I explore what and when hypocrisy is a moral wrong by interrogating the case of hypocrisy of Julien in Stendhal's The Red and The Black. I conclude hypocrisy is most morally vexed in those sphere where sincerity is required.

Arlie Hochschild glosses the practice of women migrants in poor nations who leave their families behind for extended periods of time to do carework in other wealthier countries as a “global heart transplant” from poor to wealthy nations. Thus she signals the idea of an injustice between nations and a moral harm for the individuals in the practice. Yet the nature of the harm needs a clear articulation. When we posit a sufficiently nuanced “right to care,” we locate the harm (...) to central relationships of the migrant women. The “right to (give and receive) care” we develop uses a concept of a relational self drawn from an ethics of care. The harm is situated in the broken relationships, which in turn have a serious impact on a person’s sense of equal dignity and self-respect, particularly since the sacrifice of central relationships of the migrant woman allows others (mostly women) to maintain these same relationships. The paper ends with a brief discussion of some of the solutions we need to consider. (shrink)

Apology is arguably the central act of the reparative work required after wrongdoing. The analysis by Claudia Card of complicity in collectively perpetrated evils moves one to ask whether apology ought to be requested of persons culpably complicit in institutional evils. To better appreciate the benefits of and barriers to apologies offered by culpably complicit wrongdoers, this article examines doctors’ complicity in a practice that meets Card's definition of an evil, namely, the non-medically necessary, nonconsensual “normalizing” interventions performed on babies (...) born with intersex anatomies. It argues that in this instance the complicity of doctors is culpable on Card's terms, and that their culpable complicity grounds rightful demands for them to apologize. (shrink)

This is an abstract of a discussion of Martha Minow's article "Equalities" in APA Symposium Eastern Division 1991 .

In this essay, we suggest practical ways to shift the framing of crisis standards of care toward disability justice. We elaborate on the vision statement provided in the 2010 Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Medicine) “Summary of Guidance for Establishing Crisis Standards of Care for Use in Disaster Situations,” which emphasizes fairness; equitable processes; community and provider engagement, education, and communication; and the rule of law. We argue that interpreting these elements through disability justice entails a commitment to both (...) distributive and recognitive justice. The disability rights movement's demand “Nothing about us, without us” requires substantive inclusion of disabled people in decision‐making related to their interests, including in crisis planning before, during, and after a pandemic like Covid‐19. (shrink)

Federated learning (FL) is a machine learning (ML) approach that allows multiple devices or institutions to collaboratively train an ML model without sharing their local data with a third-party. It has recently received significant attention as a promising way to overcome longstanding ethical obstacles to training medical ML models with patient health data. This paper examines the promise of FL in healthcare from an ethical perspective. It argues that medical FL generates a new variety of opacity – federation opacity, wherein (...) stakeholders cannot access, analyze, or curate the data on which a model has been trained – which (a) presents distinctive ethical challenges concerning institutional fairness and accountability in medical ML; and (b) makes FL models especially vulnerable to data poisoning attacks. It then identifies several key claims about the expected benefits of FL in healthcare and argues that they may be either exaggerated, misleading, or incomplete – often due to the problem of federation opacity. (shrink)

I argue that Smith proposed a new kind of imperialism, which we would describe as a species of ‘federalism,’ and that his plan influenced Bentham and Kant in their federal projects, although they seem to have been unaware of each other’s proposals. In what follows, I outline Smith’s position. I then describe Kant’s and Bentham’s debts to Smith in turn. This will also allow for greater clarity about the nature of early liberalism.

The paper presents a novel take on the character of South Africa’s governance structure. It argues that, insofar as it constitutionally recognises traditional authorities, figures who rule in accordance with idiosyncratic and localised customary laws, as well as instigate a cheek-by-jowl existence of an asymmetrical property law (where in the urban setting land is nominally bought or transferred for sale, but in traditional rural areas granted by the chief), manifest in the differentiated land laws brought about by the Communal Land (...) Rights Act of 2003, is more akin to, and necessitates a definitional alignment with, the federal system of government than a unitary one – or at least a weak “federalism with South African characteristics.”. (shrink)

