Wisdom in fragments

Banning a market in which some people nevertheless want to participate may be the first step in designing the illegal black market that will emerge.

It's quite hard to effectively ban something in Europe that's available legally in California. Often bans that are porous put up barriers that primarily affect the poor more than the rich.

We wouldn't like there to be any heroin in society, but there's plenty of heroin. So our discussion can't just concern our moral feelings about drug addiction. It has to involve our consequential feelings about prisons, overdose deaths, and the effect on communities. You can't escape consequences when you talk about the world.

A repugnant transaction has fans as well as foes. When I call something repugnant, I'm not saying I oppose it, or that you should -- only that it has opponents who raise objections primarily on moral grounds.

There are plenty of reasonable, moderate, reformist, liberal leaders who just don’t quite know what to do. Our book ideally will help them make that choice. That is my hope.

Not only are incomes being lost — a sense of community, a sense of pride, a sense of belonging has also been lost. Those things clearly matter for human wellbeing. We’re just not very good at measuring them.

It is the job of the prime minister or the president to persuade people that we are all in it together, and that if you fall behind, we will lend you a hand.

We have the technological means to deal with climate change. We have the technological means to deal with pandemics. This is not a technical problem. It is mostly a political problem. If we get our politics under control, the rest is fun and games.

Economic growth is a means. The goal must be something else. It must be shared prosperity. It must be happier lives. It must be communities in which we all feel that we belong. It must be mutual respect. Those are ends.

One interesting way to break the sunk cost is to think about the cost of staying to other people. You might be willing to absorb the abuse yourself — but are you willing to put your family through the effects of your staying?

They tend to have quite a power of persuasion and dominance in person. That gets diminished when they are reduced to words on a page.

It’s more like a you problem than a them problem. You have a problem with their behaviour, but they don’t have the same level of empathy or concern for others. So why would they care about it?

That stress doesn’t just stay in the office. We get in our car, we get on the subway, we bring it home with us. If you have a high-psychopathy boss, research shows you actually have more conflict at home too.

They are not held back by care, compassion, concern, or remorse. They are very willing to lie to get what they want.

No matter how poor you are, you don’t really have to wear rags anymore. Why? Because technology automated the production of t-shirts.

It’s this weird dichotomy of superintelligence and super stupidity, sort of mixed in one scenario.