French protests run on real energy and real demands this time, but there is no government left that answers them – so the prisoners only rattle the bars for better conditions, and every benefit won pays for the next crackdown.
Argues that politicians are the most dangerous people in ordinary life because power corrupts and elections are too slow to constrain them, so systems should be designed around distrust, limits, liability, and constant oversight rather than trusting better leaders.
The article argues that appeals to humanity are rhetorical tricks that hide who is included and excluded, and that genuine care must be specified for each individual rather than claimed for an abstract whole.
The article argues that if the state treats citizens as too incompetent to vote without tests, the legitimacy of elected governments collapses into either paternalism or a broken democracy.
Argues Zoomers are not lazy: older generations upheld a failing status quo, so the young should reject guilt, build personal capital, and demand structural change instead of harder work.
Claims Europeans wrongly equate democratic elections with trustworthy government, and should adopt the Russians’ lifelong skepticism, treating rulers as hired managers limited to basic services rather than society architects.
Argues libertarian left is structurally impossible, since left economics requires state coercion that breeds bureaucracy, leaving only the libertarian right able to protect liberty through a free market.
UBI is a terrible idea unless it is absolutely unconditional – same sum for every citizen with no behavioral conditions – because the moment survival money depends on behavior it becomes a universal control mechanism. Here I show that universal and unconditional – would be very hard in practice.