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I have a simple morality:

1. I like feeling good.
2. I don’t like feeling bad. (Suffering)
3. I want other people to feel good.
4. I don’t want other people to feel bad (to suffer.)

Most people have some of this as part of their morality.

How much is a matter of moral transitivity. How many people are part of three and four?

Let’s outline some variations:

The psychopath. Only my suffering and happiness matters.

The Patriarch/Matriarch. Only the suffering and happiness of me and my relatives matter.

The Back Slapper. The suffering and happeiness of me, my relatives, and my friends matters.

The Noble. The suffering and happiness of me, my relatives, my friends and my dependents matters. (Modern version is the good boss.)

The Aristocrat or Oligarch: Only the suffering or happiness of my class matters.

This week, the government opened new plans intended to protect social housing tenants from unsafe homes to consultation. The plans consist of strict timeframes to which housing association landlords will have to adhere when investigating and repairing hazards, or face court. This proposed legislation is being called Awaab’s Law, in reference to the death of […]

Here’s a piece I wrote for The Guardian. It’s also at my Substack. Some of it is Australia-specific but some may be of more general interests The policy debate about the cost of living is among the most confused and confusing in recent memory. All sorts of measures to reduce the cost of living are […]

Julia Giese and Charlotte Grace In response to the global financial crisis, the Bank of England (BoE) began using Product-Mix Auctions (PMA) to provide liquidity insurance to financial institutions. The PMA, designed by Paul Klemperer, allows the quantity of funds lent against different types of collateral to react flexibly to the economic environment and market … Continue reading How auction design can make a difference: the case of the Bank’s Indexed Long-Term Repo Facility →

Before the recent Boeing disaster, the company and its parts supplier Spirit AeroSystems spent years lobbying to boost production and weaken safety regulations.

Labor is fuelling racist views about migration, announcing a major crackdown on the number of people entering Australia to study or work.

The post Labor’s migration policy puts profit before people first appeared on Solidarity Online.

Israel is threatening to widen its war into Lebanon.

The post Israel threatens wider war on Lebanon against Hezbollah resistance first appeared on Solidarity Online.

Today’s post is a complement to my post on earlier this week – So-called ‘Team Transitory’ declared victors (January 8, 2024). Yesterday (January 10, 2024), the Australian Bureau of Statistics published the latest – Monthly Consumer Price Index Indicator – for November 2023, which showed another sharp drop in inflation. The data are the closest…

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Why scientists can’t quit chalk, even in the digital age.

The post The Magic of the Blackboard appeared first on Nautilus.

Health experts are working out the right dose for you.

The post How Much Nature Is Enough? appeared first on Nautilus.

Chris Christie dropped out of the race today and gave quite a speech. He didn’t endorse anyone and I think we know why: Christie’s speech was the best one I’ve ever seen him give. He didn’t mince words about Trump and chastised those who are giving him a pass. He talked honestly about the stakes for the country in this election. A couple of highlights:

National Review says that Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis “are far and away better on the merits, more likely to win in November, and, if elected, more likely to deliver — free from the wild drama of a second Trump term — conservative results.” I don’t know about Haley and DeSantis but we can certainly agree on the horror of another Trump term. But maybe they could have been consistently critical of the MAGA cult over the past 7 years? I dunno. But they were “Never Trump” in 2016 and they are again, so I guess that’s something. Mediaite reports: The editorial minced no words in prosecuting its case against Trump, bluntly stating that Trump “lost to Joe Biden in 2020″ and “did everything he could to overturn the result, including trying to bully his vice president into violating his oath and preventing and delaying the counting of the electoral vote.” “When a mob, fervently believing Trump’s lies, fought its way into the U.S. Capitol to try to end the count, Trump did little or nothing to try to stop it,”  it added.

The spoilers are still at it Joe Lieberman and company really are determined to screw up this election: A political group intending to support a presidential candidate run by the group No Labels plans to file paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, with a handful of Republican and Democratic strategists as advisers. The group, New Leaders ’24 political action committee, expects a No Labels ticket to materialize this year. No Labels has said it would mount a campaign if President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump are their parties’ nominees, in a rematch of the 2020 campaign that is increasingly likely. The group will be advised by Rob Stutzman, a Republican and former deputy chief of staff to Arnold Schwarzenegger during his governorship as well as an adviser for Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. Kathleen Shanahan, a Republican and former chief of staff to Jeb Bush during his governorship, will be the chief executive, and Andrew Fishman, whom the group identified as a Democrat and who has a business background, will serve as treasurer, Mr. Stutzman said.

Four FBI agents posing as ISIS members began chatting online with Humzah Mashkoor when he was 16 years old. He was arrested on terrorism charges weeks after his 18th birthday.

The post Undercover FBI Agents Helped Autistic Teen Plan Trip to Join ISIS appeared first on The Intercept.