Inequality, then, is not just unattractive in itself; it clearly corresponds to pathological social problems that we cannot hope to address unless we attend to their underlying cause. There is a reaso...
In the years following 1945 it seemed to most intelligent observers as though the Austrians had made a simple category error. Like so many of their fellow refugees, they had assumed that the condition...
In a certain sense the country of ‘Russia’ as such did not exist: it had for centuries been an empire, whether in fact or in aspiration. Spread across eleven time zones and encompassing dozens of diff...
Governments, in short, now increasingly farm out their responsibilities to private firms
George Kennan, the American diplomat, described the scene in his memoirs: ‘The disaster that befell this area with the entry of the Soviet forces has no parallel in modern European experience. There w...
We have smuggled in a misleadingly ‘ethical’ vocabulary to bolster our economic arguments,
Somewhat different. Many European countries have long practiced something resembling social democracy: but they have forgotten how to preach it. Social democrats today are defensive and apologetic. Cr...
Life closely track your income: residents of wealthy districts can expect to live longer and better.
In the arena of economic policy, the citizens of today’s democracies have learned altogether too much modesty. We have been advised that these are matters for experts: that economics and its policy im...
Dějiny nacismu – a vůbec všech forem totalitarismu – nelze plně pochopit, pokud je omezíme na vyprávění o zlých lidech, kteří se vědomě a záměrně dopouštějí zločinů s cílem páchat zlo
Why do we experience such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society? Why is it beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage? Are we doomed indefinitely...
What, then, should we have learned from 1989? Perhaps, above all, that nothing is either necessary or inevitable.
Unsurprisingly, planning was most admired and advocated at the political extremes.
The loss of social purpose articulated through public services actually increases the unrestrained powers of the over-mighty state.
The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despite, or, at least, to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the c...
The democratic failure transcends national boundaries. The embarrassing fiasco of the Copenhagen climate conference of December 2009 is already translating into cynicism and despair among young people...
The chief shortcoming of the old public services was the restrictive regulations and facilities—one-size-fits-all—with
Selfishness is uncomfortable even for the selfish. Hence the rise of gated communities: the privileged don't like to be reminded of their privileges - if these carry morally dubious connotations.
Odjet do Španělska bojovat za republiku bylo nesmírně lákavé. Byl to způsob, jak se stát antifašistou, v atraktivním prostředí se zapojit do společnosti čelící velmi prostým dilematům.
Namísto abychom veřejně přiznali potřebu určitého společenského vybavení (muzeí, sportovišť, veřejné dopravy), vyhýbáme se nepopulárnímu danění tím, že podobné výdaje kryjeme z loterií – jichž se v di...