circularfish

An inability of the citizenry to cohere around a shared national identity can make it more difficult for the government to overcome collective action problems. To be clear: the ability of the state to marshal resources and provide for individual needs *does not depend on racial or ethnic homogeneity, but is greatest where there is a shared sense of national community and commitment to common wellbeing.

The pace at which a nation can integrate immigrants, of all cultures and ethnicities, in terms of education, employment, housing, and adherence to existing shared cultural norms, should be determinative of the rate at which immigrants are admitted.

The precise definition of "integration"

I know folks around these parts are pretty much "live and let live", and that's actually why this is a great community, but I'm wondering why we've got two separate subreddits dedicated to agnosticism. I don't know if it was a historical accident or there was some sort of disagreement at some point, but I do note that at least one of the mods is on both and maybe he has an answer.

Anyway, it's not really that big of a pain to subscribe to both, but it might be nice to see more threads appearing on a single board. I've also seen a recent r/atheism post that compared the number of subscribers there to here [(link)](http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/sqq7t/saw_this_on_ragnosticismfor

I'm really pleased to see the recent posts here and over at r/agnostic which, if I can characterize them, resist the attempt to define self-described agnostics as deluded or misinformed atheists.

You don't have to be a pipe-smoking postmodern philosopher to recognize that the use of language, and the act of definition in particular, can often mask power politics. To me, at least, the impassioned attempts to tell us what we really mean when we self-identify as agnostic have started to resemble an odd philosophical recruiting drive.

That may be unfair, but the point of language is to convey meaning. When the meaning that others are attempting to attribute to you conceals or denigra

Ok, NeutralPolitics, if there was ever a topic that is at once (a) timely, (b) controversial, and (c) at least in theory, subject to empirical input, this is it.

The basic idea beyind Keynesian pump priming is simple - government stimulus is supposed to boost aggregate consumption in certain recessionary situations as a function of Keynesian multiplier which is, in turn, a declining function of a marginal propensity to save as expenditures are cycled.

Others are not so convinced this actually works. Or, for t

Howdy, baby eaters. Long screed – read at your risk, but this one has been bothering me for a while.

For years I’ve gone about happily referring to myself as an “agnostic”. It has always seemed less confrontational when addressing matters of belief -- the speech act of declaring oneself to be an atheist has always seemed to amount to a direct refutation of the theist (“your god does not exist”) whereas the agnostic descriptor at least allows room for common ground (“I doubt your details, but you might be right in some abstract sense”).

That said, I was fascinated to read explanations such as this one, where it is argued that a distinction ought to be drawn be

I was pondering this while preparing my morning coffee. We know refined cane sugar it is bad for you, but how long could a sugar and water diet support life compared to, say, simply drinking water?

I assume it would eventually kill you. How?