Benjamin Studebaker

Yet Another Attempt to Make the World a Better Place by Writing Things
July 31, 2020

On Coronavirus, We Don’t Want to End Up Like Europe

As the rich countries begin to release economic data for the second quarter, we can begin to form a clearer picture of where things stand. To date, it is undeniably the case that the crisis has been much worse for the European states than for the United States. This may change going forward, because the United States is still seeing its case load expand. But at present, the mainstream media narrative that the United States has uniquely mismanaged the crisis does not withstand scrutiny. The Europeans now face new long-term, existential threats to their social programs. They are much worse off.

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July 14, 2020

The Four Centrisms

Back in 2016, I argued that the centrist consensus of the 90s was breaking down, and that instead there was a wider menu, with three meaningfully distinct choices:

  • Left Egalitarianism, which critiqued the consensus on the grounds that it enabled capitalists to exploit workers
  • Neoliberalism, which defended the consensus through the traditional center-right and center-left parties
  • Right Nationalism, which critiqued the consensus on the grounds that it enabled foreigners to exploit citizens

I no longer believe that this menu exists, and it may never have existed. Instead, I think there are four different types of centrist position. These types of centrism are aesthetically different but substantively nearly identical. By differentiating aesthetically, the 90s consensus is able to accommodate a higher level of cultural polarisation while protecting the core commitments of the 90s consensus.

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July 11, 2020

Against the Stoics, Skeptics, Epicureans, and Buddhists

This is going to be an odd post about Greek philosophy and the contemporary analogues of Greek traditions. Its purpose is threefold. First, I’ll argue that the Stoics, Skeptics, and Epicureans had similar conceptions of the good life, that this conception closely resembles the conception preferred by Buddhists, and that this conception of the good life is mistaken. Second, I’ll argue that the Stoics and Skeptics both make similar–if opposite–errors with respect to meta-ethics, with the Stoics asserting an unrealistically ambitious epistemology and the Skeptics denying that epistemology without acknowledging less ambitious alternatives. Third, I’ll argue that many contemporary political and moral antagonisms are essentially new versions of the Stoic/Skeptic antagonism, and that there is a popular Epicurean response to this antagonism.

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June 20, 2020

The Immense Political Insight of The Land Before Time III: The Time of the Great Giving

Were you fortunate enough to see The Land Before Time III? The direct-to-video sequel to the original Land Before Time came out on VHS in late 1995. I re-watched it recently, and I think it has better political commentary than most of what I’ve read over the past couple months. Here’s why.

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June 15, 2020

The Ungoverned Globe

I have a new piece out at Aeon on the liberal international order, its inadequacies, and the difficulties with replacing it. You can read it here:

https://aeon.co/essays/can-the-liberal-order-be-transformed-by-global-government