INVENIRE

As much as we value should value logic and the scientific method, we must recognise that politics is not the reason-driven battle that we often treat it as. At the ballot box, and in Parliament, we are emotional actors. While ideological discussion is important, the work of every economics professor in the country is no match for the emotive rhetoric that politics is built upon. This phenomenon is only exacerbated by the democratic nature of modern politics. The more accessible political discussion is, the less rooted in science and philosophy it becomes. There are two primary strains to political activism. Both have the aim of communicating political messages implicitly, though they vary slightly in method. The foremost strain is the aesthetic strain of politics. By associating certain politicians and their viewpoints with certain visual representations, one can either bring a set of ideas into the forefront or leave it for disrepute. A clear example of how the aesthetics phenomenon m...

 The 2020 Presidential Election is set to be the most expensive and most soughtly contended of all time. The incumbent has spent the past four years in the White House after a shock victory in 2016. His opponent, a veteran politician and the right-hand man of Obama, is projected, by most major pundits and news outlets to be the forty-sixth President of the United States, and by a comfortable margin. The Economist's  election forecast data , predicts, as of the 29th of October, that Biden will win the Electoral College with 350 votes to Trump's 188. FiveThirtyEight has projected a  347-191 victory for Biden. With respect to the noteworthy events of the year thus far, Invenire predicts a 279 to 259 victory for Trump (270 Electoral College votes are required to win the Presidency). In particular, Invenire believes that Trump will retain the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, despite it being Biden's home state. Map-maker courtesy of 270towin.com Arizona Once considered to be a re...

More than eight months after Britain's first case of COVID-19, the country is still under acute restrictions. More than 700,000 have contracted the disease and more than forty thousand have died. With the highest case-fatality rate in Europe  and the eighth highest in the world,  it is widely accepted that the country's response to the virus has been a failure. However, many have erroneously concluded that the solution to the problem is a set of even more punishing restrictions. In response to the months of lockdown, political debate has erupted. A recent poll, courtesy of Sky News/You Gov, found that 67% of the country were in favour of a strict two-week lockdown. Any attempt to regress the country back into lockdown must be resisted; not only least because it is impractical, but because it is a poor response to the pandemic. In Wales, First Minister Mark Drakeford and his Labour Government have come under increasing scrutiny for their draconian response to the lockdown. Indi...

The Western world has rejected oligarchic and autocratic governmental structures. Foolishly, we have pushed them aside, denouncing them as immoral, favouring liberal democracies instead. Contradicting nearly all history, we view these two conditions (wealth and democracy) as inseparable. When we look to the poorest regions of the world, this ill-found sentiment is only reaffirmed; it is easy to look to a despot in Africa and shout, "Look! You need democracy to succeed." However, a simple review of the histories' of developed countries tells otherwise. Despite its seemingly successful practice in the Global North, democracy hinders the development of the Global South. Foremost, we must address the most obvious contention: it is true that nations like Taiwan, New Zealand and Norway are both developed and democratic. Furthermore, it is true that there are nations like North Korea and Chad that are both poor and under authoritarian regimes. However this correlation is mislead...

Intelligence is one of the most misunderstood concepts imaginable. Contrary to popular belief, intelligence is not too complex to be summarised; researchers found a method of doing so over a century ago. It is not easily changeable after childhood and is largely inherited. Lastly, intelligence has important ramifications, ranging from life expectancy to criminality. Although there are myriad types of intelligence tests, researchers in this field have observed that the level of correlation between intelligence tests that purport to measure different aspects of cognitive ability is high. This correlation was labelled g and is now what scientists are referring to when discussing intelligence. G was first proposed by English psychologist Charles Spearman, in his paper "General Intelligence" Objectively Determined and Measured. Spearman examined the results of various tests of both crystallised and fluid intelligences and noted a significant correlation between seemingly unrelate...

Prolonged wars, although often criticised, can act as the origin of a nation's empire. As a result of failed Western intervention operations in Asia and the Middle East, the idea of long wars has become even more unpopular. Sun Tzu, the famous Chinese military general, made the claim, in his renowned The Art of War, that there "is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare." While it is true that long wars often hurt countries, I disagree with Sun Tzu’s summary. His assertion  was the culmination of a long description of the various costs associated with war. Among other things, Sun Tzu cites the cost of weaponry, the strength expended while laying siege to a town and the cost of providing for soldiers; “if the campaign is protracted [prolonged], the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.” While I accept that prolonged warfare discourage political stability in a nation, typically dampens national morale and has long-reaching human costs...

The Electoral College is as essential to maintaining American federalism as the Bill of Rights. The system for electing American presidents is fit for purpose. For the President of the United States to be effective, he must unite the Union. We must recognise that the United States is different from other nations in that it is not a nation in the traditional sense, the American culture is not derivative of one ethnicity. America was not settled with ideas of national unification in mind and so national unity must be fought for. If the President does not unite the Union, the effects are dire. In 1860, Lincoln, despite winning the popular vote, won less than 3% of the Maryland vote, less than 1% of the Kentucky vote, and received no votes in the South. Predictably, the Civil War followed. The primary area of concern with the Electoral College comes in its preference for voters who live in low-population states. In 2016, a Wyomingite had 268% more voting power than a Texan did, when el...