Motus Mentis

From an article entitled When Work Is Punished: The Tragedy Of America’s Welfare State:

We realize that this is a painful topic in a country in which the issue of welfare benefits, and cutting (or not) the spending side of the fiscal cliff, have become the two most sensitive social topics. Alas, none of that changes the matrix of incentives for most Americans who find themselves in a comparable situation: either being on the left side of minimum US wage, and relying on benefits, or move to the right side at far greater personal investment of work, and energy, and… have the same disposable income at the end of the day.

As I wrote just after the election:

America has now crossed the event horizon, and the singularity lies ahead. Before we reach it ”” and although “there is a lot of ruin in a nation’, the acceleration will now be brisk ”” the tidal forces it will exert will soon begin to tear the nation to pieces.

Meanwhile, in England, there’s this — as described by Thomas Sowell, here.

The social engineers and professional uplifters responsible for this dog’s breakfast of a civilization in decline would have done well to reflect on two important concepts in evolutionary theory: “fitness landscapes” and “local maxima”.