We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first … Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper … Melancholy as all these delusions were in their ultimate results, their history is most amusing.

Charles Mackay, 1843, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, on financial-market manias and panics.

Politics

I've written a moderate amount which I'd classify as political.

• quite a lot concerning Intellectual Property.
• concerning (other) monopolies
• citizenship
• the inequities to which capitalism is prone
• my take on Karl Marx's famous line property is theft
• an allegory on the information industry
• fragments from On Liberty, an essay by John Stuart Mill.
• the folly of prohibition
• bored of the net's perennial arguments about guns yet ?
• a call to action for Britain's liberals
• some thoughts on (spam, …) privacy and surveys
• A modest proposal concerning constitutions.
• sibboleth
• and my ramblings about being human aren't entirely unrelated to politics.

See Also (or instead)

• A visit to Roberto di Cosmo's web site will give some interesting insights into Micro$oft's antics. Those who can't read French might benefit from buying one of his books, CyberSnare or The Planetary Hold-Up instead.
• Jacob Levich's article Bush's Orwellian address makes for poignant reading.
• Amita Guha's account, Fingered by the movie cops, of how the DMCA can cause someone to be punished for being falsely accused. This article is a perfect illustration of the common fallacy that law-abiding folks have nothing to fear from being snooped on: when the snoop makes a mistake, law-abiding folks can get punished for things they didn't do; and, in this case, there is no means either for them to obtain compensation or even to oblige their accuser (and the ISP who punished them) to acknowledge their innocence.
• John Perry Barlow's declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996/Feb/9th.
• Climate Change Questions Answered, in The Seattle Post Intelligencer.
• Peter Leeson describes situations in which anarchy has worked better than government.
• All hail the Eviscerati.
• Brian W. Vaszily's assorted articles discussing some scary truths about marketing.
• Yoram Bauman's book on Quantum Microeconomics.
• A brief (and fascinating) history of the neutron bomb and its creator – sheds some scary light on political processes.
• The Doonesbury comic strip is full of insightful satires on politics; unfortunately, it's now on a site which only gives you the latest month without a premium subscription, so I can no longer offer you a link to the 1993/Nov/29th strip which begins Trudeau's excellent take on the conspiracy theorists …
• Lawrence of Arabia's foreshadowing of the modern Iraqui situation. He was an expert on guerrilla insurgency – having fomented one, among the arab peoples of roughly what is now Iraq.

Written by Eddy.