American Affairs

24/09/2024

What do we talk about when we talk about the frontier? For more than a century, Americans haven’t been able to avoid using that term to describe our society’s past, present, and future. It may be time to find a better one.

What do we talk about when we talk about the frontier? For more than a century, Americans haven’t been able to avoid using that term to describe our society’s past, present, and future. It may be time to find a better one. A new concep­tual frame is needed to examine the political, social, and ...

23/09/2024

Warren Buffett, who limits buybacks of Berkshire stock to when the price is low enough, has never expressed displeasure at Apple for repurchasing more than one-third of a trillion dollars of stock in the last six years with seemingly no valuation criteria.
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/08/we-were-the-balance-looking-back-on-low-interest-rates/

19/09/2024

Amid worsening geopolitics and internal political divides, building a healthier relationship between tech entrepreneurs and the institu­tions of a free society would benefit both the entrepreneurs and their opponents. There isn’t any exit door.

It’s a rare buccaneer who runs a book club. But in October 2012, the chief administrator of the Silk Road drug market, under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was on the dark web assigning readings from the anarchist libertarian philosophy of Murray Rothbard. Roth­bard had argued that mar...

18/09/2024

Liberalism today finds itself in the paradoxical place of upholding an elite whose claim to preeminence lies in part in its being more egalitarian than those below them in the class structure. In this, it is not unlike its forebears from 2 centuries prior.

Today, many self-described liberals in the professions—including in my world of academic political philosophy—inhabit what the histo­rian Darrin M. Mc­Mahon calls “a kind of egalitarian plateau,” convinced that the orienting value of their lives is equality. Yet liberalism’s relationship...

17/09/2024

Whether dealing with China or the West, developing countries will not succeed by positioning themselves as the purest victims in some “oppression Olympics.” Instead, they need to look at how to turn colonial legacies into a permanent advantage.

In this era of heightened racial and ethnic tension, few academic concepts have enjoyed as much success as “settler colonialism.” This approach has been used to explain conflicts taking place in Israel-Palestine, Australia, Russia-Ukraine, Latin America, and the African continent, as well as wit...

16/09/2024

Part of what is remarkable about “modernity” is that it has already lasted so long—not least, perhaps, through the stabilizing power of recurring periods of what we might call renormativization, in which social order is temporarily reasserted.

Byung-Chul Han is one of most popular figures in contemporary German philosophy. More a derivative than an original thinker, he applies ideas of Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, etc., to such facets of modern life as professional burnout, dating apps, and social media. His work most...

12/09/2024

As a cultural subject in, and by extension of, hypermodern America, you cannot believe in a return to nature or the imaginative power of the poet. The only way you’ll approach the infinite is through the secularized infinity of the scroll.

As a cultural subject in, and by extension of, hypermodern America, you cannot believe in Rousseau’s return to nature, or Winckelmann’s return to the ancients, or the late Romantic insistence on the imaginative power of the poet. The closest you’ll get to the sacred is liking pictures of cathe...

11/09/2024

Because progressives control so much of the public education infrastructure, conservatives—and their centrist allies—must look beyond passing a handful of libertarian-influenced policies and focus on rebuilding the institutions of public education.

Early in my teaching career, I sat in a meeting at my public school district; projected up front was a colorful graphic with the word “equity” placed at the very center. It was the conceptual cornerstone and guide star of this governmental entity—justifying and affecting every one of its polic...

08/09/2024

Once united behind principles related to outputs of a well-managed grid—such as access, reliability & affordability—America’s political parties have lately arrayed behind supposedly rival technologies that are inputs to the grid & their patronage networks.

05/09/2024

The world is about to need more energy. A lot more. In the US, new data centers and manufacturing activity mean the era of flat energy demand is over. America can meet this challenge, but the next administration must prioritize energy deployment.

04/09/2024

Addressing America’s industrial policy needs will require rethinking how we pursue policy goals. The use of tax credits has made the administration of industrial policy smoother, but it has also made it difficult to know what the policy is accomplishing.

Since late 2021, the Biden administration has set aside more than $1.6 trillion in infrastructure spending. Almost three years later, it’s very hard to know where most of that money has gone. The Biden administration’s infrastructure laws are built upon two distinct and competing philosophies of...

26/08/2024

Israel's Advanced Manufacturing Institute has vastly exceeded expectations. Manufacturers working with AMI experienced a 22% increase in labor productivity—twice the baseline rate—and averaged 16% growth in revenue—more than 5x the typical rate.

The AMI has been operating since 2020 and has exceeded our expectations in terms of reach and impact. Demand far outpaced our initial projections, as more than 350 manufacturers signed on in the first three years. Our original goal was for two hundred enterprises within four years. Manufacturers who...

26/08/2024

What led to the IDF’s “cult of technology”—a tendency to view the implementation of technological tools as an end in itself, at the expense of larger strategic purposes—and the flaws of this mentality that were so catastrophically exposed on October 7?

Given Israel’s prominence as a developer and exporter of weapons and military technologies, the collapse of its defense systems on October 7, 2023, has raised concerns among security services in Europe and the United States. Central to this discussion is whether the operational success of Hamas’...

22/08/2024

We are living in the aftermath of a Chinese trade war victory—China's economy itself a dark reflection of our own financial system. We must choose between maintaining this corrosive order or making painful yet necessary policy adjustments.

22/08/2024

CCP elites appear to believe that, across a range of metrics, China is gaining ground in its bid to replace the US as global hegemon. Americans might, therefore, at least consider the possibility that the PRC is outcompeting the United States.

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elites appear to believe that, across a range of metrics, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is gaining ground in its bid to replace the United States as global hegemon. Americans might, therefore, at least consider the possibility that the PRC is outcompeting the U...

20/08/2024

Fall 24 issue now online:
-Is China winning?
-The IDF's cult of technology
-Rebooting US industry
-Electricity in South Africa (& the US)
-Education reform
-Liberalism and equality
-Political thought in Silicon Valley
-America as filibuster society
& more

18/06/2024

Faced with American hostility, Chinese leaders see manufacturing as their only way out. In this context, batteries & EVs are just weapons in a war that is not so much between China & America as it is between competing visions of what China is or could be.

It is difficult for Chinese to idealize the United States anymore, perhaps particularly for those Chinese who spend time there or are fluent in English. And yet, China is not anywhere close to “finished,” and so the map is being redrawn in the middle of a voyage. Today, China’s society is like...

17/06/2024

The West failed to understand the internal politics of the Russian Federation. The current state of affairs might have been avoided. Instead, Putin was able to bridge the internal Russian political divide before the West realized it even existed...

For centuries, the internal workings of successive Russian states have been a mystery to the West. The Russian Empire was seen as a strange place, an “other.” The Soviet Union was so opaque that Ameri­can intelligence agencies were reduced to analyzing who was standing next to whom in photos to...