End-to-end autonomous steering models map raw sensory observations directly to continuous control actions, reducing the hand-engineering burden of modular autonomy stacks. However, two practical barriers limit deployability: (i) steering prediction is inherently temporal and frame-wise convolutional neural networks (CNNs) often exhibit oscillations and degraded recovery under covariate shift, and (ii) centralized training requires aggregating large-scale driving data that are distributed, bandwidth-intensive, and privacy-sensitive. This paper presents a federated temporal autonomous steering framework combining CNN-based spatial perception with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) (...) sequence modeling under Federated Learning. Multiple clients (simulated vehicles) train locally on heterogeneous, non-identically distributed (non-IID) driving data and periodically synchronize with a server via Federated Averaging. We formalize the temporal imitation learning objective, present a sequence-aware model architecture and preprocessing pipeline, and define a federated optimization protocol with communication and non-IID considerations. Extensive experiments compare centralized CNN, centralized CNN-LSTM, and federated CNN-LSTM baselines under steering imbalance and distribution shifts induced by curvature bias and lighting perturbations. Results show that temporal modeling reduces steering oscillation variance and improves closed-loop stability, while federated training achieves comparable accuracy to centralized training with privacy-preserving data locality. We also analyze convergence behavior under heterogeneous clients, communication cost per round, and ablations on sequence length, local epochs, and client sampling. The proposed framework provides a reproducible foundation for distributed, privacy-preserving end-to-end control. (shrink)

Federated learning (FL) is a machine learning approach that allows multiple devices or institutions to collaboratively train a model without sharing their local data with a third-party. FL is considered a promising way to address patient privacy concerns in medical artificial intelligence. The ethical risks of medical FL systems themselves, however, have thus far been underexamined. This paper aims to address this gap. We argue that medical FL presents a new variety of opacity -- federation opacity -- that, in turn, (...) generates a distinctive *double* black box problem in healthcare AI. We highlight several instances in which the anticipated benefits of medical FL may be exaggerated, and conclude by highlighting key challenges that must be overcome to make FL ethically feasible in medicine. (shrink)

The introduction of Pakistan’s Single National Curriculum (SNC) in 2020 has triggered a constitutional dispute after the 18th Amendment of the 1973 Constitution devolved education to the provinces. This article examines whether the federal government retains constitutional authority to prescribe a uniform curriculum. Existing scholarship has focused on policy debates but has not systematically analysed the SNC’s constitutional foundation in light of post-Amendment jurisprudence. The study employs a doctrinal legal method. It analyses relevant constitutional provisions, including Article 25A (right to (...) education), Article 140A (principles of local government), and Article 142 (legislative competence), together with Supreme Court decisions and intergovernmental coordination mechanisms. The analysis assesses the scope of federal authority and the limits of provincial autonomy in curriculum regulation. The findings show that the federal government may promote coordination and minimum standards. However, direct imposition of a uniform curriculum lacks a clear constitutional basis without structured provincial consent or constitutional amendment. The article clarifies the boundaries of legislative power in Pakistan’s federal system and argues for a cooperative model of education governance that aligns national objectives with constitutional devolution. (shrink)

Dense retrieval has become a critical component of modern knowledge-intensive AI systems, enabling efficient semantic search over large document collections for applications such as question answering, enterprise search, recommendation, and retrieval-augmented generation. In practice, however, many high-value corpora are inherently distributed across organizations, regions, devices, or business units and cannot be centralized due to privacy, compliance, ownership, or cost constraints. Federated Learning (FL) provides a natural paradigm for collaborative model training without sharing raw data, yet applying FL to retrieval systems (...) introduces a fundamental challenge: embedding inconsistency across clients under heterogeneous knowledge distributions. When local retrievers are trained on domain-skewed corpora and aggregated natively, the resulting representation space can drift across clients, leading to degraded ranking quality, unstable convergence, and poor cross-client interoperability. This paper presents Federated Retrieval Alignment (FRA), a framework for training dense retrieval models in federated environments while preserving representation consistency across heterogeneous clients. FRA augments the standard retrieval objective with an alignment-aware regularization term that constrains local query embeddings toward a shared global embedding geometry, thereby reducing drift introduced by heterogeneous document and query distributions. We implement a prototype using dual-encoder retrieval models and evaluate it on partitioned Natural Questions and TriviaQA workloads with controlled domain skew, query skew, and client imbalance. Experimental results show that FRA improves Recall@10 by up to 9-12% relative over standard Federated Averaging under heterogeneous settings, reduces embedding drift by more than 60%, and stabilizes convergence without introducing additional communication overhead. Ablation studies further demonstrate that moderate alignment strength provides the best trade-off between retrieval quality and optimization speed. These findings indicate that embedding-aware coordination is essential for reliable federated retrieval learning and that native federated aggregation is insufficient for distributed knowledge systems operating under realistic heterogeneity. (shrink)

