In answer to the question about What burning issues to address? I suggest you engage [debunk?] the emerging hype cycle about empathy (Einfuehlung), but do so in a profesional way. One point of view is that nothing sensible has been said about empathy since Heidegger called for "a special hermenetuic of emapthy" in a 1927 publication and then did not give one. Another point of view - last month (Oct 2009), Frans de Waal's The AGE of EMPATHY was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal - an excellent popular treatment of the subject based on his experiences with great apes at the Yerkes Primate habitat. Some excellent illustrations too. JD Trout (Philosophy Loyola University Chicago) tries to connect the dots between empathy and social security - I am not making this up - in his The EMPATHY GAP (Viking Books). Arguably these launched the inchoate hype cycle. I am not saying this is good or not good - I am saying it is time for a fundamental philosphical inquiry. See a contribution by yours truly atwww.EmpathyInTheContextOfPhilosophy.com

In the near future how we reconcile the continued development of life quality and quantity extension with the continued population challenge on world resources will be increasingly a philosophical problem. One the one hand it is in many senses "Human Nature" to develop technologies that make it easier to live. Possibly the single greatest development, fire, has led to one of our greatest challenges to continued development, global warming. As more people exert their fundamental rights to live, carbon is burned. As our basis for development, energy consumption is inexorably linked to improving the human condition. And, improvements in the human condition are linked inexorably to human population. This has been bandied about for decades yet we face this mutually exclusive relationship in increasingly dramatic terms. If a very few (wealthy) humans are enabled to have medically and cybernetically enhanced life spans in an energy intensive ?post biological? future while the vast majority of humans are constrained to hard-scrabble, energy and food starved, shorter, less healthy lives in an environmentally damaged world, it will be a profound moral failing. Prometheus? legacy?

