The fundamentals

A couple of notes in passing.

The random 50 or so books I am reading currently seem to document a theme in modern human development.  Nothing especially revelatory other than that the naming conventions are slightly different.

The fifty are a mix of history (ancient and modern), economics, military history, statistics, risk, literature, poetry, travel writing, mysteries, religion, linguistics, essays, cultural studies, humor, sociology, communications, engineering, science of medicine, etc.  Despite the seemingly unconnected variety of books, topics and issues keep arising among them which emphasize the centrality and importance of

Consent of the Governed

Property Rights and Markets

Frictionless communication/Freedom of speech, religion, movement, assembly, press, etc.

Individual responsibility for actions, outcomes and consequences

Rule of Law and Equality before the Law

All familiar and well discussed topics but seemingly increasingly relevant in an environment today where academia, government bureaucracies, journalists, and public intellectuals have turned away en masse from those concepts and reverted to or demonstrated an enthusiasm for archaic forms of authoritarianism and totalitarianism.  

The seeming connection of ideas between the seemingly unconnected books is almost certainly just a product of Path Dependence and the Frequency Illusion.  Interesting none-the-less.