Centripetalism is often perceived as a type of a political system for a multi-segmental, especially multi-ethnic, country in order to create among the members of the political elite of moderate, accomodative, and integrative political behavior cross-cutting segmental divisions which, reaching beyond group interests, depoliticize the segmental separateness and, in this manner, reduce their significance. One of the central institutions of centripetalism is decentralization leading to a division of large segments into smaller parts that inhabit different, ideally multi-segmental regions, thus inclining (...) regional political elites of different segments to collaborate. Although both Nigeria and Indonesia have similar centripetal territorial structures, only Nigeria is a federation. This paper focuses on Nigerian centripetal federalism and its link to the so-called federal character principle that is mostly consociational in substance. Krzysztof Trzcinski, Centripetal Federalism, in: 50 Shades of Federalism, ed. by Soeren Keil & Paul Anderson, Canterbury: Canterbury Christ Church University & Montréal: CRÉQC, 2020. (shrink)

In the last third of the eighteenth century, several thinkers who have come to be known as ‘popular philosophers’ (Popularphilosophen) were deeply influenced by Locke’s philosophy. My aim in this chapter is to describe how two extremely important and influential popular philosophers, namely Johann Georg Heinrich Feder and Gottlob August Tittel, were inspired by a particular position of Locke’s, namely his rejection of innate ideas. After discussing Feder’s engagement with Locke in his early works (1), I outline Feder’s primary account (...) of the origin of ideas, which he presents by means of rejecting Kant’s idea that space is a form of intuition that exists in the mind prior to all sense experience (2). I then turn to Johann Schultz’s attempt to defend Kant against what he takes to be Feder’s misunderstanding (3), which was important because Feder later responded to Schultz and further refines his position on the origin of ideas. I summarize Feder’s position by arguing that it is less radical than at first seems to be the case: in his later works Feder admits that both certain cognitive faculties and their essential laws (such as the principle of contradiction) exist in the mind prior to all experience (4). Finally, I briefly outline Tittel's empiricism as well as his attempt to re-popularize Locke by publishing a partial German translation of the Essay (5). (shrink)

The Quebec government recently (May 2021) announced that it wants to amend the Canadian constitution so that Quebec will be recognized as a nation. This is a bad idea.

For Hannah Arendt, the federal system is an effective mode of organizing different sources of power while avoiding sovereign politics. This article aims to contribute two specific claims to the burgeoning scholarship on Arendt's international federalism. First, Arendt's international thoughts call for balancing two demands: the domestic need for human greatness and flourishing and the international demand for regulation and cooperation. Second, her reflections on council-based federalism offer a nuanced position that views the dual elements of equality in (...) politics (intra-state and interstate equality) as neither contradictory nor reconciliatory but rather as ideal types along a continuum. This study shows that, through the unique form of federalism emphasizing the need to balance two demands of free politics with a clear acknowledgement of its precariousness, Arendt's thinking adds much-needed sensitivity to international discourse. (shrink)

The rapid digitalization of financial services has driven the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) for automating decision-making, fraud detection, risk assessment, and personalized financial offerings. However, these AI models often require access to sensitive user data, leading to significant concerns around data privacy, security, and regulatory compliance. Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a transformative approach to address these concerns by enabling collaborative model training across decentralized data sources without exposing raw data to central servers. This paper explores the application (...) of federated learning techniques specifically tailored for secure AI model training in the FinTech domain. We present an in-depth analysis of FL architecture, system design considerations, privacy-preserving mechanisms, and optimization strategies for heterogeneous and non-IID data distributions. Real-world use cases are studied to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating FL with existing financial systems. The evaluation also compares FL’s effectiveness against centralized models, considering parameters like model accuracy, data leakage resistance, and convergence performance. This work aims to provide FinTech developers and researchers with a practical blueprint for implementing secure and scalable federated AI systems that meet evolving data protection standards. (shrink)

