Comments by "andrew worth" (@andrewworth7574) on "Steven Pinker: Progress, Despite Everything" video.

  1. "Wagner's law, known as the law of increasing state spending, is a principle named after the German economist Adolph Wagner (1835–1917).[1] He first observed it for his own country and then for other countries. The theory holds that for any country, that public expenditure rises constantly as income growth expands. The law predicts that the development of an industrial economy will be accompanied by an increased share of public expenditure in gross national product: The advent of modern industrial society will result in increasing political pressure for social progress and increased allowance for social consideration by industry. Wagner's law suggests that a welfare state evolves from free market capitalism due to the population voting for ever-increasing social services as general income levels grow across broad spectrums of the economy. In spite of some ambiguity, . . ." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner%27s_law
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  2. Regarding the proposed Shapiro/Pinker/Peterson/Harris discussion: Religions prosper when they effectively serve the needs of their adherents in their times, pre-Christ Judaism was useful to Jews in that time because being genocidal is better for survival than being genocided. Today we live in different times, today survival isn't a zero-sum game in which one tribe has to die out for another's population to expand, today being genocidal is frowned upon by the global super-tribe.
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