The claim that public discourse operates as a marketplace of ideas — where truth and falsehood compete on equal terms, and the better argument wins — has never described how mass public discourse actually works. John Stuart Mill's On Liberty imagined the competition occurring among individuals with roughly equal access, sufficient time to weigh competing … Continue reading The Marketplace of Ideas Was Always a Protection Racket
The Calcification Consensus: Why Everyone Discussing China’s Future Is Lying About the Odds
The polite version of China's economic debate goes like this: optimists emphasize institutional capacity and monetary sovereignty; pessimists emphasize real constraints and debt; reasonable people occupy the middle ground and wait for more data. This framing is not wrong so much as it is cowardly—a description of positions that serves everyone's professional interests and nobody's … Continue reading The Calcification Consensus: Why Everyone Discussing China’s Future Is Lying About the Odds
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