> The genetic arguments in the book draw the most criticism and yet the book has much else offer as Clark notes. For example:
>>Social status is inherited as strongly as height. Even relatives as distant as nine generations apart, 270 years, still show significant correlation in social status.
> That is a very striking finding–especially given the intervening industrial revolution, multiple wars, huge changes in social mores etc.–but if it stands, it does so independent of the genetic explanation.
> The fact that this monumental and challenging book–right or wrong–cannot find a major academic publisher is an intellectual scandal. The editors at Princeton University Press and the University of Chicago Press should be ashamed.
You’re projecting a disability onto the general population. Most people are capable of socialising and propagating the idea they’re not is a service to no one.
You’re projecting a disability onto the general population. Most people are capable of socialising and propagating the idea they’re not is a service to no one.
> HDI is a good metric for gauging living standards
A country with living standards at Bill Gates levels with perfect good health until 200 where everyone is illiterate has a lower HDI than South Sudan. Even if we fix it by setting the minimum education value at 0.1 billionaires with perfect health land would have a HDI lower than 180 countries. HDI has a 90%+ correlation with GDP. It’s not a worthwhile measure.
Not quite - that’s if you believe the moderates control the extremists. If they don’t, it’s more like “I’m the extremist and I am currently so unhappy I will do this. What will you do to make me less unhappy?”
> In 2011, Scotland destroyed its secondary school curriculum, once ranked among the best in the world. It was not the first country to do so.
> Between 1990 and 2010, Sweden, France, Germany, Japan, and England — among many others — radically reformed their school curricula to emphasize general skills over content knowledge. In Scotland and France, the reforms were orchestrated by left-wing progressives committed to social equity; in England and Sweden, by free-market devotees as a means to enhance economically valuable skills. In Germany and Japan, the impetus was simply to update the school curricula for modern economic conditions. All of the reforms had the same logic: Remove facts, content, and structure, and replace them with general analysis and synthesis tasks.
> These reformers discarded the traditions their predecessors had built over the previous century. Children in Scotland, France, and Sweden no longer study a humanities curriculum resembling that of their parents or grandparents; nor do they necessarily study anything resembling the curriculum of their peers in neighboring schools. Any sense of a collective tradition, going forward or backwards, unifying a country or a people, has vanished.
I cycle everywhere in Shanghai and I would not even buy a bike if I lived in the US. Motorcycles are for wannabe organ donors. Maybe I’d change my mind if robocars took over from human driven ones but I’d be hesitant about commuting by bike in Ireland, never mind anywhere in the US. Good bike infrastructure is rare.
Decline is used in the article only to refer to test scores and budgetary shortfalls are laid at the feet of a school board caving in to union demands. At no point is there any suggestion that money is a limiting factor in raising student academic performance.
> Fertility rates in higher and middle-income countries have reached record lows. Today, over 2 billion people – more than a quarter of the global population – live in countries with a total fertility rate below 1.3. This level would lead to rapidly shrinking populations in these countries in the absence of significant immigration. This article maps the global landscape of low fertility and the key drivers behind its recent declines. The current fertility ‘freefall’ is more widespread, deeper and more permanent than previously anticipated. It is driven by multiple factors, including structural conditions, unstable labour markets and anxiety about the future, but also changing intimate relations, better access to efficient contraception and changing views about parenthood and reproductive preferences. These conditions contribute to delayed parenthood, which increases the risk of infertility. Young adults express lower and more fluid fertility intentions than the previous generations, eroding the two-child family norm. The multifaceted nature of fertility decline implies that very low fertility is likely to persist and spread to many more countries. Due to lower fertility preferences and a limited scope to address the root causes of low fertility, policies aiming to increase fertility will probably fail in their aim to reverse fertility decline.
Degrowth is about reversing growth, not slowing it. A decrease is a reduction, not a slowing. It’s about reversing the sign, not changing the first derivative.
>>Social status is inherited as strongly as height. Even relatives as distant as nine generations apart, 270 years, still show significant correlation in social status.
> That is a very striking finding–especially given the intervening industrial revolution, multiple wars, huge changes in social mores etc.–but if it stands, it does so independent of the genetic explanation.
> The fact that this monumental and challenging book–right or wrong–cannot find a major academic publisher is an intellectual scandal. The editors at Princeton University Press and the University of Chicago Press should be ashamed.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/th...