Moral Hazards
Where’s the morality in imprisoning inner city citizens for political gain, or over-medicating university students over liability worries? Is compassion a virtue or a trend? What’s the upside to being good?
The Guardian
The Escalating Breakdown of Urban Society Across the US: The Wire imagines a stunning example of a parallel economy working within a national economy that has abandoned an entire subculture. Writer David Simon explores a similar disconnect with the legal system in Baltimore, and how its citizens are fighting back.
The American Interest Online
Medicate U.: Over-medicating college students with psychiatric drugs may be a university’s defense against malpractice suits, risk-management masking real problems.
in character
How an Emotion Became a Virtue–it took some help from Rousseau and Montesquieu: It’s only a recent historical phenomenon that we see compassion as a virtue. Will we eventually return to dispassion?
The New Yorker
“Good People” by David Foster Wallace: It is through being good that we learn how to love–a short story.
