Agencies of Scale

By JohnR |

When Augustine came to Rome from his home in North Africa just before 400 A.D., he was coming to the cultural centre of that part of the world, rather as one trying to “make it” might travel now from a small mid-western town to New York City. But whereas New York has been a major […]

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The Law of Laws

By JohnR |

There are many essential aspects of human life that are inherently non-individual, that is, aspects of life that individuals depend upon but that no individual alone could ever define, create or maintain.  Language is one of most obvious examples of this: minimally, language must be something adopted and developed by at least two people acting […]

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Calculating Your Earnings

By JohnR |

We often have a sense of pride in a product that we have made, and the effort we put into forming the thing gives us a sense of ownership. After years of practice with the soccer ball and the playing field, I feel on the “inside” of soccer, I feel that soccer is “my thing.”  […]

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The Laws of Inheritance

By JohnR |

“Did you earn it or inherit it?”  This is the question that Socrates asks the shield-manufacturer Cephalus at the beginning of Plato’s Republic.  Socrates asks this question about Cephalus’s wealth, noting that people who inherit wealth from another tend be less careful about its use than do people who have earned it themselves. Already this […]

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