“公司即人”是现代价值观和实践灾难的核心。As corporations have grown into "Global Persons" they have become increasingly anti-human in their character, and have become addicts to unsustainable Growth as the prevailing values that drive production, deceptive advertising, compulsory mis-education and professional life, providing financing to buy politicians and disseminate fallacious news reporting, toxic, mendacious punditry, and pumping pseudo-scientific obscurantism into public policy, etc.
企业人是现代的弗兰肯斯坦怪物，他实际上已经统治了世界，在很多方面超过了民族国家的力量，在所有领域绝对超过了真正的人类的力量，除了做好事的能力。国家已经变成了现代企业巨兽的仆人，为保护公司的掠夺性权利而战斗，为企业灾难提供援助，并为企业罪犯、犯罪机构和机会主义股东提供保护豁免权。企业对媒体的所有权已经成为企业成功的一个重要因素。
随着媒体日益公式化(包括美国国家公共电台(NPR))，真相和社会的本质已经灾难性地恶化，人们被分裂成仅仅是个人主义的小玩意消费者和他人行为的被动观众。媒体一直围绕着一种有利可图的利益，不惜一切代价(通过诱人的广告和“平衡”的报道，让谎言有同等的曝光时间)宣传盲目的道德相对主义和商品拜物教，以拥有一个可操纵的民众，他们可以被引导购买任何东西(小玩意，以及导致战争和金融欺诈的政治谎言)。
Side by side with this corrosive relativism (and the insecurity it breeds) is a correlative psychological tendency toward authoritarianism and brutish social Darwinism, as we witness with the flood of corporate-sponsored ?reality? TV shows based on survival themes where only 1 person is entitled to be a winner, and all the rest are authoritatively rejected and devalued as Losers. You're Fired, American Idol, Fear Factor, The Swan, Biggest Loser, Survivor, Hell's Kitchen etc. are all presided over by a mix of truly sociopathic, voyeruistic, hostile and sadistic personalities who are elevated to positions of social leadership and respectability, using fabricated competitions to promote the corporate value system of ruthless opportunism as a replacement for pro-social values of caring, community, and conscience. As spectators, we are invited to join them in their amused indifference to human suffering, its causes and solutions.
它们是1950年的病态回忆?“一天的女王”节目也同样款待了我们。她们通过讲述最悲惨的家庭故事来赢得奖项，比如迫切的医疗需求、经济困难或个人损失。资本主义并没有为其不人道的倾向而感到羞耻，而是反常地将其系统性的失败和残酷转变为新的娱乐和消遣形式，创造出宣泄情绪的戏剧，重新引导和消散社会对制度失败的反感和愤怒，并将它们变成无害的、替代正义和胜利的琐碎插曲。一天的女王得到了一种宣泄的胜利，象征着一个新秀丽手提箱，一瓶Tuvaché香水，戴着王冠和斗篷，在走道上散步30秒，以暂时抵消她现实生活中的痛苦;和系统?不?她必须解决一些根本问题，比如她的房子被银行收回，她生病的丈夫缺乏负担得起的医疗保健，或者是公司解雇了他。一个女人赢了?在电视上，无数女性观众对她的胜利产生了一种暂时的、宣泄的认同，而公司资本的机器可以继续在历史上掠夺前进，而不受任何大规模的民众反对。
The corporate media are collectively promoting a corporate agenda of Darwinian survivalism not only as a perverse form of cruel, voyeuristic gladiatorial entertainment, but also as the brutish social ethic of the future, to reverse the less-profitable humanistic advances of pro-social modernity. Our media are using entertainment vehicles to promote an anti-communitarian allegory of regressive individualism, where lying, manipulation, selling each other out, and "anything goes" are the newly acceptable, brutish norms for the social contract of the 21st century. Corporate media are preparing us for a world where most people are going to end up as Losers and be thrown out of the game, off the island, to build their Loser lives in desperate, low-class mediocrity, outside the charmed circle of Rich Winners. The Rich Winners are deemed inherently admirable, and nobody else really matters because The Contest (i.e., corporate capitalism) has authoritatively defined them as Losers.
Reality TV becomes the offical venue where larger societal issues are narratively distorted and re-defined, and truly virtuous alternatives are never discussed or represented. Only the coarsest, least humane, least cooperative options are given airtime. Trivial ?treasure hunt? elements are constantly substituted for the real challenges of Reality, and the pacified spectator populace thoughtlessly grants acceptance and agreement to the increasingly dehumanizing Game that creates a thousand Losers for every Winner. Virtually no disgusting humiliation is excluded as a valid "test" for contestants, and this sets the stage for telling the rest of us in society to not expect anything better when difficult times are upon us. If you're not prepared to drink a smoothie made with blenderized grub worms, then you're not worthy to even be in the Game, much less ever be considered as a Winner. Reality games are re-defining human virtues in ways that routinely exclude truly human virtues, and that exalt truly sick, sadistic, and sociopathic traits.
The corporate myth of progress is built around constantly exaggerated valuing of its primary products every six months (?You gotta have this thing!?), and a profound under-estimation of the vast array of negative externalities involved in the production and consumption process, with global warming as the looming exemplar. Ignoring environmental and economic externalities is an essential element of corporate ?success,? and Darwinian entertainment is becoming an essential tool for inculcating a corresponding societal indifference to the social externalities (Losers) that we will increasingly be surrounded with, or become ourselves, as the global corporate mega-machine continues on its suicidal rampage of Profits Uber Alles, undeterred by revelations of massive financial fraud and environmental collapse.
The more corporations can help *debase* the standards of social life, the more of a manipulable consumer base they will have for the false values of corporate products and the false politics that are needed to provide an appearance of necessity and legitimacy to the brutish deterioration of civilization and the catastrophic destruction of the natural world.
由非人的、不可持续的经济伪价值驱动的弗兰肯斯坦公司(Frankenstein Corporation)，是现代人类福祉的主要反对者。我们必须直面它，让它服从于人类的价值观。
Several concrete actions to take are:
(a) eliminate corporate personhood as a legal concept and entity.
(b) require all corporations above a certain size to have elected public Directors on the Board, to protect the public interest;
(c) require all corporations to submit to Re-Chartering every 5 years, based on a systematic review of pro-social and environmental criteria, as well as economic performance;
(d) create Corporate Liability legislation that will define long-term accountability for corporate officers and shareholders, so that long-term costs/liabilities /externalities can be retroactively charged to *all investors and beneficiaries* of corporate decisions (e.g., making stock holders liable to pay for future damages caused by toxic waste). Short-term profiteers, legislators, and lobbyists will be accountable for long-term impacts. Stockholders and their immediate family members who profit from any corrupt or damaging corporate practices will be liable to ?restitutional taxation? for up to 25 years for all investments and capital gains income (i.e., investment itself alone creates liability for restitution, regardless of whether capital gains are involved)
(e) corporations guilty of corrupt practices (including employee or public endangerment, fraudulent billing, and environmental damage) will be prevented from federal or state contracts for a period of 3 years;
(f) eliminate all corporate involvement in political campaign financing, and
(g) re-write FCC regulations to require all corporate broadcast licenses to include a Public Service component, requiring broadcasters to provide free prime time airtime for political candidate debates, public education, and public discussions.
如果不采取这些措施，弗兰肯斯坦公司(the Corporate Frankenstein)及其在华盛顿和州政府购买的政治代理人将毫发无损，自由地继续对地球和社会2022世界杯小组赛分组价值观进行系统性的破坏。几个世纪以来，这些价值观标志着文明与野蛮之间的脆弱差异。

