Modern commentators, including Yuval Noah Harari in his interesting book “Sapiens – a brief history of humankind” (Harper, 2015) believe that the coming of agriculture around 10,000 years ago was a disaster for humanity, forcing people to work much harder than the previous hunter-gatherers for a less stable and reliable subsistence. Yet when you […]

  President Obama this week announced in Africa that he would be confident of being re-elected, but was blocked by the 1951 22nd Amendment, which prevented U.S. Presidents seeking a third term. My first reaction was of course a crassly partisan sigh of relief, but then I began thinking about term limits in general, and […]