Power and Progress

more importance to the aggregate accumulation of wealth and power than to the manner of its diffusion

Malthus thought that it was more humane not to let the living standards of the poor increase too much in the first place, lest they end up back in misery as they had more children.

should be society at large that should have a voice in whether such software should be designed and deployed.

When a company decides to develop face-recognition technology to track the faces in a crowd, to better market products to them or to make sure that people do not participate in protests, their engineers are best placed to decide how to design the software. But it

major part of democracy’s real advantage is avoiding the tyranny of narrow visions

diversity is not a “nice to have” feature; its presence is necessary to counteract and contain the overconfident visions of elites. Such diversity is also the essence of democracy’s strength.

By building institutions that provide access to a broader range of people and create pathways for diverse ideas to influence the agenda, we can break the monopoly over agenda setting that some individuals would otherwise enjoy.

we cannot count on social responsibility among those who hold great power

The rich and the prominent convince themselves that they are simply taking their just deserts, or even that being greedy is not beyond the pale.

support of $182 billion in the fall of 2008, yet it was allowed to pay nearly half a billion dollars in bonuses, including to people who had wrecked the company