Federated Learning (FL) is an emerging machine learning paradigm designed to enable model training across decentralized data sources without requiring data to be transferred or centralized. This approach is especially valuable in environments where data privacy, regulatory compliance, and communication efficiency are paramount, such as healthcare, finance, and edge computing. Traditional machine learning methods typically require data to be aggregated in a central server, raising concerns about data privacy and security. Federated Learning addresses these concerns by keeping data on local (...) devices and sharing only model updates, thereby preserving data sovereignty. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of Federated Learning in distributed systems, focusing on its architecture, advantages, and the technical challenges it presents. We explore the different types of FL—including horizontal, vertical, and federated transfer learning—and explain how each is suited to specific application contexts. We also investigate critical issues such as communication overhead, model convergence, data heterogeneity, and security threats including poisoning and inference attacks. The methodology section discusses state-of-the-art FL frameworks, including Google's Federated Averaging (FedAvg), Secure Aggregation protocols, and emerging advancements like differential privacy and homomorphic encryption. Real-world implementations in mobile networks, autonomous vehicles, and medical diagnosis systems are examined to demonstrate FL’s growing applicability. The paper concludes by emphasizing the transformative potential of Federated Learning in enabling privacy-preserving AI. It also highlights the need for standardized protocols, legal frameworks, and interdisciplinary collaboration to fully harness FL’s benefits while mitigating its risks. As AI continues to permeate sensitive domains, FL offers a promising path forward for ethical and secure machine learning. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between federalism and individual liberty. It is shown that a complete treatment of the relationship between federalism and individual liberty should consider two countervailing effects. On the one hand, a federalist structure enhances individual liberty by enlarging the choice set of the citizens. On the other hand, however, a federalist system leads to institutional diversity, a fact that per se leads to higher exit costs, which a citizen must bear if he or she (...) decides to change jurisdictions. This effect on individual liberty is a negative one, since a consequence of every increase in the exit costs is a decrease of individual liberty. The optimum range of diversity of jurisdictions is shown to lie where the two effects counterbalance each other. (shrink)

The increasing number of smart devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to a surge in cyber- attacks, posing significant security risks to personal and industrial systems. Traditional centralized intrusion detection systems (IDS) often face challenges related to privacy, scalability, and the heterogeneity of data generated by smart devices. This paper introduces a novel approach, Federated Learning (FL) for smart device security, to address these challenges. By utilizing FL, multiple smart devices can collaboratively learn a shared intrusion detection (...) model without exposing their raw data, ensuring privacy while improving detection accuracy. This paper presents the architecture of a federated intrusion detection system (FIDS), explores various FL algorithms suitable for smart device security, and evaluates the performance of the proposed system using real-world IoT datasets. The results show that the federated approach achieves comparable or even superior performance in detecting intrusions while preserving data privacy and reducing communication overhead. This paper concludes that federated learning has the potential to revolutionize smart device security by enabling decentralized, scalable, and privacy-preserving intrusion detection systems. (shrink)

Federated Learning (FL) is a machine learning paradigm that enables model training across decentralized devices while preserving data privacy. However, FL faces two significant challenges: privacy concerns and scalability issues. Privacy concerns arise from potential vulnerabilities in aggregating updates, whereas scalability issues stem from the increasing number of edge devices and the computational overhead required for communication and model updates. This paper explores cutting-edge advancements aimed at addressing these challenges, including advanced encryption techniques, differential privacy mechanisms, federated optimization methods, and (...) decentralized training architectures. We also discuss strategies for managing communication costs, improving convergence speeds, and ensuring robustness in heterogeneous environments. By integrating novel approaches to privacy and scalability, next-generation federated learning can provide a more secure, efficient, and scalable framework for a wide range of applications, from healthcare to autonomous vehicles. (shrink)

