I recevied the following email from one of my best friends a couple of months ago:
Kind of out of left field, but I was thinking the other day that the end of the cold war might be partially related to the dramatic increase in inequality. There are a bunch of articles about how the super-elite in New York have more in common with their counterparts in Paris and Moscow than their own countrymen.
There are a lot of things you can do if you control a corporation that might be good for your personal wealth and ROE in the short-term, but bad for the nation state in the long-term. If there is a credible threat of war with other states you are unlikely to pursue these avenues, such as essentially giving away production secrets and skills to China. But if that threat is gone, do you really care about your actual country anymore? It would also explain why super-right anti-government spending types often want the US not just to maintain a large military for defense, but continue pursuing world policing type actions. Does any of this make any sense? You actually know stuff about history, I just read about math these days.
I met the friend who sent this to me when we were both 18, living in the honors dorm at our alma matter. The school had decided to stick all of it's National Merit Scholars in the same dorm, and to put most of the out-of-state scholarship men on the same ground floor. The results were basically what you would expect, but probably with more girls.
The idea behind this blog is to recapture some of the intensity, jocularity and wide-eyed-ness of conversations that we had when we were 18–22. For the most parts those conversations were gobbledygook; uninformed wishful thinking, fueled by caffiene and beer. But they also were curious and hopeful, something that is sorely lacking in most contemporary debates about things that matter.
I've enlisted some of my friends from back then, and some new friends to help keep the conversation lively.
But don't expect twitter sized conversations or fun facts–this blog will not be SEO optimized nor will it follow anyone's 5 tips for increasing blog traffic. If you do happen to stumble on it expect to find conversations between intelligent people actually attempting to understand one another–the kind of conversation you had when you were up at 3 AM on a Wednesday morning in your door room. Hopefully ten years later our conversations will be tempered with a little wisdom, lots more (expensive) education and some prudent editing.
I'm LMJK, I'll be the curator. I'll try to respond to comments. I'll also try to post links of interest and other stuff to make this place more useful and enjoyable.
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