Robert Johnson

The Growth Illusion Why Economic Growth is No Longer Realistic or Aspirational

"...advanced economies may have reached the point where significant growth is structurally impossible without wholesale redistribution of capital. That redistribution need not be ideological or punitive; it could be engineered through systemic redesign."

Why Everything You Know About Illegal Immigration is Wrong The Real Story Behind Britain’s "Illegal Immigration" Crisis

"Why don’t asylum seekers simply wait in their own country and apply there? The UK government's official position is explicit: You cannot apply for asylum from overseas. You must reach UK territory first. There is thus no legal route to asylum without doing something illegal, to get into the UK."

Where Pride Ends and Intimidation Begins The St George's Cross Problem

"If the act is really one of belonging and pride, fly it with a message of ‘respect for all races’ written across the middle. That demonstrates pride without the intention to threaten. If this disgusts you, then perhaps it wasn’t pride that was the initial motive for displaying the flag after all."

General Artificial Intelligence: The Myth that Still Dominates Society We are trying to create limitless human minds, whilst misunderstanding how human minds work

General Artificial Intelligence is fundamentally impossible, and misunderstands what the 'General' in 'Human General Intelligence' both consists of and is held back by.

Understanding these facts of neuroscience, evolutionary biology and philosophy of mind help to show why AI will never become GAI.

The Rise of the Far Right: Can Institutions Be Rebuilt to Withstand Extremism? Finding the Pied Piper.

"Yes, the far-right is ineffective, and wasteful and hateful, and will fail the societies it is part of. But if you argue on it’s terms - if you fight it in online algorithms that will spread its myths 500 times faster than it will spread your truths - then you will lose."

The Rise of the Far Right: Religious Roots and Rebirth How political extremism hijacked the language of morality and belonging.

"...the architecture of religious belief, untethered from critical inquiry, mirrors the structure of political extremism: obedience over doubt, group loyalty over evidence, faith over complexity. The match was not accidental but strategic."

The Rise of the Far Right: Algorithmic Authoritarianism How Tech Platforms Became Radicalization Machines

"If the US’ broadcast media looks like an unbalanced apparatus to other developed nations, social media resembles a seesaw shattered by a ten-ton weight.

The more effective a piece of far-right propaganda is at triggering emotion, the more likely it is to dominate your feed."

The Rise of the Far Right: How Bots Spread the Disease Weaponised social media, inauthentic voices, and the illusion of mass support.

One 2021 study estimated that as much as 45% of all content on trending topics such as politics came from non-human accounts, often amplified through networks of fake followers and "engagement pods. Bots didn’t just amplify. They framed reality.

Where The Rise of the Far Right Began 4th Aug 1987: The Day We Removed the Manhole Cover

"The date was 4 August 1987. On paper, it was a small regulatory adjustment by a 4 person committee. In reality, it marked a turning point: the moment America, perhaps unknowingly, pried open the manhole covers leading to the gravest threat to democracy since the 1940s."

Has the Land of the Free Become a Failed Democracy? Is America's descent from democracy now definitive?

"For much of modern history, the United States has proudly billed itself as “the land of the free” and a model democracy. In recent years, however, prominent watchdogs and research organizations have raised alarms about the health of American democracy."

"As early as 1992, Netanyahu claimed Iran would have a nuclear bomb within 2-3 years. For decades, one critical factor restrained him from acting on his threats: the United States. After 30 years of crying wolf, Netanyahu finally found a president he could manipulate."

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“10% of GDP”: the Hidden Benefits of Engineering Capitalism In recent weeks, my series on re-engineering capitalism has been delving into the problems necessarily faced within our current economic system (including when it will necessarily fail), as well as wh...

"When we step back and look at the global picture, it's clear that modern capitalism carries an enormous price tag (well over 10% of global GDP) in the form of its failures. These are resources that could be better directed toward human flourishing, innovation, and resilience."

Capitalism’s Final Equation When will increasingly hoarded wealth leave too few resources to sustain everyone else?

