joshuago’s politics Bookmarks

Paul Romer is trying to help the poorest countries grow rich—by convincing them to establish foreign-run “charter cities” within their borders. Romer’s idea is unconventional, even neo-colonial—the best analogy is Britain’s historic lease of Hong Kong.

For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women?

The strange phenomenon that's destroying Latin America.

In the public sector, the "consumer" often has little choice... so-called "market discipline" is a lot more diffuse when you have a former-schoolteacher-or-real-estate-broker-turned city councilman whose job it is to disburse a multi-million-dollar street-paving contract. And neither the schoolteacher nor the real-estate broker has any clue how to write or evaluate a road-paving contract.

This is the perverse logic of meritocracy. Once a system grows sufficiently complex, it doesn’t matter how badly our best and brightest foul things up. Every crisis increases their authority, because they seem to be the only ones who understand the system well enough to fix it.

Immigration lawyers and Department of Homeland Security officials say that many thousands of people in the military have spouses or close relatives who are illegal immigrants. Many of those service members have fought to gain legal status for their family members — only to hit a legal dead end created in 1996, when Congress last made major revisions to the immigration laws.

After years of trying to broaden the appeal of Reader’s Digest, the publishers are pushing it in a decidedly conservative direction.

A government made up of rotating amateurs cannot maintain the steadiness and continuity that our expansive Republic requires.

It was once the “land of a thousand cities” and home to some of the world’s most renowned scientists, poets, and philosophers. Today it is seen mostly as a harsh backwater. To imagine Central Asia’s future, we must journey into its remarkable past.

The very efficiency of the VAT means that it throws off huge amounts of revenue that politicians eagerly spend. The VAT thus becomes an engine of even greater public spending.