
Nice rhetoric. And then ...?
Friday 16 September, 2022 | Memex 1.1
In the UK at the moment, the average household consumes 3,731 kWh of electricity in a year. That comes to 10.23 kWh per day. So wouldn’t it be smarter — and fairer — to subsidise consumption up to that level, and let households which consume more face the market rate? And pay for the subsidy by a windfall tax on energy companies.
It won’t happen, of course, for the simple reason that it’s ‘unthinkable’.
An alternative to Marxist explanations of inequality – The one-handed economist
I wish I understood more deeply, but the more I read about Henry George and Georgism, the more inclined I am to believe it to be correct.
Beyond rescue ecomodernism: the case for agrarian localism restated | Small Farm Future
Our modern culture is good at heroic, high-tech mitigation of specific and immediate acute problems. It’s not very good at long-term, low-tech cultural adaptation that mitigates against these specific and immediate acute problems from arising.
Is there time? Best to assume that there is, and start the transition now.
ongoing by Tim Bray · Slow Travel
Oh, to be able to travel by Zeppelin. Meanwhile, I think the idea of never flying anywhere for less than a week is a good stop-gap, and more trains when possible.
Time's the revelator
Many good thoughts and conclusions.
City of the dead, part two
“... (a symptom of the malaise: the spellchecker on my computer is happy with the word ‘urbanization’ but not ‘ruralization’).”
When, I wonder, are we going to get to the art/culture arguments in favour of cities. Those are what have kept me urbanised for the past many years. Irrationally, perhaps, but the result is the same.