"A useful way to keep all of this grounded is to watch for a simple red flag: any system—cultural, technical, or political—that quietly shifts from supporting human flourishing to sorting humans by worth is moving in the direction you should be concerned about".

"I'm too tired to maintain interpersonal relationships. Life kicked my ass over the past decade in general, but particularly over the past year. I want a connection with humans but most of their brains are rotten they are in a zombie mode there's nothing real or deep there, its unclear, probably mine too. I wish to just live far away, off the grid, with a tribe or something. I'm kinda done".

 

When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him. In the same way the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one. 

KARL A. MENNINGER

The quote "It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one" was coined by American psychiatrist Karl Menninger. It highlights that those without personal experience of struggle or trauma (the free fish) cannot truly understand or empathize with the pain and struggles of others (the hooked fish). [1, 2, 3, 4]

Key Interpretations of the Quote:

• Empathy and Judgment: It highlights our tendency to judge others for their struggles—anxiety, addiction, or bad decisions—without seeing the invisible "hook" (circumstances, trauma, or mental health issues) that keeps them stuck.
• Perspective: The free fish assumes the hooked fish is just acting erratically, not realizing it is fighting for survival.
• Application: It is often used to describe the difficulty in explaining hidden struggles, such as mental health issues or complex research, to those who have not experienced them. [1, 2, 3]

The quote is widely cited as a reminder to practice compassion rather than judgment, acknowledging that "hooks" can be hidden. [1, 2]

 "The paint that language creates with is kinaesthetic experience"

 Cahal Moran (the YouTube channel Unlearning Economics) doesn’t push one single “grand plan,” but there are clear themes in the kinds of solutions he tends to support. They come out of his broader goal: challenging mainstream (neoclassical) economics and promoting more realistic, pluralist, and policy-focused approaches.

Here’s a grounded breakdown of the main types of solutions he promotes:

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1. Pluralism in economics (method + policy)

A core idea is that no single economic theory is enough.

• He argues economics should draw from multiple schools (Keynesian, institutionalist, behavioural, etc.)
• Policies should be case-by-case and historically informed, not one-size-fits-all models

Implication:
Instead of rigid free-market or rigid socialist policies, he supports pragmatic, mixed approaches depending on the problem.

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2. Stronger role for government (but not simplistic “big state”)

He often critiques the idea that markets alone solve problems.

Typical positions he explores:

• More public investment (healthcare, education, infrastructure)
• Regulation of markets where they fail (housing, finance, labour)
• Using policy to shape outcomes, not just “let markets decide”

This is tied to his view that current systems “set us up to fail” and need active reform

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3. Reforming money and banking

A recurring theme in his work:

• Most money is created by private banks through lending, not governments
• This has big effects on:
  • housing bubbles
  • inequality
  • financial instability

Solutions he discusses:

• Better regulation of credit creation
• Rethinking how money enters the economy

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4. Housing system reform

Housing is one of his biggest concrete policy areas.

• He highlights how policy mixes land and housing in problematic ways

Typical solutions he supports or explores:

• Separating land value from property value
• Planning reform and/or public housing expansion
• Policies to reduce speculation

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5. Tackling inequality and poverty

He consistently focuses on distribution, not just growth.

Ideas he engages with include:

• Wealth inequality and the power of billionaires
• Social mobility barriers
• Better welfare systems

He has discussed proposals like:

• Universal Basic Income (UBI) (often as something to seriously consider, not always uncritically)
• Expanded public services

---

6. Behavioural, real-world policy design

Because he’s a behavioural economist, he emphasises:

• People don’t act like perfectly rational agents
• Policy should reflect actual human behaviour, not idealised models

So solutions often involve:

• Better “choice architecture”
• Policies designed around real decision-making biases

---

7. Democratising economics

From his book The Econocracy and channel:

• Economics shouldn’t be left only to experts
• Ordinary people should have a say in economic decisions

Solution direction:

• More public debate and transparency in economic policymaking

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Bottom line

Moran isn’t proposing a single ideology like “capitalism vs socialism.” Instead, his solutions are:

• Pragmatic (what works empirically)
• Interventionist where needed (especially in housing, finance, inequality)
• Pluralist (multiple theories, not one model)
• Often centre-left in flavour, but grounded in critique rather than slogans.

