Thomas Wells teaches philosophy in the Netherlands and blogs about politics, philosophy and economics at The Philosopher's Beard. Email: philosophersbeard [at] gmail.com
Website: https://www.philosophersbeard.org/
by Thomas R. Wells European colonisation is a hot topic these days, among my academic colleagues and students, and the people who like to spread moral indignation on the internet. This surge in concern over the evils of colonisation is somewhat surprising. Thirty years or so ago when I first acquired a political awareness there…
by Thomas R. Wells Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. —H. L. Mencken Neoliberalism is doomed because everyone hates it. They are mostly wrong about the reasons they think they have for hating it. But explaining what neoliberalism actually is –…
by Thomas R. Wells All things come to an end eventually, including the human species. From the perspective of the universe it won’t matter, and so it also shouldn’t matter to us now. The discontinuance of a taxonomic unit is not particularly interesting or important, especially since no one will be around to notice. My…
by Thomas R. Wells The world’s richest 1% have more purchasing power, and hence more command over what the economy produces than ordinary people. They can afford a more extravagant lifestyle – at the extreme including multiple yachts, mansions, and private jets. One may reasonably quibble with the way activists like Oxfam produce their numbers,…
by Thomas R. Wells In a world in which anyone can create fake sexually explicit images of anyone else, we should not be surprised when it happens, and we should not get especially upset if it happens to us. Synopsis of my argument Premise 1: It is now trivially easy to use a generative AI…
by Thomas R. Wells Wars have never been the concern only of their combatants. Other states pay close attention to the geo-political implications and opportunities created by armed conflict, and interfere directly or indirectly when their cynical calculations suggest that would advance their interests. For example, various countries – the UAE, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi…
by Thomas R. Wells Many climate activists claim to believe that climate change is an existential threat to humanity if not the entire biosphere. This is the justification for groups like Extinction Rebellion to engage not only in demonstrations and civil disobedience to raise awareness of the issue and persuade fellow citizens to demand action,…
by Thomas R. Wells Lots of people think that a few people controlling a very large share of a society’s economic power is a bad thing. It is unfair that some should have so much while so many have so much less. It is inefficient that so much wealth lies in the hands of people…
by Thomas R. Wells The idea that ‘indigenous’ knowledge counts as knowledge in a sense comparable to real i.e. scientific knowledge is absurd but widely held. It appears to be a pernicious product of the combination of the patronising politics of pity and anti-Westernism that characterises the modern political left (dumb, but still preferable to…
by Thomas R. Wells There is no good reason for small countries to exist, and we should stop making more of them. The World Bank classifies 40 countries as ‘small states’ on the basis of having a population smaller than 1.5 million. Some are as small as 11,000 (Tuvalu), and the total population of all…
by Thomas R. Wells Many environmentalists find the climate change policy problem baffling. The core mechanism of how certain molecules create a greenhouse warming effect on the earth is extremely clear (and has been known for over a century). Evidence that human activities are releasing greenhouse gases in dangerously disruptive quantities is also very clear and well-established, as is…
by Thomas R. Wells Many environmentalists support the idea of charging deposits on drink bottles and cans in order to persuade people to bring them back for recycling. They believe this is a good and obvious way to reduce humans environmental impact. They are mistaken. While bottle deposit systems are superficially attractive they are a…
by Thomas R. Wells Drug overdose deaths have more than doubled in America in the past 10 years, mainly due to the appearance of Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. These drugs combine incredible ease of manufacture with potency in tiny amounts and dangerousness (the tiniest miscalculation in dosage makes them deadly). This continues a general…
by Thomas R. Wells Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has reminded everyone of how dangerous a world we live in. As rich countries scramble to rebuild militaries dismantled by post-Cold war complacency, one of the other problems of national success has become apparent: young people have better things to do than play soldier. My solution: conscript…
by Thomas R. Wells Taiwan is an independent prosperous liberal democracy of 24 million free people that the Chinese Communist Party solemnly promises to annex to its empire by whatever means are necessary. Although Taiwan’s flourishing capitalist economy once allowed it to outgun and hence straightforwardly deter China from a military invasion, this military advantage…
by Thomas R. Wells The recent history of the term ‘political correctness’ and its association with the contemporary left and the tedious culture wars obscures its true character and ubiquity. Political correctness is real, significant, and arguably the dominant mode of politics since before humans could even talk. It is the few trying to rule…
by Thomas R. Wells Americans dominate global (social) media and one result of this is that the rest of the world is overexposed to Americans’ ideas, and also to their ideas about themselves. One such idea that is more or less endlessly repeated is that even middle-class Americans are actually poor these days. I accept…
by Thomas R. Wells The term ‘problematic’ seems to be everywhere these days – even in academic philosophy settings where people are supposed to take some care about what they are saying. Both intellectually and morally it is a bad word to use and we should stop. In ordinary conversation, social media, and even mass-media…
by Thomas R. Wells Human minds run on stories, in which things happen at a human level scale and for human meaningful reasons. But the actual world runs on causal processes, largely indifferent to humans’ feelings about them. The great breakthrough in human enlightenment was to develop techniques – empirical science – to allow us…
by Thomas R. Wells Environmentalists are always complaining that governments are obsessed with GDP and economic growth, and that this is a bad thing because economic growth is bad for the environment. They are partly right but mostly wrong. First, while governments talk about GDP a lot, that does not mean that they actually prioritise…