Societies have always had to negotiate the competing demands of the better-off and the poor. Yet for Aristotle, attributing civil war solely to economic causes is myopic. In Book V of his Politics, the ancient Greek analyzed no fewer than seven long-term causes that can transform peaceful citizens into violent factionalizers. Writing in American Greatness, Steven Skultety wonders how many of these are at play right now in the United States.

Keeping the AI Apocalypse at Bay
Writing in City Journal, Judge Glock examines legal efforts to control AI and dismisses the current fixation on suing for specific harms, such as bad advice. “The idea that we should treat Big Tech, including AI companies, like we treated Big Tobacco, is exactly the wrong idea,” he observes. A better approach is to assess product liability based on which parties can perform the task at the cheapest cost, as is the case with the regulation of medical equipment. This “has the benefit of putting the onus on companies themselves to game out dangerous scenarios and prevent them,” he advises. For more on AI, see this C2C article.


