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A batch of the best highlights from what Todd's read, .
The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be. This is clear. But there’s no guarantee that the leanest we can be will ever be as lean as we’d like. This is a reality to be faced. As I discussed, there are genetic variations in fatness and leanness that are independent of diet. Multiple hormones and enzymes affect our fat accumulation, and insulin happens to be the one hormone that we can consciously control through our dietary choices.
Why We Get Fat
Gary Taubes
In fact, there’s absolutely no reason a modern state should fund itself primarily by appropriating a proportion of each citizen’s earnings. There are plenty of other ways to go about it. Many—such as land, wealth, commercial, or consumer taxes (any of which can be made more or less progressive)—are considerably more efficient, since creating a bureaucratic apparatus capable of monitoring citizens’ personal affairs to the degree required by an income tax system is itself enormously expensive. But this misses the real point: income tax is supposed to be intrusive and exasperating. It is meant to feel at least a little bit unfair. Like so much of classical liberalism (and contemporary neoliberalism), it is an ingenious political sleight of hand—an expansion of the bureaucratic state that also allows its leaders to pretend to advocate for small government.
Against Economics
David Graeber
The myth of redemptive violence serves as the inner spirituality of the national security state. It provides divine legitimation for the suppression of poor people everywhere, and the extraction of wealth from the poorer nations.
The Powers That Be
Walter Wink
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