Lecture 1: Introduction to Power and Politics in Today’s World

These seem to be the ground rules for a high school debate, not sure if they are adequate to the troubles in these times. First there is a body of work on political "science" which is not quite physics or chemistry but is closer to "science" than it is to Scientology that is the backdrop of what is possible. Here are two semesters worth of lectures from Ian Shapiro which for me are a "required curriculum" for those who want to talk about reforming politics at a fundamental level: [link] ▶ this video

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I think the primary distinction is between government expenditure on private production and government production. While in many cases governments still pay for things, they're not running them. The idea of course being that a profit motive improves efficiency, but of course it is competition that does so and in almost all cases government purchasing of private production suffers from the principal-agent problem: [link] I think my favourite source of information on the political side of privatisation (rather than the economic side) is this lecture series from Professor Shapiro at Yale: ▶ this video

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[link] Harvard's CS50 is best of class. Created by David J. Malan. I've never seen an online course that has production quality or clarity of concepts as good as this. Even if you know how to code you may find a few useful bits in there and if nothing else you're learn excellent ways to explain programming concepts to people. They also make a new one every year, so maybe the 2020 or 2021 version is better. ▶ this video Yale's Power and Politcs was created by Ian Shapiro is an excellent zoom out into global politics and how how the modern world was made. [link] Poker at Hopkins was an intersession course created by Avi Rubin, a poker enthusiast professor who collected resources over many years with the thought in the back of his mind "maybe one day I'll teach a course on poker somehow". It's very much an introduction but a good one.

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Following the 2017 "Power and Politics" lectures at Yale[1] on Youtube (lecture 5) I came across this graph[2] showcasing the relationship between inequality and union membership. I know that correlation does not imply causation but here there are at least two strong narratives offered at the lecture supporting the relationship. [1]: ▶ this video [2]: [link]

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