The Political Compass - More than Just a Meme

Despite its designers' hopes that it might beckon in a new era of more nuanced political discourse, the political compass has largely been reduced to…

Sep 12, 2024 • 

Steven

March 2024

Doing Things Differently - Adventures Raising the Next Generation

It has been some time since I posted on this blog. Writing posts that are good enough for me to consider posting takes a reasonable amount of effort…

Mar 7, 2024 • 

Steven

March 2021

Dividends vs. Buybacks - Take My Money, I Didn't Ask for a Refund

Conventional wisdom is that dividends are great - for many people they are the main reason why people invest in companies in the first place. A dividend…

Mar 25, 2021 • 

Steven

Free Markets and the Dangers of Optimisation Engines

In my last post, I discussed why I think that Capitalism can be a net positive for the world, along with why it shouldn’t be used as a bogeyman that…

Mar 3, 2021 • 

Steven

January 2021

Capitalism as a Social Cause

Even many proponents of capitalism seem to view investments as fundamentally selfish. They just view selfishness itself as a good thing, channelling the…

Jan 13, 2021 • 

Steven

December 2020

Economic Extremism - Too Much of a Good Thing

Allow me to juxtapose two viewpoints for a moment. First – what I perceive to be a fairly common view amongst neo-liberal economists: The huge…

Dec 23, 2020 • 

Steven

November 2020

Voting Systems IV - Procedural Voting

This post is part of a series of posts on Voting Systems. As well as the general public voting for politicians or directly for policies, voting is also…

Nov 18, 2020 • 

Steven

Voting Systems III - Representatives

This post is part of a series of posts on Voting Systems. Now we move out of the simple realm of single offices and single issues. Appointing multiple…

Nov 4, 2020 • 

Steven

October 2020

Voting Systems II - Referenda

This post is part of a series of posts on Voting Systems. Leaders usually have a significant amount of power, so it is fairly easy to convince people…

Oct 21, 2020 • 

Steven

Voting Systems - Electing Leaders

Getting the general public's input on how a country should be run is a fundamental tenet of democracy. This has to be done in a way that is both…

Oct 7, 2020 • 

Steven

September 2020

Canadian Provinces & German Länder

This post follows on from Optimising Federalism. Once a country is already federal, it is much more difficult to make any sort of changes to either the…

Sep 9, 2020 • 

Steven

August 2020

United Federal Britain - Local Government

This post follows on from A United Federal Britain. Having changed all of the borders it would make sense to tidy up all of the counties. As mentioned…

Aug 26, 2020 • 

Steven