"The data says that the non-elite already fall $43 trillion short of simply eating and sleeping under a roof. An economic system that cannot clear the bar of keeping its participants alive, let alone allow them space to innovate."

"The mistakes Roosevelt made happened during the last great war, at a time of international panic and insecurity. Roosevelt’s mistakes are seen as lamentable but understandable in context. Trump’s ‘national emergency’ will be judged a cynical political power grab."

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Reason Applied - read the article now: buff.ly/Ky2Qfof

#USPOL #PhilSky #CriticalThinking

"We must ask whether our rush to support transition is, in some cases, a failure to challenge outdated norms — norms that tell people they must change who they are to be accepted as they are."

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"In democracies like the US and UK, political power is heavily influenced by campaign finance and media ownership, often dominated by those with the most to lose from reform. We risk forever living in an impractical system if we allow those forces to dictate our future policies."

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The Long Con: 30 Years of Netanyahu’s Lies, and the President He Could Finally Manipulate 30 years of crying wolf

reasonapplied.substack.com/p/the-long-c...

"U.S. intelligence continues to assess that Tehran was not building a bomb. But for the first time in decades, the Israeli Prime Minister calculated that Washington’s veto power could be outmaneuvered. After 30 years of crying wolf, Netanyahu finally found a president he could manipulate."

Trump’s False Right-Left Dichotomy in Education Why elite universities don’t reflect the political right and why they shouldn’t.

"The problem isn’t a lack of conservatives in universities. It’s a lack of modern conservatism that can withstand serious scrutiny, which has been created by conservatives abandoning the benefits of science and academia for decades."

UK Water: An Example of the Disaster of Privatisation A right-wing experiment to test the viability of privatising UK water has cost consumers £337 billion.

"Today, the National Audit Office estimates that the UK faces a £290 billion infrastructure bill over the next 25 years to fix what should have been maintained all along...all but £13 billion of that could have been avoided if just the dividends paid to investors had instead been reinvested."

How Do We Move To An Engineered Capitalism? Capitalism is failing the falsifiability test. Engineered Capitalism is now a necessity. How do we move toward it?

"Engineered Capitalism, then, is not a single reform but a sequenced redesign of the economic system."

Rethinking Economics. A Blueprint for Engineered Capitalism In a world where capitalism is failing the falsifiability test, we need to examine the alternatives and move to Engineered Capitalism.

"An economic system that cannot clear the bar of keeping its participants alive, let alone allow them space to innovate, has forfeited its social license. In this follow-up, I explore potential alternatives to our current economic system."

Capitalism’s Final Equation When will increasingly hoarded wealth leave too few resources to sustain everyone else?

I’ve spent the past few weeks building a model to test this. The goal was simple: find out when the amount of wealth held collectively by non-millionaires will no longer be enough to cover basic needs. When will the rules of the game begin to necessarily eliminate the players?

Thinking the Unthinkable: In an Age of Billionaires and AI, Is Capitalism Still Viable? Inflation proves that money relates to real world resources, so do billionaires mean that capitalism fails the falsifiability test?

"A handful of billionaires command more wealth than most countries. Wages for ordinary workers have stagnated. Basic needs—housing, healthcare, education—are slipping out of reach. Automation replaces jobs faster than new ones are created. Entire economies now bend to the will of a few."

reasonapplied.substack.com/p/trumps-iso...

Trump's Isolationist Policies Aren't New - Ask the USSR. Donald Trump's foreign policy, with its signature "America First" slogan, has been marked by a retreat from international alliances, the abandonment of treaties, and a push for greater American milita...

"The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the ultimate consequence of its isolationist policies: the loss of its superpower status and the disintegration of its empire. The warnings for the U.S. are stark."

reasonapplied.substack.com/p/trumps-imm...

Trump's Immigration Plan Has Been Done Before. It Didn't Go Well. History serves as a powerful reminder about consequences of bad decisions.

From birthright citizenship to mass deportations, Trump's policies echo the most troubling and regressive periods of U.S. history, and his refusal to recognise this shows a dangerous failure in leadership. Good leadership requires new ideas, not repeating the mistakes of the past.