So the UK voted and chose to elect a Conservative government. In this video, we examine the result, the winners and losers. We also discuss how Johnsons win will affect the UK going forward as well as the Brexit process.
17 December 2019
The Intercept: The Bernie Blackout
Bernie Sanders faced a media blackout that helped sink his 2016 run for president. Today, the trend continues: Sanders gets less media coverage and a higher rate of negative coverage than his top rivals for the Democratic nomination in 2020.
16 December 2019
Prospect Podcast: Meritocracy and the social mobility trap, with Daniel Markovits
Is it a rewards-based social system that works, or a sinister trap?
Sure it’s a good idea in theory, but does meritocracy really work in practice? Yale law school professor Daniel Markovits joins the Prospect podcast and tells us why he’s sceptical. Far from seeing a world where people can get ahead regardless of one’s social background, Markovits instead argues that meritocracy has also emerged alongside a greater concentration of wealth and privilege, more so than ever.
UnHerd: How Boris can cement his new coalition
Brexit, rather like immigration in the past couple of decades, has become an “emblem” policy. Support for Brexit is not so much about the details of EU regulation, rather it has become part of a wider, defensive reaction to the radicalism of the post-Cold War “double liberalism” of free market and cultural opening, represented in the EU by the two central post-national policies of the Euro and free movement. [...]
There will also be genuine conflicts of interest between different parts of the new Tory coalition. The small-state, low-tax Toryism of the affluent suburbs has hardly been in the ascendancy in recent years. But it will have to concede further ground to the new Tory voters who want quite high public spending and good public infrastructure. How much ground it will have to concede will be the stuff of battles to come. [...]
This election result is a big blow to the confidence and cultural power of educated, left-liberal Britain. A new coalition of people from many different backgrounds, by no means all Tories, now has an opportunity to push back against the extremes and pathologies of that cultural hegemony.
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell: Overpopulation & Africa
For most of our history, the human population grew slowly. Until new discoveries brought us more food and made us live longer. In just a hundred years the human population quadrupled. This led to apocalyptic visions of an overcrowded earth. But the population growth rate actually peaked in the 1960s. Since then, fertility rates have crashed as countries industrialize and develop. World population is now expected to balance out at around 11 billion by the end of the century. But the big picture conceals the details.
Let us look at one region in particular: Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2019 it was home to a billion people living in 46 countries. Although its growth rate has slowed down in the last few decades, it is still much higher than in the rest of the world. While some projections expect around 2.6 billion people others reckon with up to 5 billion by 2100. Such growth would be a huge challenge for any society. But Sub-Saharan Africa is also the poorest region on earth. So is Sub-Saharan Africa doomed? And why do the projections vary by 2.4 billion people?
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