Can you take a more in depth look at one of his solutions/proposals

Let’s take one of his most concrete and recurring themes: housing reform, because it’s where he moves beyond critique and actually engages with specific policy directions.

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🏠 The problem he’s trying to solve

Moran argues that housing crises (like in the UK) aren’t just about “not enough houses,” but about how the system is structured:

• Land is scarce and gains value passively
• Housing is treated as an investment asset, not just shelter
• Credit (mortgages) fuels price increases
• Planning systems interact with all of this in complex ways

This overlaps with ideas from economists like Henry George and modern housing researchers.

---

🔧 One key proposal: Land Value Tax (LVT)

A major solution he discusses is shifting taxation away from buildings and onto land itself.

The core idea:

Tax the value of land, not the property built on it.

---

How it works (in simple terms)

• If you own land in a desirable area → you pay more tax
• If you improve the building (renovate, extend, build more) → you are not penalised

So:

• Current system → taxes activity (building, improving)
• LVT → taxes passive ownership of valuable land

---

Why Moran (and others) like it

1. Reduces speculation

Right now:

• People can hold land and wait for prices to rise

With LVT:

• Holding unused or underused land becomes costly
  → pushes owners to develop or sell

---

2. Encourages more housing supply

Because:

• Building more doesn’t increase your tax burden

This removes a weird incentive in current systems where:

• doing nothing can be more profitable than developing

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3. Targets unearned wealth

This is the economic rent idea:

• Land value often comes from society (infrastructure, jobs, demand)
• Not from the landowner’s effort

So taxing it is seen as:

capturing socially created value for public use

---

4. Hard to avoid

Unlike income or corporate tax:

• You can’t move land offshore
• You can’t hide it

So it’s relatively efficient and difficult to dodge.

---

⚠️ Where this proposal gets tricky

This is where serious debate comes in.

---

1. Political resistance

• Homeowners (especially in high-value areas) would face higher taxes
• That’s a huge voting bloc

So even if it’s economically elegant, it’s politically difficult

---

2. Transition problems

If introduced suddenly:

• House prices could fall
• Existing owners could lose wealth

That creates:

• fairness concerns
• potential financial instability

---

3. It’s not a silver bullet

Even strong supporters admit LVT alone won’t fix everything:

You still need:

• planning reform
• construction capacity
• infrastructure investment

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4. Measurement challenges

Separating:

• land value
  from
• property value

…is technically difficult (though not impossible—some countries do it).

---

📊 How economists view it

What’s interesting here is that LVT is unusually cross-ideological:

• Supported by classical economists like Adam Smith
• Championed strongly by Henry George
• Backed by many modern economists across the spectrum

Even fairly market-oriented economists often like it because:

• it’s efficient
• it distorts behaviour less than other taxes

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🧠 So what does this tell you about Moran?

This example shows his general pattern:

✔ Strengths

• Focuses on structural causes, not just symptoms
• Draws from serious economic traditions
• Highlights under-discussed but credible policies

⚠️ Limitations

• Tends to emphasise the benefits more than the political difficulty
• Often presents ideas that are technically sound but hard to implement

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🧾 Bottom line on this proposal

• Economically: widely respected, even by people who disagree on other things
• Practically: difficult, especially in countries like the UK
• In Moran’s framing: part of a broader attempt to fix how housing and wealth distribution interact

---

If you want, I can dig into another one of his proposals—like banking reform or UBI—which are a bit more controversial and less widely agreed upon.

Life is fraught with sorrows: no matter what we do, we will in the end die; we are, each of us, held in the solitude of an autonomous body; time passes, and what has been will never be again. Pain is the first experience of world-helplessness, and it never leaves us. We are angry about being ripped from the comfortable womb, and as soon as that anger fades, distress comes to take its place. Even those people whose faith promises them that this will all be different in the next world cannot help experiencing anguish in this one; Christ himself was the man of sorrows. We live, however, in a time of increasing palliatives; it is easier than ever to decide what to feel and what not to feel. There is less and less unpleasantness that is unavoidable in life, for those with the means to avoid. But despite the enthusiastic claims of pharmaceutical science, depression cannot be wiped out so long as we are creatures conscious of our own selves. It can at best be contained — and containing is all that current treatments for depression aim to do.