迄今为止，“哲学谈话”似乎忽略了中国伊朗亚洲杯比赛直播一个话题，那就是寻找外星智慧生物。为什么人类如此急切地希望与其他智能生命接触?我们是受生理因素的制约，仅仅是出于好奇，还是自恋?我们接触更先进的文明真的是个好主意吗?如果我们自己的历史有任何指示，更原始的文明总是以某种形式被利用。如果外星智能“生命”根本就不是活的，而是机器呢?等等……

Congratulations on 200 episodes. May there be many more!

Dear John & Ken-
Thanks for your radio program, I enjoyed the discussions on Sunday's 200th anniversary show, and I especially appreciated the points that Ms Nussbaum brought up.
I would like to contribute with a philosophical issue that faces us in the future. Although this topic had been brought up in an abstract and general way, I often think about it more specifically.
Definition of national identity and statehood, self-determination. When do a group of people, with a common cultural identity, have the right to declare an independent statehood apart from the nation they are currently under? Who authorizes these declarations of independence? How can a nation judiciously hold disparate groups of people, how can it protect the rights for all of its citizens? Who are nations accountable to? We see these issues in Israel/Palestine, the Uyghurs and Tibet in China, to name a few examples.

I thank you, both Ken and John, for this mind expanding show you bring to the air waves. Philosophy itself, at least in the public view, has become rather scarce. I personally think that a brief history of both Eastern and Western philosophies should be discussed.
Another topic would be rather engaging, would be a compare and contrast of materialism and transcendental idealism.
But, the most interesting topic to arise in the last three years is the LCH accelerator experiment in Geneva, Switzerland. Recently two Physicists, Holger B. Nielsen, The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, & Masao Ninomiya, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, who have postulated a logical assertion based on experiments that they want to be done at the facility.
?While we find that there is a lot of structure from the past that exists today in its present state - at the level of pure physics - simple structures existing in the future, so to speak, do not appear to prearrange the past so that they are (Nielsen, Ninomiya, 2008).?
但无论如何，我相信你会找到一些好的东西来提升我们作为听众的意识。再接再厉!

I think we will be revisiting the issue of human rights in this century. When we first started discussing such rights, they were described as "inalienable", and God given. Now there are a broad range of human rights being encoded in international agreements and some nations' constitutions, including rights to employment, health care and education. Are these truly "God given" rights that we are born with, or are they choices about how we want to treat each other as fellow human beings? My view is that they are the latter, which gives us both greater responsibility and greater agency to make them universal.

