Letters Remain

Category: politics

  • Prosperity, Freedom, Fertility

    When it comes to reproduction, are individuals who strive only for personal gain—as Adam Smith stated in The Wealth of Nations—”led by an invisible hand […] to promote the public interest”? In The Tragedy of the Commons, ecologist Garrett Hardin suggested not and called for further government intervention to help control rising populations. Recent studies,…

  • Rethinking Prison Design

    Justice Center Leoben is a fantastically-designed prison in Austria that can’t be ignored. Designed by architect Joseph Hohensinn, views on the prison are varied and emphatic. The New York Times takes a tour of the prison, offering some novel thoughts on imprisonment and rehabilitation. Before the prison opened, late in 2004, [Joseph Hohensinn] had a…

  • Iran Political System Infographic

    Nicolas Rapp—an Art Director for the Associated Press—has produced a timely and simple infographic depicting Iran’s “complex and unusual political system”. Iran’s political system combines elements of democracy and religion. Institutions controlled by the Supreme Leader [elected by the Assembly of Experts] are balanced by an elected president and parliament. Wikipedia’s Politics of Iran article (and…

  • Education and Surveillance

    After a school here in the UK installed a CCTV system in a classroom used for the teaching of an A-level politics class the students revolted; walking out only to return once they were reassured that the monitoring system was inactive and to be used solely as a teaching aid. The students’ plight was eventually…

  • The Economist Daily Chart

    The Daily Chart from The Economist is one of those links where it’s been around so long and is so great that you feel everyone must know about it already. Visualising data from a diverse range of topics, The Daily Charts are almost always impeccably executed and surprising. The RSS feed for the feature is…

  • Can Technology Solve Our Climate Problems?

    After reading Cambridge physicist David MacKay’s much lauded Sustainable Energy (free download available), the FT Economist Tim Harford worries that we are “too complacent about technological fixes for the twin problems of climate change and finite oil and gas reserves”. Harford suggests that if we contemplate the idea that technological progress may not solve these…

  • Top Ten Foreign Affairs Articles

    After compiling a few ‘top ten’ lists of classic foreign affairs books, Stephen Walt—professor of international affairs at Harvard University—compiles a more digestible version: the top ten articles in the field of international relations. The ten articles Walt recommends are below, but click through to the original to see his reasoning behind each choice and…

  • Observations on London and Paris

    Returning from a trip to Europe, Nate Silver—proprietor of the political analysis website FiveThirtyEight—has promptly compiled a list of observations on London and Paris from an American point of view. As an ‘insider’ it appears that I’ve take a lot of these gradual changes for granted, not really making any conclusions. London, and the United…

  • Ending Foreign Aid to Africa

    Foreign aid to Africa has turned the continent into a ‘giant welfare state’ and is one of the direct causes for the rise in poverty rates from 11% to 66% in recent times. This is according to African author and economist Dambisa Moyo as she adds her voice to the growing group of learned economists…

  • Behavioural Economics and Financial Policies

    The news that Obama had some of the leading behaviourists advising his campaign comes as no surprise to me, however I likely underestimated how much they influenced both the campaign and the voters. Time takes a look at this “behavioural dream team” and discusses how the Obama administration is using behavioural economics to guide its…