Protests in Iran: Self in Society Roundup 9
Protests in Iran: Self in Society Roundup 9
Notes on the Iranian protests, progress, Marx for cats, and more.
The Brave Women of Iran
Imagine government agents murdering someone over their choice of clothing. Barbaric! That is the sort of theocratic oppression the people, and especially the women, of Iran face. Iran’s so-called “morality police”—a perversion of language if ever there was one—murdered 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for breaking the hijab rules (see also the Atlantic’s piece). Horrific. Below are some examples pulled from Twitter of women protesting such abuse.
Quick Takes
Progress: Noah Smith reviews Brad DeLong’s book Slouching Towards Utopia. A few key lines: “Only after 1870 did technological progress accelerate to the point where it managed to outstrip human population growth.” “He attributes this acceleration to three key innovations: the industrial research lab, the modern corporation, and steamship-driven globalization.” “DeLong’s ‘long 20th century’ saw the development of various ideologies, including liberal democracy, free-market libertarianism, communism and fascism.”
Marx for Cats: “The history of Western capitalism can be told through the cat and that doing so reveals a heretofore unrecognized animality at the heart of Marx’s critique and of Western Marxist critique.”—Leigh Claire La Berge (Apparently this is not parody. Via Jason Brennan.)
Housing: U.S. governments should re-legalize “small, no-frills homes that would give a family new to the country or a young couple with student debt a foothold to build equity.”—New York Times (my editorial remark)
Systemic Racism: “If you’re going to use ‘racism’ to refer to policies that in fact harm blacks, regardless of their intent, then you’re going to have to say that a lot of racism consists of attempts to help blacks.”—Michael Huemer, pointing to the drug war
Ayn Rand: After 22 years of publication, the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies is coming to a close, announced lead editor Chris Matthew Sciabarra.
More Ayn Rand: Objectivists continue to very publicly fight over Rand’s legacy. If you like you can read a piece by Onkar Ghate and Harry Binswanger and a reply by Carl Barney. Or you could just ignore all that!
Optimism: Objectivist Yaron Brook remains optimistic about the future.
Education Wars: Sam Weaver and Onkar Ghate some helpful things to say on the political wars over education. The focus by “both sides” (progressives and conservatives) seems to be on indoctrination, not education, they suggest.
Transgender: “A federal appeals court . . . said Arkansas can’t enforce its ban on transgender children receiving gender-affirming medical care.”—AP
Guns: “Rates of Black lynching decreased with greater Black firearm access.”—Makowsky and Warren, ht Alex Tabarrok
Libertarianism: Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi have a book on libertarianism, The Individualists, coming out next year. It looks like it will be excellent.
Nuclear War: Stanislav Petrov came as close as anyone has to “saving the world,” on September 26, 1983.