The Philosophers Beard

Latest Blog Posts - The Philosophers Beard

• Avoiding our dystopian robot future
  on May 31, 2013 in economics ethics society
  The robot economy is coming! Perhaps by as early as 2040 robots will be smart and dexterous enough to do pretty much everything humans call work as well as or better than us, and at a lower cost (eg, eg). If this scenario comes about, human soci...
• How to justify a ban on the burqa (or anything else)
  on May 10, 2013 in ethics religion feminism
  Bans on wearing the burqa and other face-covering religious garb (such as are under consideration or recently passed in several European countries) fall under a class of restrictions by government on the free choice of individuals over private matter...
• Exile the rich
  on Feb 1, 2013 in society liberalism justice politics democracy
  We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.  (Justice Louis Brandeis)The rich may be identified by their independence from and command over others. Those two f...
• Against Prison
  on Jan 30, 2013 in crime justice
  Prison time is a very severe punishment. JS Mill likened it to being consigned to a living tomb.* Any society that employs it should do so with care and restraint. Yet we do not. Partly because we think that prison is a humane punishment, it is drast...
• Freedom of the press is not the same as freedom of speech
  on Jan 4, 2013 in media
  Freedom of the press is often conflated with freedom of speech, a conceptual error that leads to excessive deference to media corporations. Properly understood, freedom of the press requires that mass-media corporations be free from government contro...
• Human rights, the rule of law, and British parliamentary sovereignty: the debate about prisoners' right to vote
  on Dec 7, 2012 in UK justice
  7 years ago the UK was found in breach of its legal obligations to uphold the European Convention on Human Rights for its blanket ban on prisoners voting (Ruling of the European Court of Human Rights).Yet the British parliament has still not managed...
• Human rights, the rule of law, and British parliamentary sovereignty: Prisoners' right to vote
  on Dec 7, 2012 in UK justice
  7 years ago the UK was found in breach of its legal obligations to uphold the European Convention on Human Rights for its blanket ban on prisoners voting (Ruling of the European Court of Human Rights).Yet the British parliament has still not managed...
• The concept of 'Religious Defamation' has no foundation in liberal principle. Only liberal fear
  on Sep 21, 2012 in liberalism religion
  The recent furore over the internet video, The Innocence of Muslims, has raised familiar concerns about the limits of free speech.  Here I want to explore, in a revised version of a previous post, the intellectual qualities of the arguments that...
• Debating climate change: The need for economic reasoning
  on Sep 10, 2012 in economics ethics environment
  The global climate change debate has gone badly wrong. Many mainstream environmentalists are arguing for the wrong actions and for the wrong reasons, and so long as they continue to do so they put all our futures in jeopardy.My diagnosis is a twofold...
• What to do about the rich
  on Aug 1, 2012 in society liberalism justice politics democracy
  We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.  (Justice Louis Brandeis)The rich may be identified by their independence from and command over others. Those two f...

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