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…

by Thomas R. Wells It is easy to become exasperated with liberal democracy. Various factions bicker and manoeuvre against each other in an endless grubby contest for power, hypocritically appealing to a shared public interest while continuously generating and sustaining social divisions. Things that are necessary – like addressing climate change – do not get…

by Thomas R. Wells When people take to the street to protest this is often supposed to be a sign of democracy in action. People who believe that their concerns about the climate change, Covid lockdowns, racism and so on are not being adequately addressed by the political system make a public display of how…

by Thomas R. Wells According to the meta-charity GiveWell, the most effective charities can save a child’s life for between 3 and 5,000 US dollars. One way of understanding this figure is that whenever you consider spending that amount of money, one of the things you would be choosing not to spend it on is…

by Thomas R. Wells The idea that ‘taxation is theft’ is one of those thrilling, paradigm shifting recognitions that are continually being rediscovered and shared. It is a classic case of pseudo-intellectuality, in which the excitement around an idea determines its popularity, rather than its quality (previously). First, unlike theft, taxation is legal – and…

by Thomas R. Wells Climate change is a huge and urgent problem. It is natural to suppose that it is therefore a terrible mistake, an unforced error that we should regret and try to prevent ever happening again. I disagree. Climate change is the unfortunate outcome of the economic growth that has transformed human civilisation…

by Thomas R. Wells The argument in brief: 1. Romantic love hijacks our desires and practical reasoning 2. If your desires and practical reasoning are hijacked your decisions aren’t authentically your own 3. If there were something that would prevent you from falling in love (a ‘vaccine’), it would prevent this hijacking Therefore, 4. If…

by Thomas R. Wells Countries exist. They are places on the map which have a political identity and borders and which people or things can live in, come from, or go to. But countries are not anymore than that. Firstly and most obviously, countries are merely a social construction. They are collectively produced fictions (like…

by Thomas R. Wells A large number of jobs exist not because they create economic value but because they make business sense given the institutions we have – customer expectations, bureaucratic regulations, and so on. They do not solve a real problem but a fake problem created by inefficient institutions. They therefore do not make…

by Thomas R. Wells “The poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he” (Thomas Rainsborough, spokesman for the Levellers at the Putnam Debates) What does it mean to say that everyone is equal? It does not mean that everyone has (or should have) the same amount of nice…

by Thomas R. Wells Suppose that we could all be good for just one day. No one would be tempted away from doing the right thing and towards their own selfish interests or illicit urges. No one would be afraid of retribution. We would be free of all internal and external obstacles to being good.…

by Thomas Wells Billions of people around the world continue to live in great poverty. What is the responsibility of rich countries to address this? This essay takes the view that the best we can do is the least we ought to do, but also that the best we can do is heavily constrained by…

by Thomas Wells Climate change is such a terrifying large problem that it is hard to think sensibly about. On the one hand this makes many people prefer denial. On the other hand it can exert a warping effect on the reasoning of even those who do take it seriously. In particular, many confuse the…

by Thomas R. Wells Effective altruism is based on a very simple idea: we should do the most good we can. Obeying the usual rules about not stealing, cheating, hurting, and killing is not enough, or at least not enough for those of us who have the good fortune to live in material comfort, who…

by Thomas R. Wells Libertarianism does not make sense. It cannot keep its promises. It has nothing to offer. It is an intellectual failure like Marxism or Flat-Earthism – something that might once reasonably have seemed worth pursuing but whose persistence in public let alone academic conversation has become an embarrassment. The only mildly interesting…

by Thomas R. Wells Prime Minister Boris Johnson has exactly one strategy in his EU trade negotiations: threatening to drive Britain into a no-deal wall unless he gets what he wants. In other words, Johnson has been approaching this extraordinarily important matter of national interest as a peculiar version of the game of chicken. This…

by Thomas R. Wells Covid-19 reminds us once again that we can’t do without politics, or, to put it another way, we can’t do well without doing politics well. ‘Science’ can’t decide the right thing to do about Covid, however appealing it might be to imagine we could dump this whole mess on a bunch of…

by Thomas R. Wells Lincoln consistently scores top or at least top 3 in every ranking of US presidents. This high standing has long puzzled me. After all, this is the leader who presided over a long brutal civil war that killed 620,000 of his own people. For context, as a percentage of the population,…

by Thomas R. Wells Some people claim that the prominent display of statues to controversial events or people, such as confederate generals in the southern United States, merely memorialises historical facts that unfortunately make some people uncomfortable. This is false. Firstly, such statues have nothing to do with history or facts and everything to do…