伟大的表演。当然，文明所面临的许多最困难的问题都需要个人、公司、组织和政府之间进行某种形式的合作。但是，我们能否重新定义人们的偏好，让我们每个人自己选择社会最优的活动水平呢?还是建立制度、法律和规范更有效，引导人们的自然欲望，使他们有效地内化他们的行为的影响?
The difference is highlighted by John's and Jenaan's misconception of economics. John states that economics is based upon growth which requires an increase in population; Jenaan does understand that economics is based upon individuals making decisions in a decentralized manner but thinks that economics does not harbor the answer to the challenges confronting civilization.
我想澄清这些误解。首先，经济学家关心的是增长，但不是总产出，而是人均产出——经济中每个人(包括不工作的人)生产的商品和服务的价值。当这种“生产力”提高时，人们就有了更多的自由——有时间和资源来购买给他们带来快乐的商品和服务，有资源来免受社会和自然的掠夺，甚至有时间来享受这些快乐。2022世界杯小组赛分组想想过去几个世纪、上个世纪、过去十年、甚至过去几年发生的显著变化:以任何标准衡量，地球上几乎所有地方的人们都变得更好了。考虑到预期寿命、分娩风险、生活质量、更短的工作周、更好更安全的工作条件、越来越多的人有机会在世界各地交流和旅行……非常好的酒曾经是富人的专利，许多周末的运动员因为常见的伤病而缩短了职业生涯，我们的汽车更安全、更干净，需要的维护也少得多，……
Yes, population has grown, but that is more a result of the decrease in childhood disease and the increase in life expectancy of adults. As the people in an economy become more productive, women acquire more education, have fewer children, and population growth slows (or even, as in much of Europe, declines).
Similarly, as economies grow, the stress they generate on the environment increases, but as they become wealthier (on a per capita basis), they start to devote more resources to cleaning the environment and pay more to keep production from damaging the environment in the first place.
All of these improvements (ask anyone who lived in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s, or recalls the scourge of acid rain in the northeast, or sees the ozone hole closing) are a consequence of sound science and good economic policy. Yes, individuals acting in their own self interest, and firms doing the same, CAN choose socially efficient levels of activities and produce goods in the socially efficient manners when governments ensure that ALL goods are priced appropriately. These are called Pigouvian taxes -- a tax on carbon emissions would be one such example.
Game theory, especially cooperative game theory, and mechanism design are subfields of economics that seek an understanding of what individuals would choose in different situations and the outcomes. Governments have "social welfare functions" that rank different distributions of resources, and "social choice functions" that translate the collective preferences of the individuals into actions that the government takes.
选举过程本身是一个经济体中的个人组织如何聚集他们的集体偏好，然后实施行动，以最好地实现这些偏好的一种方式。利用国际条约通过惩罚和拒绝奖励那些背离承诺的人来诱导承诺，这是合作博弈论和机制设计付诸实践的例子。困难在于，由于个人有动机错误陈述他们的偏好，或缺乏执行的能力，或有不同的时间偏好率，这些决定的实施和执行是困难的。
但是，正如无数的成功所证明的那样，这并非不可能。它首先要理解经济学家的目标和经济学的各个子领域，并与这些系统一起工作，以实现更理想的目标。通过增加教育和安全保障，社会的生产力会提高，可以使用更多的资源来提供我们所享受的商品和服务，减少危害和清理混乱。
去享受这样的事情:听，从世界的另一端，异步地听播客;与朋友和家人沟通几乎不需要任何成本;甚至还有来自全国(或世界各地)的人们聚在一起过节和庆祝的能力——过去旅行的时间足够长，以至于人们不会考虑在全国各地飞一个周末，或者旅行的费用非常昂贵，只有富人才能负担得起。
To be able to enjoy well-told stories -- in a book or on a movie screen or on a laptop while lazing at a lakefront. To be able to experience diving at a coral reef or soaring into outer space. To walk the souks one day and the Champs Elysees the next before marveling at the Great Pyramids of Giza and walking along the Great Wall of China.
These are what economists pursue -- how to most effectively allow individuals to "consume" these goods and activities. And these are what have become feasible for billions more people the last century.

These are what economists pursue -- how to most effectively allow individuals to "consume" these goods and activities. And these are what have become feasible for billions more people the last century.

Congratulations on 200 episodes. May there be many more!

Dear John & Ken-
Thanks for your radio program, I enjoyed the discussions on Sunday's 200th anniversary show, and I especially appreciated the points that Ms Nussbaum brought up.