Sublime

arrangements. Public

The cold divisive logic of the RCO impoverishes us, all of us, and brings us closer to that primitive state that the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes called “the war of every man against every man.”

Today’s news moves as a maelstrom, swirling at every moment with information at once trifling and historic, petty and grave, cajoling, demanding, funny, horrifying, uplifting, embarrassing, fleeting, loud—so much of it, at so many scales, that the idea of choice in the midst of it all takes on a certain absurdity.

In the 1960s, Hofstadter saw paranoia as a pernicious and growing influence in American life, citing the rise of groups like the anticommunist John Birch Society. He laid out a blueprint for the paranoid style that, even after all these years, sounds familiar to anyone who ever watched Glenn Beck sweat onto his chalkboard.

The bezzle can appear seductive from outside, thanks to the generous regular paychecks and the lack of actual work involved, but if there's one lesson economics teaches us, it is that there is no such a thing as a free lunch. Money being handed out to unproductive people will attract a lot of people who want to do these jobs, driving up the cost of