Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows

David Brooks (see Icons passim) has been unloading again:

I don't think appealing to people as individuals gets you far. Many social problems are caused by insufficient social capital. . . to solve these problems you need to build dense social networks. You have to get beyond treating people as rational machines who respond to the economic incentives.

We went to Rutsfest for the second year in a row yesterday. Andy H, Hugh and the Burglar accompanied me and the Bomber for a day of local music and bumping into all sorts of friends and friends of friends. It is the strange attractor of our very own dense social network.