Highly politicized rhetoric has blurred the distinction between depression and its consequences — the distinction between how you feel and how you act in response. This is in part a social and medical phenomenon, but it is also the result of linguistic vagary attached to emotional vagary. Perhaps depression can best be described as emotional pain that forces itself on us against our will, and then breaks free of its externals. Depression is not just a lot of pain; but too much pain can compost itself into depression. Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air, growing despite its detachment from the nourishing earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory. Saint Anthony in the desert, asked how he could differentiate between angels who came to him humble and devils who came in rich disguise, said you could tell by how you felt after they had departed. When an angel left you, you felt strengthened by his presence; when a devil left, you felt horror. Grief is a humble angel who leaves you with strong, clear thoughts and a sense of your own depth. Depression is a demon who leaves you appalled.

Andrew Solomon

I returned, not long ago, to a wood in which I had played as a child and saw an oak, a hundred years dignified, in whose shade I used to play with my brother. In twenty years, a huge vine had attached itself to this confident tree and had nearly smothered it. It was hard to say where the tree left off and the vine began. The vine had twisted itself so entirely around the scaffolding of tree branches that its leaves seemed from a distance to be the leaves of the tree; only up close could you see how few living oak branches were left, and how a few desperate little budding sticks of oak stuck like a row of thumbs up the massive trunk, their leaves continuing to photosynthesize in the ignorant way of mechanical biology.

Fresh from a major depression in which I had hardly been able to take on board the idea of other people's problems, I empathized with that tree. My depression had grown on me as that vine had conquered the oak; it had been a sucking thing that had wrapped itself around me, ugly and more alive than I. It had had a life of its own that bit by bit asphyxiated all of my life out of me. At the worst stage of major depression, I had moods that I knew were not my moods: they belonged to the depression, as surely as the leaves on that tree's high branches belonged to the vine. When I tried to think clearly about this, I felt that my mind was immured, that it couldn't expand in any direction. I knew that the sun was rising and setting, but little of its light reached me. I felt myself sagging under what was much stronger than I; first I could not use my ankles, and then I could not control my knees, and then my waist began to break under the strain, and then my shoulders turned in, and in the end I was compacted and fetal, depleted by this thing that was crushing me without holding me. Its tendrils threatened to pulverize my mind and my courage and my stomach, and crack my bones and desiccate my body. It went on glutting itself on me when there seemed nothing left to feed it.

Andrew Solomon

Every second of being alive hurt me. Because this thing had drained all fluid from me, I could not even cry. My mouth was parched as well. I had thought that when you feel your worst your tears flood, but the very worst pain is the arid pain of total violation that comes after the tears are all used up, the pain that stops up every space through which you once metered the world, or the world, you. This is the presence of major depression.

Andrew Solomon

All I wanted was for “it” to stop; I could not have managed even to be so specific as to say what “it” was. I could not manage to say much; words, with which I have always been intimate, seemed suddenly very elaborate, difficult metaphors the use of which entailed much more energy than I could possibly muster. “Melancholia ends up in loss of meaning . . . I become silent and I die,” Julia Kristeva once wrote. “Melancholy persons are foreigners in their mother tongue. The dead language they speak foreshadows their suicide.” Depression, like love, trades in clichés, and it is difficult to speak of it without lapsing into the rhetoric of saccharine pop tunes; it is so vivid when it is experienced that the notion that others have known anything similar seems altogether implausible.

Andrew Solomon

In the middle decades of the twentieth century, two questions troubled the neuroscience of depression. One was whether mood states traveled through the brain in electrical or in chemical impulses. The initial assumption had been that if there were chemical reactions in the brain, they were subsidiary to electrical ones, but no evidence supported this. The second was whether there was a difference between endogenous neurotic depression, which came from within, and exogenous reactive depression, which came from without. Endogenous depressions all seemed to have precipitating external factors; reactive depressions usually followed on a lifetime of troubled reactions to circumstance that suggested an internal predisposition. Various experiments “showed” that one kind of depression was responsive to one kind of treatment, another to another. The idea that all depression involves a gene-environment interaction was not even entertained until the last quarter of the century.

Andrew Solomon

'Misery and poverty remain their lot, till most of them succumb to an early death. Given the thrust of public policy for the past sixty years, it should come as no surprise to learn that those afflicted with serious mental illness have a life expectancy of between fifteen and twenty-five years less than the rest of us. It is, nonetheless, a disgrace'.

Andrew Scull