Author: admin
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Imagined Communities
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adminMost human beings will assume that they are connected to the larger whole. In other words, they will bear with them the “imagination,” that they belong to a larger tribe, or, group of people, even if they don’t know all their neighbors, friends, and communities. Yet, this imagination is enough…
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Seeing Like A State
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adminHuman civilizations have evolved from hunter-gatherers to states. The latter is described by Mancur Olson as “stationary bandits.” They exist purely to extract and collect taxes; often through coercion if need be. Ontologically, state or nation-state, has been a vehicle of violence. But state also tend to latch on to…
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The Better Angels Of Our Future
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adminDueling and slavery, according to John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University, have disappeared. Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard University, isn’t making the same argument. Rather, he argues that based on previous historical epochs, human beings have actually become more and more peaceful and civil; even if…
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In Defense Of A Liberal Education
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adminLiberal arts, as opposed to the hard sciences, are often regarded as a weak discipline. The yield from a liberal arts degree is considerably less, that is if everything is measured in terms of pay and perks. But, as Fareed Zakaria affirmed, liberal arts can train one on a whole…
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Beyond the University – Why Liberal Education Matters
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adminUniversities, at least in the medieval ages, began as guilds and centers of theocratic debates. It was a place where experts and specialists gathered to debate and exchange ideas. But over the course of the last two centuries, universities have become centers of research too, often breaking new frontiers of…
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What Is Global History?
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adminSebastian Unger, a German historian, is a persuasive writer. He argues that history is at best a manufactured discipline. It focuses exclusively on what has already been made apparent. The history of a country, for example, is told from the birth of the state. To the degree one needs to…
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Civilization: The West and The Rest
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adminWestern civilization is a social construct. It is not there writ large; as hidden underneath any civilization is a multitude of cultures, sub-cultures; and even a Bohemian way of life, that is anathema to what civilization is all about: order, discipline, functionality, and resilience, that can be passed down from…
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And The Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)
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adminArgentina is considered an economic basket case due to its default on its international loans, especially to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). While the blame is often squarely put on the borrower, in the context of international political economy, the fault actually lies on both ends. It is not Argentina…
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Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
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admin“Why Nations Fail,” follows a simple logic and narrative: that it is the awful politics of a country that sends it careening into destruction. But, it is also a bewildering revelation: If the diagnosis is so simple, why do nations continue to engage in perpetual bickering that invariably lead to…
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The ASEAN Economic Community: A Work In Progress
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adminBy the accounts of the IMF and the World Bank, Southeast Asia will have a growth rate twice that of the member states of OECD. This trend is expected to last well beyond 2020, extending all the way into 2050. This book isn’t all these targets. But it shows why…