At Slate, Matthew Yglesias has an interesting article reviewing all of the Star Trek and many of the movies from the original 1960s series to the present. He especially focuses on the series’ ideology and politics, and its “utopian” vision of the future. Despite coming at the issue from a very different perspective, I actually […]
Archive | Socialism
Podcast on the Politics of Star Trek
The Institute for Humane Studies has produced a podcast in which I discuss the politics of Star Trek, especially it’s favorable portrayal of socialism, which I previously wrote about here and here. I single out Star Trek: The New Generation as the Trek series most committed to socialist ideology and most unwilling to give any […]
New York Yankees Co-Owner Hank Steinbrenner Denounces “Socialism”
New York Yankees co-owner Hank Steinbrenner recently denounced Major League Baseball’s revenue-sharing system, calling it “socialism”: Yankees co-chairman Hank Steinbrenner [the other co-owner/co-chairman is Hank’s brother Hal] says baseball’s revenue sharing and luxury tax programs need changes….. “We’ve got to do a little something about that, and I know Bud wants to correct it in […]
Competing Explanations for the Oppressive Nature of Socialism
Economist Bryan Caplan has an interesting post summarizing three competing explanation for the oppressive nature of socialist regimes: Lord Acton and F.A. Hayek have inspired the two most popular explanations for the crimes of actually-existing socialism. While Acton never lived to see socialists gain power, their behavior seems to perfectly illustrate his aphorism that, “Power […]
Telos Returns to ‘New Class’ Analysis and the Critique of the ‘Wholly-Administered Society”
The critical theory journal, Telos, returns to one of its earliest themes, the critique of what its editors in the 1970s and 80s termed the “wholly-administered society” and “New Class” analysis. It shifted away from those themes and modes of analysis for a long time, but it has re-opened that discussion with a bang. Editor […]
Democracy and the Appeal of Socialism
Economist Bryan Caplan wonders why socialism ever developed any broad appeal, given the weaknesses of the idea of the “New Socialist Man”: The classic argument against socialism is that it gives people bad incentives. What’s the point of working, conserving, saving, quality control, and/or taking out the garbage if they don’t pay? The classic socialist […]