The contrast between Kant’s moral philosophy and Feder’s is not less crucial than the controversy caused by the Göttingen review of the first Critique. One of main targets of Kant’s moral philosophy was Feder’s view, which can be regarded as Kant's main competitor in the contemporary debate. I thus argue that the background provided by the conflict with Feder shows significant distinctive traits of Kant's view, with regard to three fundamental issues. First, I examine how the project of a pure (...) moral philosophy opposes Feder’s empirical investigation into the will, which is in fact one of the targets of Kant's criticism against universal practical philosophy. Second, a central element of Kant’s anti-eudaemonism, the contrast between happiness and self-contentment, is a rejection of the strongly moralized view of happiness that underlies Feder’s eudaemonism. Finally, I examine Tittel's objection that Kant had provided "only a new formula" of morality and Kant's response, which display a fundamental contrast between Kant’s understanding of the aims of moral theory with Feder’s common-sense conception. (shrink)

This article provides a comprehensive constitutional and jurisprudential analysis of the Sixteenth Amendment and the legal validity of the modern federal income tax system. Beginning with the original constitutional framework governing direct and indirect taxation under Article I, the study traces the historical evolution of the “direct tax” doctrine through Hylton v. United States, Springer v. United States, and the pivotal reversal in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. The Pollock decision’s expansion of the direct tax category created a (...) constitutional and fiscal crisis that ultimately prompted the proposal and ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913. The article examines the political circumstances surrounding the amendment’s adoption, the ratification process among the states, and subsequent challenges to its procedural validity, including the William Benson non-ratification argument. Relying on federal appellate precedent and the Enrolled Bill Rule, courts have consistently rejected claims that clerical or procedural irregularities invalidated the amendment. -/- The analysis further explores the Supreme Court’s definitive confirmation of the amendment in Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., clarifying that the Sixteenth Amendment did not create a new taxing power but removed the apportionment requirement for income taxes regardless of source. Subsequent cases such as Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., Tyee Realty Co. v. Anderson, and Eisner v. Macomber are examined to demonstrate the development of the realization doctrine and the evolving definition of taxable income. The discussion concludes with modern constitutional interpretation in Moore v. United States (2024), where the Court upheld Congress’s authority to attribute realized corporate income to shareholders. The article ultimately concludes that, as a matter of constitutional law and judicial precedent, the Sixteenth Amendment’s validity is firmly settled and remains the enduring foundation of federal income taxation in the United States. (shrink)

There exists a standard view of Kant’s position on global order and this view informs much of current Kantian political theory. This standard view is that Kant advocates a voluntary league of states and rejects the ideal of a federative state of states as dangerous, unrealistic, and conceptually incoherent. This standard interpretation is usually thought to fall victim to three equally standard objections. In this essay, I argue that the standard interpretation is mistaken and that the three standard objections miss (...) their target. Kant does advocate the establishment of a non-coercive league of states, at least in his mature political writings (such as Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals), but he does so for different reasons than is usually thought and without rejecting the ideal that a world federation of states eventually be realized. I end by indicating how Kant’s revised view can be made productive for present-day philosophical purposes. (shrink)

Proudhon is renowned for his anarchist ideas, yet his thoughts on federalism have long been overlooked. To such an extent that Proudhon himself wrote in his book that even at that time, his critics did not carefully read his ideas on federalism, but hastily concluded that all his discussions on federation were anarchistic, which greatly frustrated Proudhon. As for this book, The Principle Of Federation and the Need to Reconstitute the Party of Revolution, there is very limited information (...) available on both the English and Chinese Internet. Richard Vernon published an English translation of the book in 1979, but it only covered the main chapters discussing federalism, about 12 chapters in total. However, the original French version of the book consists of 31 chapters. To date, there is no Chinese translation of this book. Therefore, the translator believes that it is highly appropriate to translate the complete version of this book into Chinese and introduce it to the Chinese repository. After revising the Chinese translation, the translator also intends to re-translate the book into an English version to fill the gap of the remaining 19 chapters in the English repository. -/- Proudhon believed that politics, fundamentally, depends on two entirely opposite principles: authority and liberty. One is obedience and belief, while the other is freedom and reason. These two principles are as old as human history itself. The principle of authority is naturally given, while the principle of liberty is derived from thought and reason. Among the various combinations of liberty and authority, Proudhon classified all forms of government in the world into two major categories and four specific types. The two major categories are authoritative regimes and free regimes. In authoritative systems, power is indivisible, whereas in free systems, power is divisible. Every society contains elements of both authority and liberty. Only one kind of constitution can combine order and liberty, stability and justice. And this constitution, ultimately recognized by the people's reason, must be federalism. -/- So, how is federalism established? The author reviews the signing of the contract. To meet the conditions of cooperation and complementarity of the contract, citizens must fulfill the following when joining the contract: 1) The benefits they receive from the state must be equal to the sacrifices they make to the state. 2) They must retain their freedom, sovereignty, and initiative. Proudhon also explicitly pointed out that this stipulated and understood political contract is what is called a federation. The essence of the federal contract is that within this system, the contracting parties—namely, the heads of families, communes, states, provinces, or kingdoms—not only assume obligations to each other but also, through the contract, retain more rights, more freedom, more power, and more property than they have relinquished. (shrink)

