Mark Koyama

Posts About

• 

  Money’s Mutation of the Modern Moral Mind: The Simmel Hypothesis and the Cultural Evolution of WEIRDness

  A great number of theories have been offered as to the root of the difference between the modern mind and the premodern mind. One neglected account comes from Georg Simmel’s Philosophy of Money, which argues that the rise of the mass money economy in the early modern era encouraged calculative . . .

• 

  It's Not Socialism, It's Clientelism

  Most of what passes for ‘socialism’ in the U.S. today is actually clientelism, the exchange of favors for political support. Based on the examples of Venezuela and Post-soviet Russia, that’s likely even worse.

• 

  The Feudal Origins of the Western Legal Tradition

  This paper draws a distinction between ‘communitarian’ and ‘rationalist’ legal orders on the basis of the implied political strategy. We argue that the West’s solution to the paradox of governance – that a government strong enough to protect rights cannot itself be restrained from violating those rights – originates in . . .

• 

  Myth and Modernity: A Review of Persecution and Toleration

  One doesn’t need much detailed historical knowledge to be struck by just how recent many of the most deeply held moral and political convictions in the modern West are. Prior to just a few hundred years ago, it would have been considered eccentric (at best) or seditious (at worst) to . . .