David Lay Williams

press.princeton.eduThe Greatest of All PlaguesHow the great political thinkers have persistently warned against the dangers of economic inequality

3 Sept 2024

After a decade's labor, it is finally book-release day for "The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx." I'm both relieved and excited to see this day arrive. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Great weekend for dog walking!

local-note-jazz.turntabletickets.comChicago Jazz Dads - ALBUM RELEASE - Thu, Oct 22 - Local Note JazzGordon Wright - vocals David Williams - guitar Leo Kawczinski - tenor sax Eric Perney - bass Jonathan Singer - drums https://www.chicagojazzdads.com/ The Chicago Jazz Dads were working musicians…

Last call for the @chicagojazzdads.com shows tonight at Evanston's Local Note Jazz Club. Shows at 7:30 & 9:30 to celebrate our album release.

music.apple.comLive at SPACE (Live) by The Chicago Jazz Dads on Apple MusicAlbum · 2026 · 8 Songs

And Apple Music:

music.youtube.comLive at SPACEAlbum • The Chicago Jazz Dads

And YouTube:

Last call for the @chicagojazzdads.com shows tonight at Evanston's Local Note Jazz Club. Shows at 7:30 & 9:30 to celebrate our album release.

music.apple.comLive at SPACE (Live) by The Chicago Jazz Dads on Apple MusicAlbum · 2026 · 8 Songs

And Apple Music:

squeezeboxbooks.comSqueezebox Books and Music

And in physical CDs anywhere (by which I mean at our shows or at Squeezebox Books & Records in Evanston).

Last call for the @chicagojazzdads.com shows tonight at Evanston's Local Note Jazz Club. Shows at 7:30 & 9:30 to celebrate our album release.

open.spotify.comListen to Live at SPACE - Album by The Chicago Jazz Dads | SpotifyThe Chicago Jazz Dads · album · 2026 · 8 songs

The album is now live at Spotify:

Big event for political theorists and inequality scholars!

Teresa M. Bejan@tmbejan.bsky.social

Today is the official release date for my new book, First Among Equals: Visions of Equality before Egalitarianism. It explores how and why “equality” became, rather suddenly, a basis on which ordinary men and women could make political demands in early modern England. Please, check it out!

Important op-ed from Cambridge Business professor, Chris Marquis, on the risks of business education for universities and societies at large. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/18/o...

mccloskey.substack.comInequality Is Not the ProblemThe absolute condition of the poor has been raised overwhelmingly more by the Great Enrichment than by regulation or redistribution.

As the op-ed itself notes, I don't want to say anyone who has studied or taught business conforms to the worst implied here. But there have been very broad negative effects on the whole. The single-minded focus on profit maximization has really perverted the culture and exacerbated inequality.

David Lay Williams reposted

The Chicago Jazz Dads

@chicagojazzdads.com

CDs have arrived. Excited to sell you one next Thursday night at Local Note in Evanston! Don’t have a CD player? We hear these make great paperweights, coasters, or decorations… 😅

David Lay Williams reposted

Matthew Mendelsohn

@mendelmatt.bsky.social

This was a great book on the corrosive impact of economic inequality. 🧵👇

David Lay Williams@laywilliams.bsky.social

1) I saw this morning that Deirdre McCloskey is posting an argument from her 2016 book (Bourgeois Equality), in which she argues that economic inequality is unproblematic. I argued in the conclusion of my last book that you could only think this if you thought social problems in very simple terms.

David Lay Williams reposted

Cord Schmelzle

@cordschmelzle.bsky.social

Großartige Sammlung von Argumenten, warum die Sorge um ökonomische Ungleichheit nichts mit Neid zu tun hat.

David Lay Williams@laywilliams.bsky.social

mccloskey.substack.comInequality Is Not the ProblemThe absolute condition of the poor has been raised overwhelmingly more by the Great Enrichment than by regulation or redistribution.

David Lay Williams reposted

Tom Theuns

@tomtheuns.bsky.social

🧵 on a great book (recommended for our pleonexic age)

David Lay Williams@laywilliams.bsky.social

mccloskey.substack.comInequality Is Not the ProblemThe absolute condition of the poor has been raised overwhelmingly more by the Great Enrichment than by regulation or redistribution.

Look what just arrived, @tmbejan.bsky.social ! So excited for you on this major achievement and also excited to read and learn from it!

Exciting things are happening for the @chicagojazzdads.com! We are having our CD release party next Thursday at the Local Note Jazz Club in Evanston (shows at 7:30 & 9:30). Come to the show and be the first on your block to own the album!

Information about tickets for our upcoming album release party here: local-note-jazz.turntabletickets.com/shows/13002/...

chicagojazzdads.bandcamp.comLive at SPACE, by The Chicago Jazz Dads8 track album

Information about our upcoming album here:

chicagojazzdads.comThe Chicago Jazz Dads

Information about the @chicagojazzdads.com here:

mccloskey.substack.comInequality Is Not the ProblemThe absolute condition of the poor has been raised overwhelmingly more by the Great Enrichment than by regulation or redistribution.

