Feudalism

If the financial downturn proves to be intractable, “all bets are off,” says scholar Walter Scheidel. "If there is one lesson we can draw from history, it is: What really matters is the way that this kind of crisis shapes political preferences and decision making." In times of doom and…

This is not your normal zoonotic pandemic virus. That would be the famous Black Plague of 1348 spread by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It arrived in northern Italy from the Crimean Peninsula, and eventually reached all of Europe, killing off a third of the population. Recent archeology suggests the same…

For over two centuries, New York has been the predominant urban center in North America. It remains the primary locale for the arts, culture, finance, and media, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. It has also served as the incubator of the many Americas—including Jewish, Italian, African…

Key Point: This battle was the turning point needed to keep the Union in the war. It would also stop the Europeans from coming to the South's aid. The occasion was, for the North, inauspicious. In the Battle of First Manassas, the Federals were routed, humiliated, and almost utterly crushed. In…

Photo by Nathaniel St. Clair Politicians like Lindsey Graham have been worried that some individuals might get a few cents extra during this crisis if the relief bills are too “generous”. The concern does not extend to corporations that bloat and have essentially no stipulations put upon them from the…

The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy, by Heinrich A. Rommen The realistic theory of knowledge is the basis both of the unity of knowledge and of the internal coherence and organic structure of the sciences. Metaphysics is the logical foundation of all science. Science…

As of this writing, the long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic remain uncertain. But one possible consequence is an acceleration of the end of the megacity era. In its place, we may now be witnessing the outlines of a new, and necessary, dispersion of population, not only in the wide…

Yves here. Yet another informative talk with Michael Hudson on one of his key topics: why debt that can’t be paid won’t be paid. Here, he gives another riff on how ancient societies dealt with this issue and how modern lenders have gone off the rails. Originally published at Digital…

by Charles Hugh-Smith Essential home lockdown reading. The pandemic is revealing to all what many of us have known for a long time: the status quo was designed to fail and so its failure was not just predictable but inevitable. We’ve propped up a dysfunctional, wasteful and unsustainable system by pouring trillions…

By late spring, the most severe impacts from the coronavirus may be fading, but its impact on how we live and work will not go away. Indeed, many of the most relevant trends — including the rise of dispersed work and living arrangements — were already emerging even before the…