Scott Boehmer

Category: Politics

  • The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

    By reducing morality to an abstract numbers game, and by declaring that what’s most important is fulfilling “our potential” by becoming simulated posthumans among the stars, longtermists not only trivialize past atrocities like WWII (and the Holocaust) but give themselves a “moral excuse” to dismiss or minimize comparable atrocities in the future. This is one reason that I’ve come to see longtermism as an immensely dangerous ideology. It is, indeed, akin to a secular religion built around the worship of “future value,” complete with its own “secularised doctrine of salvation,” as the Future of Humanity Institute historian Thomas Moynihan approvingly writes in his book X-Risk. The popularity of this religion among wealthy people in the West—especially the socioeconomic elite—makes sense because it tells them exactly what they want to hear: not only are you ethically excused from worrying too much about sub-existential threats like non-runaway climate change and global poverty, but you are actually a morally better personfor focusing instead on more important things—risk that could permanently destroy “our potential” as a species of Earth-originating intelligent life.

    Émile P. Torres

    The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk” (Current Affairs)

  • Why Billionaires Obey in Advance

    The Trump administration is being actively taught right now that it can expect the full cooperation of the leaders of industry. Why are they offering themselves without being asked? Because that’s what they’re trained for.

    The myth of the moral billionaire has dogged me my entire career. For years I’ve been reassured by people inside and outside the power structure of Silicon Valley that the moral judgement of people at the top of major companies was so reliable that it required no real oversight.

    Jacob Ward

    Why Billionaires Obey in Advance (The Rip Current)

  • NC GOP Sore Losers

    On the brink of losing their supermajority in the state legislature, North Carolina Republicans overrode a gubernatorial veto on Wednesday to enact a new law that gives them control over elections in the state and strips the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general of some of their powers.

    Sam Levine

    Unfortunately, Western North Carolina had to watch as every Republican in the general assembly shamelessly put their desire to strip political power away from recently elected Democrats ahead of the aid and relief their communities need. Using the guise of Hurricane Helene relief is a new low, even for general assembly Republicans.

    Anderson Clayton, Chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party

    North Carolina GOP lawmakers override veto to strip power from Democratic officials (The Guardian)

  • The Purpose of a System is What it Does

    When trying to understand systems, one really eye-opening and fundamental insight is to realize that the machine is never broken. What I mean by this is, when observing the outcomes of a particular system or institution, it’s very useful to start from the assumption that the outputs or impacts of that system are precisely what it was designed to do — whether we find those results to be good, bad or mixed.

    Anil Dash

    The Purpose of a System is What it Does (Anil Dash)

  • The Case for “Single Stair” Reform

    Building only one staircase into a building means that builders can use more space for living area. It not only lowers construction costs (building more stairs adds costs), but it also increases the amount of available housing space, bringing down total cost-per-square-foot. Builders can also fit single-stair buildings into smaller or more oddly-shaped parcels of land. In urban areas where the housing crisis is often worst, that describes a significant portion of real estate available for housing construction.

    The bottom line: single-stair means more places to live, and they’re more affordable.

    Carolina Forward Research Staff

    The Case for “Single Star” Reform (Carolina Forward)

  • More on Biden’s Pardon

    It’s one in a long line of things that should be punished by the electorate, but are currently not. This kind of behavior, whether it is from President Biden or former President Trump should have made either of the candidates unelectable. But we aren’t rewarding people for doing the right thing, and we’re not punishing people for doing the wrong thing. And unfortunately, I don’t see that trend changing anytime soon.

    And as I said at the beginning, there’s no dispute that the President actually possesses this power. But we’re in really bad shape as a country, if the rule is if you’re legally allowed to do it, then you can and should do it.

    I guess this is a good reminder that so much of what we’ve come to respect in our society and in our government is not about the law as it’s explicitly written down, but is just a norm that we’ve grown accustomed to. A norm that is slowly eroding.

    Devin Stone, LegalEagle

    The Hunter Biden Pardon Is An Abuse of Power (LegalEagle)

  • How North Carolina’s Gerrymandering Affects the Nation

    Here’s the reality: the congressional map we used to have, with a 7-7 Republican-Democratic split, reflected the true political makeup of our state. It was fair. It gave voters on both sides confidence that their voices mattered. But that wasn’t good enough for legislative Republicans in Raleigh. They threw fairness out the window, forcing through a mid-decade map that handed Republicans an unfair 10-4 advantage in the next Congress. That’s 71% of North Carolina’s seats in the U.S. House going to Republicans and those 10 bright red districts were not even close.

    It doesn’t take a mathematician to see what’s wrong with that. And now, with Adam Gray’s apparent victory in California’s 13th District giving Republicans a bare three-seat majority in the U.S. House, it’s clear that gerrymandering in North Carolina tipped the scales in their favor and cost Democrats control of the US House of Representatives.

    Representative Wiley Nickel

    NC congressman: Republicans stole fairness from the nation in giving GOP a House majority (Raleigh News & Observer)

  • Those Who Remember Dictatorship

    The events in South Korea, and this trip to Portugal, has me more convinced than ever that the United States is an innocent teenager when it comes to our development as a nation, and our tendency to let the market choose our politics and our economic policy for us is exactly what millions of citizens in Portugal, South Korea, Colombia, Turkey, Uganda, and dozens of other nations would warn us about. And for me the most shocking part was that as a journalist of 25 years, I know so little about their experiences.

    Jacob Ward

    Those Who Remember Dictatorship (The Rip Current)

  • Biden’s Pardon

    Joe Biden has now provided every Republican—and especially those running for Congress in 2026—with a ready-made heat shield against any criticism about Trump’s pardons, past or present. Biden has effectively neutralized pardons as a political issue, and even worse, he has inadvertently given power to Trump’s narrative about the unreliability of American institutions. Biden at first promised to respect the jury’s verdict in Hunter’s gun trial, and vowed he would not pardon Hunter—and then said that because “raw politics” had “infected this process,” he had to act. And so now every Republican can say: When it comes to pardons, all I know is that I agree with Joe Biden that the Justice Department can’t be trusted to treat Americans fairly. I’m glad he finally saw the light.

    Tom Nichols

    The Hunter Biden Pardon Is a Strategic Mistake (The Atlantic)

    Some have suggested that Biden’s pardoning his son will now give Trump license to pardon anyone he wants, apparently forgetting that in his first term, Trump pardoned his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner, who pleaded guilty to federal charges of tax evasion, campaign finance offenses, and witness tampering and whom Trump has now tapped to become the U.S. ambassador to France.

    Trump also pardoned for various crimes men who were associated with the ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian operatives working to elect Trump. Those included his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, former campaign manager Paul Manafort, and former allies Roger Stone and Steve Bannon. Those pardons, which suggested Trump was rewarding henchmen, received a fraction of the attention lavished on Biden’s pardon of his son.

    Heather Cox Richardson

    December 2, 2024 (Letters from an American)

    Personally, I’m disappointed to see President Biden pardon his son, especially after saying that he wouldn’t do so. On the other hand, it is important to remember the context that Trump already has used a pardon for a family member and has also used them to shield his political allies.

  • An Uncertain Future for Election Reform

    Supporters of electoral innovation – from ranked-choice voting, to independent redistricting, to proportionally representative systems – face formidable obstacles. Perhaps the most significant is simple voter comprehension.

    Carolina Forward Research Staff

    An Uncertain Future for Election Reform (Carolina Forward)