8) As I argue in my book's conclusion:

press.princeton.eduThe Greatest of All PlaguesHow the great political thinkers have persistently warned against the dangers of economic inequality

9) If you're interested in working through these issues with some of the most consequential thinkers in the Western tradition, I encourage you to check out my @princetonupress.bsky.social book.

mccloskey.substack.comInequality Is Not the ProblemThe absolute condition of the poor has been raised overwhelmingly more by the Great Enrichment than by regulation or redistribution.

6) Per Rousseau, it inspires the rich to make a sport of hurting people.

7) This is a very small sampling of reasons we ought not to be persuaded by McCloskey and others who have argued along similar lines (e.g., Pinker, Cowen, etc.). You can't ignore moral psychology, politics, and social relations and pretend you have a political philosophy.

mccloskey.substack.comInequality Is Not the ProblemThe absolute condition of the poor has been raised overwhelmingly more by the Great Enrichment than by regulation or redistribution.

4) For another thing, Hobbes writes about how concentrated wealth instills a sense of "impunity" among the rich, a sense that the rules of morality and the laws themselves simply do not apply to them.

5) For yet another thing, in unequal societies, the rich simply come to own the political process. Mill called this "class legislation."

mccloskey.substack.comInequality Is Not the ProblemThe absolute condition of the poor has been raised overwhelmingly more by the Great Enrichment than by regulation or redistribution.

2) There are a multitude of reasons why moral and political philosophers should care a great deal about issues beyond ensuring that the poor have something to eat and a place to live, including the gap between the richest and poorest. I include snippets from my book for reference.

3) For one thing, as Plato points out in the Republic and Laws, the rich are consumed by the disease of pleonexia.

journals.sagepub.comSage Journals: Discover world-class researchSubscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Fun to see a book written by a DePaul PhD (Don Thomas Deere, Philosophy) reviewed by a DePaul BA (Arturo Chang, Political Science) in Political Theory!

Really delighted to see this symposium on the Greatest of All plagues in the European Journal of Political Theory. It's an honor to have such insightful and generous commentators.

journals.sagepub.comSage Journals: Discover world-class researchSubscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

5) Matthew W. Maguire: "Virtue, wisdom, and inequality: A response to David Lay Williams’ The Greatest of All Plagues" journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

journals.sagepub.comSage Journals: Discover world-class researchSubscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

6) Williams: "Response to Critics" journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Really delighted to see this symposium on the Greatest of All plagues in the European Journal of Political Theory. It's an honor to have such insightful and generous commentators.

journals.sagepub.comSage Journals: Discover world-class researchSubscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

3) Chiara Cordelli: "Hobbes, Inequality, and Redistribution" journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

journals.sagepub.comSage Journals: Discover world-class researchSubscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

4) Gordon Arlen: "From inequality to oligarchy: Commentary on The Greatest of All Plagues" journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Really delighted to see this symposium on the Greatest of All plagues in the European Journal of Political Theory. It's an honor to have such insightful and generous commentators.

journals.sagepub.comSage Journals: Discover world-class researchSubscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

1) John P. McCormick: "Introduction" journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

journals.sagepub.comSage Journals: Discover world-class researchSubscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

2) Sean D. Kirkland: "On Williams on Plato" journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

David Lay Williams reposted

Eloise Davies

@eloisedavies.bsky.social

What an excellent week for new books! Today’s congratulations to my brilliant former colleague @tmbejan.bsky.social. Excited to read. www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

What is going on here?

newyorker.comThe Humanism Driving the Anti-A.I. MovementAt the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington, D.C., attendees talked less about jobs and policy, and more about their philosophy of life.

Highly recommending this outstanding @newyorker.com piece from Becca Rothfeld.

21 Sept

Happy to have gotten a clean copy of Kant’s Lectures on Ethics, but somewhat sad that the University of Pittsburgh is dumping classics from their department library!

18 Sept

Few things make me happier than seeing students in office hours share their thoroughly-marked-up texts.

17 Sept

File under: 1) even a broken clock is right twice a day, and 2) the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.

15 Sept

In the very near future, universities will be measured by the degree to which they frankly acknowledge and address the damage to learning that AI inflicts on every student. In the meantime, administrators race to prostrate themselves before SV for crumbs. It's gross. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/u...

9 Sept

Year 27 —here we go!

3 Sept

Announcement for Chicago people: Tickets are now available for the @chicagojazzdads.com album release party at Local Note Jazz Club in Evanston on October 22. Tickets going fast, so do get yours soon!

foreignpolicy.comResurrecting the Real Monroe DoctrineHidden behind two centuries of aggressive presidential corollaries is an enduring appeal to hemispheric solidarity.

5 Aug

Sharing this new Foreign Policy essay from @arturochang.bsky.social, featuring arguments from his new @princetonupress.bsky.social book, A New World of Revolutions.

Arturo Chang@arturochang.bsky.social

Thanks for the book feature, Foreign Policy! In this essay I analyze the Trump administration's recent appeals to the Monroe Doctrine and how they've moved away from its intended political vision. foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/31/t...