Sandeep

“the particular idea of endowing individuals with “rights” and then designing laws based on those rights only makes sense in a world of analytical thinkers who conceive of people as primarily independent agents and look to solve problems by assigning properties, dispositions, and essences to objects and persons. If this approach to law sounds like common sense, you are indeed WEIRD.”
― Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

“Karl Marx suggested that people should produce according to their abilities but share according to their needs, and this maxim describes hunter-gatherers reasonably well. But the history of communism suggests that agricultural people don’t share very well outside their family. The problem with the Marxist utopia is that people can free-ride on the efforts of others. If you are required to share with me, then I’m tempted to put in a little less effort because I know your hard work will leave me well fed. Once you see me slacking off, you don’t want to be a sucker, so you slack off a bit yourself, and pretty soon everyone is barely working. The free-rider problem is a vicious circle and can quickly destroy a productive community if there is no way to police everyone’s contribution.”
― William Von Hippel, The Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy

“Individuals thus acquire a right to property by their labour. By means of this right, they sustain the most important of all rights— the right to life. Through this logic, the right to property became a central doctrine of liberalism.”
― Gurcharan Das, The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal

“The secret of happiness: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.”
― Daniel C. Dennett