Only Power Can Check Power

A central problem of political theory has long been the question of “who watches the watchers?” This stems from the fact that it is generally assumed that it is necessary to grant the civil government a monopoly on coercive power in order to protect the subject population from domestic crime and from aggression by some other state. (Once the civil government obtains this monopoly, it is transformed into what we call a “state.”)

The Robot Won’t Take Your Job. The Government Might

In the spring of 1812, British textile workers smashed power looms across Nottinghamshire, convinced that the machines would make their skills worthless and their families destitute. They were right about the disruption. Mills did displace hand-weavers. Communities that had organized themselves around a particular kind of skilled labor were genuinely torn apart. The Luddites weren’t stupid, and they weren’t wrong to feel the ground shifting. They were wrong about one thing: the conclusion. The labor those machines displaced didn’t vanish.

The Duke Lacrosse Case 20 Years Later: How Durham Law Enforcement Promoted a Criminal Conspiracy

In 2006, Michael Nifong had been a year in his job as Durham County District Attorney, appointed by Democratic Gov. Mike Easley of North Carolina with the promise he would not run for that position in the next election. However, after Nifong and his wife saw he could earn an extra $15,000 a year on his pension if he served four more years as a D.A., he decided to run for office in the upcoming Democratic primary in April 2006.