Combinations

combinationsmag.com is live! ✨ A publication by @RadxChange, exploring new ideas about economics, democracy, and the relationship between technology and power. If our societies are irreversibly technological, we must steer technology itself towards the common good, rather than accept it as an instrument of self-interest. To do that, our essays will examine institutional reconfigurations that can point to attractive futures for technologically mature societies—eschewing compounding power concentrations and opening up routes for more participatory paradigms. Our aim is to illuminate new possible paths, spotlighting connections between ideas, technologies, and social and political organization—to find maps of the present moment that might help us navigate it. The name Combinations reflects a belief that significant human progress often emerges at the junctures where diverse experiences and even paradoxical ideas can meet, exchange, and recombine. In this spirit, we offer our own, partial viewpoints, and seek to shed light on the work of thinkers and doers who have other perspectives. We believe that these people, ideas, and communities add up to more than the sum of their parts.

New article in @CombinationsMag 'In Defense of Secular Religions' - discusses how modern ideals of scientific & moral progress promise that rational inquiry can cleanse our beliefs of worldly bias. History suggests that this is not possible nor desirable. combinationsmag.com/in-defense-of-…

My latest, for @CombinationsMag & @RadxChange, in which I argue modernity - both in science and ethics - can be seen as an accidental offshot of medieval theology. But whereas others have argued this undermines the entire 'modern' endeavour, I argue exactly the opposite. 🔗👇

Modern ideals of scientific and moral progress promise that rational inquiry can cleanse our beliefs of worldly bias. The history of those ideals suggests that this is neither possible nor desirable. @nemocentric on secular modernity's sacred origins. combinationsmag.com/in-defense-of-…

Read here on Substack, where we'll be mirroring new articles as they're published and sharing updates: combinations.substack.com/p/the-abundanc…

“Abundance has little explicit to say about democratic contestation and the gaining and losing of power. The book invokes the importance of the public interest without properly explaining how to figure out what that is.” - Henry Farrell

The Case Against Planetary Governance: Democracy is in crisis. New piece by Wolfgang Streeck for @CombinationsMag explores how we’ve misidentified the cause and the solution alike. @wstreeckblog Read more: combinationsmag.com/the-case-again…

Read in full here: combinationsmag.com/the-case-again…

"How responsive network technologies can make politics to social needs depends on who owns and designs them. Technology per se is not an answer to anything." Wolfgang Streeck in Combinations.

Democracy is in crisis. Wolfgang Streeck thinks we’ve misidentified the cause and the solution alike. combinationsmag.com/the-case-again…

On Abundance, by @ezraklein and @DKThomp, with ht to Henry Farrell: bsky.app/profile/glenwe…

To remake globalization from a gangster racket into a genuine political society, we must recognize theology’s foundational role in shaping political order. combinationsmag.com/towards-a-plan…

What is the relationship between the grand narratives that have guided humanity and the concrete institutions and technologies that perpetuate them? Combinations’ inaugural print issue, “Myth and Mechanism” explores this question through new writing from @byranadasgupta, @glenweyl, @divyasiddarth, @SlaughterAM, @hauntedsurimi, @m_t_prewitt, @jackhendersn, @t1ngyu3, and @jayapapaya. Get your copy here: buy.stripe.com/8wMcQc1E50Ui5J…

The Catholic Church uses voting—not appointment or inheritance—to choose the Pope. In Conclave Democracy, Matt Prewitt argues this tradition reveals how voting can reinforce authority, not weaken it. Read via @CombinationsMag: combinationsmag.com/conclave-democ…

Listen to Weiler expand on the piece's ideas on the @RadxChange podcast: radicalxchange-s.simplecast.com/episodes/jhh-w…

When states ban religious symbols, they're imposing secularism while claiming objectivity. J.H.H. Weiler reveals how Europe's constitutional diversity offers a better model. combinationsmag.com/freedom-of-and…

We won a Telly!!! May the whole world learn the story of @audreyt 🖖

Henry Farrell reviews @ezraklein and @DKThomp's Abundance. Read here: combinationsmag.com/the-abundance-…

Among the charges against democracy, the claim that it undercuts stable authority holds special prominence. So why, asks @m_t_prewitt, does the Catholic Church—arguably the world’s stablest and most authoritative institution—choose its leader by vote? combinationsmag.com/conclave-democ…

The project of abundance had its beginnings in a fight that was broader than disputes between centrist and left-leaning liberals. It will perhaps have its greatest value in getting an even bigger debate started on sound footing. combinationsmag.com/the-abundance-…

The result is a book that has plenty to say about the public good but no theory of how we come to know it. Political contestation is presented solely as an obstacle to progress, not the means by which we figure out what a mutually desirable future could look like.

To understand the future of the abundance agenda, it might be useful to look back to its past. Read Henry Farrell on the cross-ideological debate that fomented @ezraklein and @DKThomp's Abundance and how it got cut short (link Below)