Introduction: There is a general agreement among previous studies that gender, merit and catchment area criteria allows for access to university education, but the pattern of these variables over the years has not been proven in these studies. Purpose: This study used a times series approach to evaluate the enrolment patterns in federally owned universities in South-South Zone, Nigeria, based on the gender, merit and catchment area criteria. Methodology: The descriptive survey design was adopted for this study. A purposive sampling (...) technique was adopted to choose three universities based on the generation of their establishment. The evaluation covered from 2010 to 2019 using stationary time-bound data collected from the academic planning units of the institutions through a checklist. Future enrolment forecasts were made to 2031 using the moving average forecasting technique. Results: A gender-based difference in enrolment, in favour of males was recorded between 2010 and 2019; there were notable fluctuations in the enrolment pattern based on the merit criterion from 2010 to 2019; the enrolment pattern in terms of the catchment area criterion was consistent from 2010 – 2019. In terms of the projection, it was predicted that enrolment at the aggregate level would rise continuously across federal universities, but not at the institutional level. more women than men are expected to be enrolled in academic programmes at federal institutions, while at the institutional level, gender-based enrolment can fluctuate. Recommendations/Classroom Implications: Based on these findings, implications are discussed for future enrolment decisions at both the institutional and national levels. (shrink)

Social media has become a phenomenon that is changing all spheres of life tremendously. It is affecting the peaceful coexistence of people in the society both positively and negatively. Almost every government throughout the world is reacting in one way or the other to this influence, especially the perceived adverse influence of social media on the peaceful coexistence of people in the society. This paper aims at exploring the interplay between the Federal Government of Nigeria and social media in relation (...) to the peaceful coexistence of people in the country. Public Sphere Theory is used as the theoretical framework. The paper is a follow-up to a study on how Baptist pastors in the Ibadan metropolis are using social media in conflict resolution and promotion of peaceful coexistence among members of their church. It further reviews some existing literatures on the subject matter where the history of social media in Nigeria and some specific effects of social media in relation to peaceful coexistence in Nigeria are explored before exploring the interplay. Some recommendations are given to the Federal Government of Nigeria at the end of the paper. The paper concludes by warning the Federal Government of Nigerian and other governments throughout the world in regulating the use of social media so that the original purpose of the regulation will not be defeated. (shrink)

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's The Principle of Federation and the Need to Reconstitute the Party of Revolution (1863) remains one of the most underappreciated works in the history of federal political thought. Though Proudhon is often remembered as a foundational figure in anarchist theory, this particular text— written near the end of his life— has not received the attention it deserves. My hope in translating this work is to make its provocative arguments accessible to a broader English-speaking audience and to spark renewed (...) discussion on federalism. -/- In fact, an English version of this work already exists— the 1979 translation by distinguished scholar Richard Vernon. However, that edition only covers 12 of the original French version's 31 chapters. Richard Vernon selectively translated what he considered to be the most crucial content of the book. On the other hand, I believe there is value in producing a complete English translation of the entire work. This would not only allow for a more accurate understanding of Proudhon's original meaning, but also help maintain the text's integrity and coherence. Therefore, the contribution of this translation lies in being the first to render all 31 chapters of the complete work into English. (shrink)

