My thoughts

A handy guide to help you understand your cosmo-liberal interlocutor - in case you thought words were what they used to be... Liberal = belonging to an ideology intolerant of incorrect speech Tolerant = refusing to tolerate incorrect opinions;  also : having the correct opinion, often referring in particular to automatically loving anything foreign Inclusive = refusing to include people with incorrect opinions Open-minded = refusing to consider incorrect opinions;  also : having the correct opinion, often referring in particular to loving anything foreign Narrow-minded =  conversely:  willing to consider all opinions;  also:  having come to an incorrect opinion Extreme =  having come to the incorrect opinion, e.g. opposed to extreme immigration [Note also "extremist" = a case needing to be conceptually separated from the group in order to uphold the concept of identicality of groups, e.g. "Islamic extremist" = not to be ...

Initial note:  I am not suggesting any particular policy solution to the problem I identify here, which is the unreasonable advantage conferred by inheritance; identifying a solution is, I expect, far beyond my capabilities, but I am trying to demonstrate that there is, in the first place, a problem to think about. When people talk about equality, they want to talk about rich and poor, but only on their terms. They want to talk about average incomes of races of genders. It is, for example, much more comfortable for rich people to talk about racial inequality, and how we should help a given racial group to raise its mean income, than to talk about poverty in the first place. Talking about racial equality, though it is a very interesting topic in its own right, is also a useful distraction, a diversion tactic which allows the richer half of the population to appear caring with little real threat to the economic ascendancy inheritance has granted them. We could even call this 'di...

Britain is a historically individualistic country. Good. individualistic <--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->collectivist                                                                               Britain                         world in general Britain is an individualistic country today. Not so good. individualistic <--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->collectivist                                    Britain                        world in genera...

Supreme Legislatures or Le gislation by court The Supreme Court of the United States has a particular dangerous habit from time to time, which is to act as the supreme legislature, and it is one that is a danger in any country where a court has the authority to dictate to governments and legislatures through judicial review. I could give two examples. Firstly, it has legislated that abortion is a right in the US constitution, and secondly, it has legislated that same-sex marriage is a right in the US constitution. Neither issue, of course, is mentioned in the US constitution, and it cannot be reasonably argued that the individuals who wrote the constitutional clauses cited — and who presumably understood fully the English language they were writing in — meant anything of the kind. Judging from opinion polls, it is likely every state would have legislated in favour of same-sex marriage anyway, while abortion laws would probably differ greatly from state to state. This is no...

A brief categorisation of relative poverty  This being in response to the ideas that there will always be poverty, in the sense that it is relative, and that in reality the relatively poor are not actually poor, objectively speaking. Relative poverty, in the ordinary sense, derived from differing incomes or costs - inevitable and in some sense desirable, in that it is the only alternative to total equality of outcome. (NB: Inheritance, being unearned, is not justified by this logic.) Competitive poverty - The difficulties created by experiencing "relative" poverty in an economy where others can dominate your life choices and possibilities by being richer. Accommodation and education are good examples of areas where this can occur. Transport is a partial example. In many countries, healthcare could be added as another example. Insertional poverty - It depends on your view of human nature I suppose, but I think it very reasonable to include social in...

Brief thoughts. They may or may not become longer one day... Education Knowledge of pollination, cell nuclei, sound waves, atomic structure, ionic compounds, transition metals, auxin and phototropism is useful for humanity as a whole and perhaps fascinating, but education takes place in limited time and the overwhelming majority of children will never use or need to know these things as they go through life.  The same could be said for glaciers and oxbow lakes. French or Spanish verb forms are not useful to the majority of children that will never speak the language competently anyway. On the other hand, every child without exception will need to live among other human beings, and the overwhelming majority will be involved in the events that define the direction in which millions will move, that is to say, elections (whether voting or choosing not to). If the school system is to produce humans to live among humans, then philosophy, religion, po...

Before I even get going: a) It is often not even clear what exactly is being discussed when people talk about happiness In this case, I am really talking about long-term happiness when asked to view one's current life-situation as a whole. b) I have found sources that ask people about their happiness do not seem to come up with the same results, e.g. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11362246/Just-three-in-10-people-feel-happy-with-their-lives.html versus https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/15/british-people-nearly-twice-happy-think/ I should really do more research on all this if I get time, but anyway... I am not sure that maximising average happiness is a very good aim, for various reasons: 1) Cultural and social factors are pretty big in all this. For example... As far as I can seen, there is a strong tendency for French people to consistently  express  themselves less satisfied while  appearing to   demonstrate  ...

It takes five years to be eligible to become a British citizen - of which over a year (450 days to be precise) can have been spent outside Britain. Even under the best of circumstances, it is not obvious that this makes you British. Living in London, even less so. As an immigrant, you will likely live among immigrants. The British citizens you have close contact with will often be other immigrants who have acquired British citizenship by "naturalization" living among fellow immigrants. The logic of naturalization is presumably that you acquire to some extent the culture of those you live among. By this logic, is it more likely in London that a foreigner will be naturalized British, or that an Englishman will be naturalized as a foreigner? Perhaps the most important behaviour in a democracy is one's attitude to democracy and to the democracy. As far as the democracy is concerned, London's attitude is much the opposite of England's: the London idea is that the...