Category: 读书

“…一群人分蛋糕，怎样才能保证公平？撇开技术细节，显而易见的方法是，其他人先拿，分蛋糕的人最后拿。…”

—《正义论》，约翰.罗尔斯

“The intuitive idea is to design the social system so that the outcome is just whatever it happens to be, at least so long as it is within a certain range. The notion of pure procedural justice is best understood by a comparison with perfect and imperfect procedural justice. To illustrate the former, consider the simplest case of fair division. A number of men are to divide a cake: assuming that the fair division is an equal one, which procedure, if any, will give this outcome? Technicalities aside, the obvious solution is to have one man divide the cake and get the last piece, the others being allowed their pick before him. He will divide the cake equally, since in this way he assures for himself the largest share possible. This example illustrates the two characteristic features of perfect procedural justice. First, there is an independent criterion for what is a fair division, a criterion defined separately from and prior to the procedure which is to be followed. And second, it is possible to devise a procedure that is sure to give the desired outcome. Of course, certain assumptions are made here, such as that the man selected can divide the cake equally, wants as large a piece as he can get, and so on. But we can ignore these details. The essential thing is that there is an independent standard for deciding which outcome is just and a procedure guaranteed to lead to it. Pretty clearly, perfect procedural justice is rare, if not impossible, in cases of much practical interest.”

—A Theory of Justice, John Rawls

冷战中，无疑，大国领导者是主要演员。

理性决策，管理冲突，防范危机，让局势从混沌到可预测，是卓越领导者的职责，也是其尊严所在。

可以赌。赌注若是国民福祉甚至人类命运，则输不起。玩大了上帝也会干涉。

权力王冠下，领导者仍需善念、勇气，以及作为地球高级动物个体的健全心智。

冷战已结束。但新冷战或正在萌发，演员也是新人换旧人…

魔都之“魔”，是魔幻还是魔鬼？或兼而有之？
一知名“退役”调查记者说过：“上海是一个非常特殊的城，有太多的隐蔽部分。上海还有一座‘地下城邦’，里面有纵横交错的权力，私下的联盟和保护，内部人未必窥透，外面人即便有强制手段，也难以理解内中奥秘。”这是熟悉上海的国人窥视当今魔都之视角。
此书是透视旧日老上海的另外一个视角。一个城市的内在要改变，百年时间可能还是太短。老上海的魔影，还在。