New paper in Science: A single mutation in bovine influenza H5N1 hemagglutinin switches specificity to human receptors.
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More capital doesn’t flow towards high-leverage ideas in Europe because the price of failure is too high.
Coste estimates that, for a large enterprise, doing a significant restructuring in the US costs a company roughly two to four months of pay per worker. In France, that cost averages around 24 months of pay. In Germany, 30 months. In total, Coste and Coatanlem estimate restructuring costs are approximately ten times greater in Western Europe than in the United States…
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According to reports, the Trump administration will issue over 200 executive orders today, including orders to declare a national emergency at the border; end all DEI programs across the federal government; a withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord; and a return-to-office directive for federal workers.
According to reports, the Trump administration will issue over 200 executive orders today, including orders to declare a national emergency at the border; end all DEI programs across the federal government; a withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord; and a return-to-office directive for federal workers.
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On the other hand, imagine how a politician who issues 'pre-emptive' pardons thinks.
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James Burnham
Inauguration Day, a day to contemplate the old and the new.
The recent Biden administration should bring to mind James Burnham.
James Burnham was a political scientist, philosopher, and one of the most astute observers of twentieth-century American politics. He was a full-bore communist revolutionary activist and a personal friend of Leon Trotsky in the 1920s and ’30s. Then he broke from communism in the ’40s and went hard to the right. He helped found the National Review with William F. Buckley.
He wrote two books in the 1940s while the big three-way battle between communism, fascism, and liberalism was trying to destroy the world. One is called The Managerial Revolution. It says, that while these movements have real differences, they have something in common; he called it “managerialism,” which is the establishment of an expert class. These expert technocrats are assumed to be able to steer society in healthy and beneficial ways, and then often lead you inadvertantly in terrible directions.
He wrote another book called The Machiavellians which looks at politics structurally rather than ideologically. One of the basic ideas is what he calls the “iron law of oligarchy” which says: Democracy is never actually real. There’s no true system of democracy because you always end up with a small minority in charge of a large majority in basically every society in human history. The reason is that small elites can organize and large majorities cannot--a simple and profound observation. (Madison would be thrilled.)
It doesn’t matter what you think democracy should be. Any form of democracy is going to have an elite class that is going to be running things. (Madison would not be thrilled.) And that elite class is either going to be good and beneficial and have the best interests of the population in mind, or it’s not. (Whether or not those aspirations are achievable is a different, profound question.) But to pretend that they’re voted in and out, that the voters are in charge, is just a myth.
The recent Biden administration should bring to mind James Burnham.
James Burnham was a political scientist, philosopher, and one of the most astute observers of twentieth-century American politics. He was a full-bore communist revolutionary activist and a personal friend of Leon Trotsky in the 1920s and ’30s. Then he broke from communism in the ’40s and went hard to the right. He helped found the National Review with William F. Buckley.
He wrote two books in the 1940s while the big three-way battle between communism, fascism, and liberalism was trying to destroy the world. One is called The Managerial Revolution. It says, that while these movements have real differences, they have something in common; he called it “managerialism,” which is the establishment of an expert class. These expert technocrats are assumed to be able to steer society in healthy and beneficial ways, and then often lead you inadvertantly in terrible directions.
He wrote another book called The Machiavellians which looks at politics structurally rather than ideologically. One of the basic ideas is what he calls the “iron law of oligarchy” which says: Democracy is never actually real. There’s no true system of democracy because you always end up with a small minority in charge of a large majority in basically every society in human history. The reason is that small elites can organize and large majorities cannot--a simple and profound observation. (Madison would be thrilled.)
It doesn’t matter what you think democracy should be. Any form of democracy is going to have an elite class that is going to be running things. (Madison would not be thrilled.) And that elite class is either going to be good and beneficial and have the best interests of the population in mind, or it’s not. (Whether or not those aspirations are achievable is a different, profound question.) But to pretend that they’re voted in and out, that the voters are in charge, is just a myth.
We poor Americans have no idea what the new administration will bring, what wars started, what youth sacrificed, what economic dreams maimed. But we can all agree that it couldn't be much worse than the one that is stumbling off into the dusk.
Hopefully, Biden and his cabel will be put behind us. But Burnham should never be forgotten.
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