The Creation of the Federal Reserve: A Historical Overview and the Role of Influential Figures -/- The Federal Reserve System, established in 1913, is the central banking system of the United States. Its creation marked a pivotal moment in the country’s economic history, reshaping the landscape of banking and monetary policy. While the official narrative surrounding the creation of the Federal Reserve involves legislative action, political decision-making, and economic theory, numerous conspiracy theories suggest that a small group of powerful elites (...) were the driving forces behind the system’s inception. These theories often point to influential bankers and politicians of the time, such as J.P. Morgan, Paul Warburg, and even the Rothschild family, as key players in the creation of the Federal Reserve. In this essay, we will examine the historical context, the official story, and the role of these figures in the development of the Federal Reserve System, while also addressing the conspiracy theories that claim a hidden elite orchestrated its creation. -/- The Economic Context Leading to the Federal Reserve -/- The creation of the Federal Reserve was rooted in a series of financial crises and economic instability that plagued the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The most notable of these crises was the panic of 1907, a severe banking panic that led to a collapse of major financial institutions and left the economy in turmoil. In response, there was growing recognition that the United States lacked a central banking system capable of stabilizing the economy and providing liquidity during times of financial distress. -/- At the time, the U.S. was using a decentralized banking system, where state-chartered banks and national banks issued their own currency and were often subject to fluctuations in the money supply. This led to instability, especially during times of economic strain. There was a clear need for a central banking authority that could regulate the money supply, manage inflation, and prevent future financial panics. -/- Timeline of the Creation of the Federal Reserve -/- 1791: The first attempt at a central bank in the U.S. was the creation of the First Bank of the United States. The bank was chartered by Congress and served as a central repository for government funds, but it was disbanded in 1811 after its charter expired. -/- 1816: The Second Bank of the United States was chartered. However, it faced political opposition, particularly from President Andrew Jackson, and its charter was not renewed in 1836. -/- 1863: The National Banking Act was passed during the Civil War, establishing a system of national banks and creating a uniform currency. However, the system remained fragmented, and the country still lacked a central banking authority. -/- 1907: The Panic of 1907 occurred, a severe financial panic in which major banks failed, and the economy faced significant strain. This crisis exposed the weaknesses of the U.S. banking system and sparked discussions about the need for a central bank. -/- 1910: The Aldrich-Vreeland Act was passed in response to the 1907 Panic, creating the National Monetary Commission to study banking reform. The Commission’s goal was to develop a solution to the banking system’s weaknesses. -/- 1911: The National Monetary Commission under the leadership of Senator Nelson W. Aldrich began drafting proposals for banking reform. Aldrich’s plan was modeled after the European central banking systems, and it laid the groundwork for the Federal Reserve System. -/- 1912: In response to the National Monetary Commission’s proposal, President William Howard Taft and several members of Congress supported the creation of a central bank. A public debate ensued between reformers, bankers, and politicians, with differing opinions on how to structure the system. -/- 1913: December 23, 1913: After years of debate, the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, officially creating the Federal Reserve System. The act established a central bank with a dual mandate: to manage the nation’s money supply and to serve as a lender of last resort in times of financial instability. The Federal Reserve System was structured with a Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., and twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks to serve different parts of the country. -/- The Political and Economic Debates -/- In the years following the Panic of 1907, various proposals for central banking were put forward, and the debate over the creation of a central bank became a prominent issue in U.S. politics. At the heart of the debate was the question of how much control the government should have over the banking system. On one side were those advocating for a purely government-run central bank, while on the other side were bankers and businessmen who sought a more private, decentralized system. -/- In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson, who had campaigned on a platform of reforming the banking system, signed the Federal Reserve Act into law. The act established the Federal Reserve System as a central banking system that would be independent but also accountable to the federal government. It created a network of regional Federal Reserve Banks and placed control of the system in the hands of a Board of Governors. The system was designed to balance the interests of private banks with the need for federal oversight to stabilize the economy. -/- Key Figures in the Creation