John C. Wright's Blog, page 190

Material Prosperity Breeds Civility and Law? Or Visa Versa?

Part of an ongoing conversation: 

"What I did say though, was that man's social conditions change and evolve into at least better material circumstances due to the increasing demands of maintaining a rising capital base and the needs of a growing diversification of labor network."

This is exactly where we disagree. I let my sense of humor escape its kennel, and so I spoke sarcastically when I should have spoken soberly. Forgive me, let us put my glib comment to one side, and actually address th...

ARRRGH! Reality stold my fictional idea!

What is the point, I ask you, of making up a new science fictional idea, such as that the whole sidereal universe is merely a singularity or wormhole defect in a larger universe (hidden from our view by the event horizon known as the lightspeed boundary that seems to be 15 billion lightyears from us, and retreated at the speed of the Hubble Expansion) --- if some real scientists is just going to come along and suggest, using real math and real observations, what you meant merely to be a wild ...

A Theory on the Causation of Moral Social Advancement

Part of an ongoing conversation:

"Basically, the state of mankind is advanced by the natural inclination of people to combine, trade, and cooperate to achieve greater and more difficult ends than they would be able to achieve separately... The failure or retardation of moral social advancement, therefore, can be attributed to an inability to perceive potential benefits."

A peculiar and droll theory, but I know of no evidence to support it. The theory I hold has the advantage of being supported...

A Summary of Coptic Christian History

I was looking up the Copts, since I planned to have them in one chapter in my next science fiction novel.

Let me quote from Fr. Adrian Fortescue, a scholar of remarkable accomplishment, who wrote one of the seminal histories of the Eastern Churches:

The fourteen centuries of Coptic history are one long story of persecution. From the time the Egyptian Monophysites organized their Church after the Council of Chalcedon (452) till the English took over Egypt in 1882 they have been cruelly...

H.G. Wells and Visions of Monsters and Cannibals

I am fascinated and bemused by this comment from G.K. Chesterton on the scientific romances of H.G. Wells, whom all loyal sons of the goddess scientifiction revere as the founder of our little walled city in the wilderness of literature:

The world did have new visions, if they were visions of monsters in the moon and Martians striding about like spiders as tall as the sky, and the workmen and capitalists becoming two separate species, so that one could devour the other as gaily and greedily a...

No questioning, no opposition, no investigation, no refutation

An article from Glen Greenwald of Salon: 

Confirmed: Obama authorizes assassination of U.S. citizen

In late January, I wrote about the Obama administration's "presidential assassination program," whereby American citizens are targeted for killings far away from any battlefield, based exclusively on unchecked accusations by the Executive Branch that they're involved in Terrorism.  At the time, The Washington Post's Dana Priest had noted deep in a long article that Obama had continued Bush's...

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

It is my sincere hope that I shall not lose that reputation as a philistine of low tastes I have so exquisitely cultivated over the years. Nonetheless, even at the risk of being brought into mockery of those whose opinions I cherish above my own, I must speak.

This is a review of four baffling short stories that promise to delight anyone whom they do not repel. It is an author whom I approach with much trepidation, since, at first glance, he seems to embody that type of experimental...

The Best Introduction to the Mountains

For your reading pleasure, allow me to post a link to an essay by the giant Gene Wolfe on the giant J.R.R. Tolkien. This is the second best essay on Tolkien I have ever read.

(The best was by the giantess Ursula K. Leguin, whose title my memory, cluttered with mathoms, has misplaced, but I recall the gist of the final line, and I recall the stinging tear of joy it brought to my eye: Elenor and Nembrithel no longer grow in Galadriel's enchanted wood, but linger as the names of the happy hobbit...

The Role of the State in the Creation of Wealth

Part of an ongoing discussion:

"Does government always destroy wealth?"

From the point of view of an economist, there are four types of goods.

"Free Goods" are things like air, or the sight of the beautiful moon, which need not and cannot be economized because they are not scarce enough. Unless you are planning to scuba dive, air is free. Your breathing the air does not deprive anyone else from breathing. Any good that is not a free good is scarce.

"Goods" refers to scarce goods that can be tra...

Economists and Antieconomists

Part of an ongoing discussion:

A reader comments: “I believe that most socialists strongly believe the world would be a better place if everyone believed and acted as they do and they may well be right. The problem is that everyone doesn't believe and act as they do but their system requires such a thing for it to succeed so they turn to government to enforce the act part if not the believe part. In the end, any system that starts with, "If only everyone would do X..." is doomed to failure.”

H...