Josh Hallwright, PhD

@hallwright.bsky.social

1215 Followers 326 Following

Humanitarian and disaster management professional turned 'academic'; ex-UNOCHA, ex-Red Cross, ex-fammer, ex-X; enjoys wine, food, the natural and social sciences; acknowledges the unfortunate job security that comes with working in humanitarian crises.

But the point remains: why do we assume that people who have figured out a way for a large population to govern and support itself without temple, palaces and military fortifications - that is, without over displays of arrogance, self-abasement and cruelty - are somehow less complex than those who have not?

Sky above Melbourne that looks apolyptic

To put it bluntly, the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences.

Picketty, p. 32

"What we see in the period 1870-1914 is at best a stabilisation of inequality at an extremely high level, and in certain respects an endless inegalitarian spiral, marked in particular by increasing concentration of wealth. It is quite difficult to say where this trajectory would have led without the major economic and political shocks initiated by the war. With the aid of historical analysis and a little perspective, we can now see those shocks as the only forces since the Industrial Revolution powerful enough to reduce inequality"