Category: Social Theory

Economy, Profitability, Social Theory, UKLeave a comment

Revealed: Scottish state pays staff £27m for jobs that don’t exist

Colin Henderson

An SNP ban on compulsory redundancy means 800 public-sector ‘ghost workers’ are on full pay even though their roles are gone Saturday October 24 2026, 5.00pm BST, Hundreds of public sector workers in Scotland are costing the taxpayer at least £27m a year because their jobs no longer exist and the SNP refuses to make them redundant. A Sunday Times investigation has uncovered about 800 cases of NHS, central government, council and quango workers who no longer have a fixed role and who might ordinarily have been made redundant but remain on the public payroll.  The cost to the taxpayer is … Continue reading Revealed: Scottish state pays staff £27m for jobs that don’t exist

banking, Economics, Geopolitics, Innovation, Risk, Social Theory

US Tariffs Set to Make world economic and military History

Colin Henderson

It is worth capturing this moment. It has the potential to be elevated to a moment in world economic history in the same vein as Bretton Woods, World Trade Organization, United Nations, and many other bedrock areas that preceded and followed WWII. The broad perspective was to encourage World stability in economic terms and those tools were designed to create a global platform of stability that would make WWxx things of the past. Here we are 80 years later and the flaws in those tools with their commensurate inability to adapt have created a global world of bad actors yet … Continue reading US Tariffs Set to Make world economic and military History

AI, Progress, research, Social Theory

UPDATED Mar 05/ 25: The Evolution of Human Thought ….

Colin Henderson

and the Emergence of AI: A Historical Synthesis Abstract This report traces humanity’s evolving relationship with reality, knowledge, and reason from antiquity to the digital age, culminating in the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Across epochs, societies have grappled with the tension between faith, reason, and technological innovation, each era refining—or contesting—the role of human cognition in shaping understanding. The classical world elevated reason and idealized forms; medieval theology subordinated inquiry to divine revelation; the Renaissance and Enlightenment recentered human agency and empirical observation. Modernity’s scientific revolutions destabilized classical physics and philosophy, revealing reality’s inherent subjectivity. Today, AI challenges the … Continue reading UPDATED Mar 05/ 25: The Evolution of Human Thought ….

AGI, Social Theory

The Dark Side of Modernity(Alexander)

Colin Henderson

In “The Dark Side of Modernity,” Jeffrey C. Alexander critically examines modernity’s contradictory character, depicting it as both a historical period embodying Enlightenment ideals and a social condition marred by suffering and destructive impulses. He discusses how key theorists like Weber, Simmel, Eisenstadt, and Parsons tackled modernity’s dual nature, emphasizing that contradictions should not be resolved but accepted. Civil inclusion and anti-civil exclusion are intertwined, highlighting modernity’s endemic frictions. Alexander advocates for social amelioration through emotional repair and cultural performance, maintaining that acknowledging modernity’s duality fosters realistic approaches to social justice and improvement. Continue reading The Dark Side of Modernity(Alexander)