I did not say that language as a completed system emerged in an individual in an instant. But I cannot think of a coherent alternative to the idea that mutations take place in individuals, not communities, so that whatever rewiring of the brain yielded the apparently unique properties of language, specifically recursive generation of hierarchically structured expressions, would therefore have taken place in an individual, and only later been used among individuals who had inherited this capacity.

Technologies can be liberating, but it can also be a tool of coercion and control.

The internet, since it is publicly created, ought to be publicly controlled.

Unfortunately, you can’t vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place

The evangelicals. . . . If all they want is gold Cadillacs and sex and so on, no big problem.

Boards of directors are allowed to work together, so are banks and investors and corporations in alliances with one another and with powerful states. That’s just fine. It’s just the poor who aren’t supposed to cooperate.

With government deregulation and the triumph of financial liberalization, the dangers of systemic risks, the possibility of a financial tsunami, sharply increased.