Quartzy: The global dominance of white people is thanks to the potato

This phenomenon wasn’t confined to Ireland. As The Wealth of Nations went to press, across Europe, the potato was upending the continent’s deep demographic and societal decline. Over the next couple centuries, that reversal turned into a revival. As the late historian William H. McNeill argues, the surge in European population made possible by the potato “permitted a handful of European nations to assert domination over most of the world between 1750 and 1950.” [...]

In short, by the 1600s, the continent was already plunged deep into demographic decline. “Europe could not, with the agriculture it possessed, feed her lower classes and also support the high-flown schemes of her upper classes,” writes eminent historian Alfred Crosby in Germs, Seeds and Animals. Precedent suggests that this should have spelled long-term doom for European civilization. [...]

It’s probably no coincidence that the man who once said “an army travels on its stomach” was Europe’s first head-of-state tater-booster. So effective was the crop that Frederick the Great of Prussia ordered his government to distribute free seed potatoes and planting instructions throughout his kingdom. That proved smart: Prussian peasants survived French, Austrian, and Russian invasions in unprecedented numbers. [...]

With Europe’s food supply suddenly more abundant, nutritious, and secure, peasants lived longer and had bigger families. The population leapt from 126 million in 1750 to 300 million by 1900 (and that’s not counting mass emigration). When the population grew bigger than the number needed to toil in the fields, this time peasants didn’t die of mass starvation. They simply moved to the cities. The potato accounts for around a quarter of the population growth and as much as a third of increased urbanization between 1700 and 1900, according to an earlier paper (pdf) by Qian and Nunn.

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Jacobin Magazine: More Free Time — for Everyone

Currently, one in five jobs in Europe are part-time. The phenomenon is most pronounced in the Netherlands, where over three in four working women and one in four working men hold a part-time job. So the thirty-hour workweek is a reality in this country — but again, only on average.

The problem is that the growth of part-time jobs across Europe risks reinforcing existing economic and gender inequalities rather than fighting them. Figures show that the “choice” of part-time work is rarely completely free, but rather determined by job availability and family obligations. Many take up part-time jobs because there’s no full-time work available, while for many others it’s the only way they can combine caring tasks with work.

Meanwhile, this kind of working-time reduction is paid for entirely by individual employees, with both their wages and pension suffering. Part-time jobs also offer poorer career prospects and are often insecure, meaning not only are the workers’ current earnings lower, but their future income is jeopardized as well. Finally, since it’s mostly women who are in part-time jobs, this sort of working-time reduction is unlikely to create a more level playing field between the sexes. [...]

Rather than “on average” cuts in hours, generated through an increase in part-time work, we should reduce working time for everybody. The examples above show that there’s no one best way of doing so, and these kinds of changes don’t always come without compromises. But they all share an approach based on parity and fairness in how the reduction was implemented and show how positive results can be achieved through an organized, collective approach.  

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Haaretz: How Lebanon Emerged From Saudi Arabia's Hariri Crisis With Iranian Influence Even Stronger

Hariri revoked his resignation on Tuesday, drawing a line under the crisis caused by his announcement from Riyadh. Lebanese officials say he was put under house arrest before French intervention led to his return home. Riyadh and Hariri deny this. [...]

Hariri has identified possible Gulf Arab sanctions as a major risk to the Lebanese economy. Analysts also see a risk of another war with Hezbollah's old foe, Israel, which is alarmed by the group's strength in Lebanon and Syria. [...]

One senior Lebanese politician said the experience had "left a big scar" on Hariri, once the "the spiritual son of Saudi Arabia". "After this, it will not be easy to have a normal relationship again."

Meeting on Tuesday for the first time since the resignation, Hariri's government indirectly acknowledged Saudi concerns over Hezbollah's role outside Lebanon. At Hariri's behest, it reaffirmed its policy of staying out of Arab conflicts. [...]

Hariri's willingness to compromise with Hezbollah was a factor behind the Saudi move against him and has drawn criticism from within the Sunni community. His status as Lebanon's most influential Sunni will be put to the test in parliamentary elections next year.

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RSA: Raoul Martinez on The Myth of Responsibility

Are we wholly responsible for our actions? We don’t choose our brains, our genetic inheritance, our circumstances, our milieu – so how much control do we really have over our lives? Writer, artist and award-winning filmmaker Raoul Martinez argues that no one is truly blameworthy. Our most visionary scientists, psychologists and philosophers have agreed that we have far less free will than we think, and yet most of society’s systems are structured around the opposite principle – that we are all on a level playing field, and we all get what we deserve. 

Wireless Philosophy: Slippery Slope - Critical Thinking Fallacies

In this Wireless Philosophy video, Joseph Wu (University of Cambridge) introduces you to the slippery slope argument. This argument is that when one event occurs, other related events will follow, and this slippery slope will eventually lead to undesirable consequences. Wu walks us through this rhetorical strategy and shows us how to avoid committing a fallacy.

The New York Times: The G.O.P. Is Rotting

Now it’s clear that middle ground doesn’t exist. That’s because Donald Trump never stops asking. First, he asked the party to swallow the idea of a narcissistic sexual harasser and a routine liar as its party leader. Then he asked the party to accept his comprehensive ignorance and his politics of racial division. Now he asks the party to give up its reputation for fiscal conservatism. At the same time he asks the party to become the party of Roy Moore, the party of bigotry, alleged sexual harassment and child assault. [...]

The Republican Party is doing harm to every cause it purports to serve. If Republicans accept Roy Moore as a United States senator, they may, for a couple years, have one more vote for a justice or a tax cut, but they will have made their party loathsome for an entire generation. The pro-life cause will be forever associated with moral hypocrisy on an epic scale. The word “evangelical” is already being discredited for an entire generation. Young people and people of color look at the Trump-Moore G.O.P. and they are repulsed, maybe forever. [...]

Today’s tax cuts have no bipartisan support. They have no intellectual grounding, no body of supporting evidence. They do not respond to the central crisis of our time. They have no vision of the common good, except that Republican donors should get more money and Democratic donors should have less.

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The Irish Times: Fintan O’Toole: Ireland has just saved the UK from the madness of a hard Brexit

The phrase “in the future” is crucial - it means that every single change in the EU’s rules will have to be mirrored north of the border. But this is now the wooden horse inside the walls of Troy because, to avoid the idea of Northern Ireland becoming a separate regulatory space, there will also have to be the same mirroring of the rules and regulations that continue to apply in Northern Ireland by the UK as a whole. The mathematics are simple: if A equals B and B equals C, then C equals A. A is Ireland’s position in the single market and customs union, B is Northern Ireland’s full alignment to that position and C is the UK’s commitment not to differ from Northern Ireland. The commitment to have no barriers to east-west trade means that London is effectively a prisoner of Belfast.

I suggested earlier this week that we were seeing things being turned upside down: instead of, as DUP leader Arlene Foster insisted, Northern Ireland leaving the EU on the same terms as the UK, the UK will have to leave the EU on the same terms as Northern Ireland. This, in effect, is what is now agreed. We always knew the Border is extremely porous, but what has now been smuggled across it is a minimum condition for the second phase of the Brexit talks: whatever trade arrangements eventually emerge, they cannot be ones in which Britain strays much beyond the existing customs and market arrangements. To adapt Henry Ford, Britain can have any Brexit it likes, so long as it is green.

Apart from all of its other consequences, this means the DUP’s great bluff has been called. It was insisting on two contradictory things: no special status for Northern Ireland and completely leaving the customs union and single market. This contradiction has come back to haunt the whole Brexit project -the DUP has been forced to concede that if the first condition is to be satisfied, the second in effect cannot. The deal secured by Ireland does not necessarily force the UK to stay in the customs union and single market. It just forces it to act as if it has stayed in - a distinction without a difference. Call it what you like - if it acts like a customs union, moves like a customs union and is fully aligned like a customs union, it is a customs union.

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Politico: May’s divorce deal doesn’t add up

It could also convince some banks and companies to put on hold plans to relocate jobs and production to Continental Europe in the next few months, while the two sides discuss a transition period and the outlines of a future trade relationship. London was desperate to start that second phase of talks before businesses voted with their feet and left the U.K. [...]

How do you keep regulations aligned between the United Kingdom and the EU to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as Theresa May has promised, while simultaneously insisting that Britain will leave the single market and the customs union and preserving the constitutional and economic integrity of the U.K? [...]

And there’s nothing in the agreement that indicates it has been answered. EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier appeared to acknowledge that five days of redrafting had merely glossed over the problem rather than truly resolving it. “No one should underestimate the difficulties we will face on this issue,” he said. “Nobody.”

The only way to square the circle would be for the U.K. to continue indefinitely observing EU rules, norms and standards like Norway — not just during a transition period but as part of a future trade agreement, without becoming a formal member of the European Economic Area.

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Politico: SPD’s Martin Schulz wants United States of Europe by 2025

“I want there to be a constitutional treaty to create a federal Europe,” Schulz said Thursday during a speech at a party convention in Berlin, as he urged his party to clear the way for talks with Angela Merkel’s conservatives which could lead to a new German government and put an end to an unprecedented coalition deadlock.

The drafting process of such a constitutional treaty, Schulz said, should involve citizens across the Continent. Once drafted, it would “be presented to the member states, and those who are against it will simply leave the EU,” he said, adding that Poland was already systematically undermining European values and Hungary was increasingly isolating itself. [...]

Asked about Schulz’s speech at a press conference in Berlin, Merkel declined to respond to the specifics of his proposal but said the EU should focus on fixing its “weaknesses” and improving its “ability to act.”

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