of the Federal Reserve -/- While the Federal Reserve System was officially created through legislative action, the involvement of key figures in banking and finance played an instrumental role in shaping the final design of the system. -/- J.P. Morgan, one of the most powerful bankers of the time, is often mentioned in discussions of the Federal Reserve’s creation. Although Morgan did not directly create the Federal Reserve, his influence on American finance was immense. Morgan played a key role in managing financial crises, including the Panic of 1907, and was one of the driving forces behind the movement to create a more centralized banking system. His support for the idea of a central bank was crucial in gaining the backing of other financiers and policymakers. -/- Paul Warburg, a German-born banker who worked for the Kuhn, Loeb & Co. firm, was another central figure in the creation of the Federal Reserve. Warburg’s influence on the design of the Federal Reserve System was profound. He advocated for a central bank that would be independent from political influence and that could serve as a lender of last resort. Warburg’s ideas were key in shaping the structure of the Federal Reserve, and he is often credited with being one of its architects. -/- Woodrow Wilson, the president who signed the Federal Reserve Act into law, also played a critical role. Wilson had long been an advocate of banking reform and saw the Federal Reserve as a way to stabilize the economy and protect it from the influence of private bankers. However, Wilson’s administration was also under pressure from powerful financial interests who shaped the final form of the Federal Reserve. Some critics argue that Wilson’s role in the creation of the Federal Reserve was more about balancing competing interests than pursuing an entirely reformist agenda. -/- Conspiracy Theories: The Hidden Elite -/- While the creation of the Federal Reserve is often framed as a product of reformist policy, conspiracy theories have emerged over the years that claim a hidden, secretive elite was behind its formation. According to these theories, a small group of wealthy bankers and financiers, often referred to as the “international elites,” manipulated political leaders to create the Federal Reserve for their own benefit, with the goal of consolidating control over the global financial system. -/- One of the most commonly cited groups in these theories is the Rothschild family, a powerful European banking dynasty. Some conspiracy theorists claim that the Rothschilds, who had vast financial interests in Europe, exerted influence over the creation of the Federal Reserve to further their control over the global economy. However, there is little concrete evidence to support this claim, and most historians dismiss it as speculation. -/- The theories also often point to J.P. Morgan and other prominent bankers as central figures in a supposed conspiracy. These individuals, it is claimed, had an interest In establishing a central bank that would benefit their financial interests by consolidating control over currency and interest rates. While Morgan and other bankers did support the idea of a central bank, the suggestion that they secretly orchestrated its creation for their personal gain remains unsubstantiated. -/- Conclusion: A Complex Legacy -/- The creation of the Federal Reserve was a complex process involving a range of political, economic, and social factors. While influential figures like J.P. Morgan, Paul Warburg, and Woodrow Wilson played key roles in shaping the Federal Reserve System, the idea that a hidden, secret elite controlled its creation is more of a conspiracy theory than a historical fact. The Federal Reserve’s establishment was the result of years of debate and compromise among policymakers, bankers, and economists. -/- In the end, the Federal Reserve became a vital institution in the U.S. economy, with the power to influence monetary policy, regulate banks, and stabilize the financial system. Whether viewed as a triumph of reform or a tool of powerful elites, the creation of the Federal Reserve remains a critical moment in the history of American finance, one that continues to influence economic policy and political discourse to this day. -/- . (shrink)

Abstract This paper examines whether a proposed shift to a federal parliamentary system in the Philippines would reduce or entrench political dynasties. Drawing on comparative experiences from other parliamentary-federal countries (India, Malaysia, Canada, Germany), the analysis concludes that without strong institutional safeguards, political dynasties could be further strengthened. A model Anti-Dynasty Law is proposed as a necessary reform, alongside party strengthening, campaign finance regulation, and holistic civic education. -/- .

Abstract This paper develops a quantitative framework for minimizing political manipulation through a federal parliamentary system, grounded in the Universal Balance-Feedback Framework (UBFF). The UBFF posits that all complex systems—including governance institutions—are governed by four universal laws: (1) Universal Imbalance Generation, (2) Balance-Feedback Activation, (3) Dynamic Equilibrium Seeking, and (4) Tolerance Limit Enforcement. These laws are formally mapped to three measurable institutional indices: Power Concentration (Pc), Transparency (T), and Feedback Strength (F), which together determine a Manipulation Risk Index (M = (...) Pc / (T·F + ε)). The framework is operationalized using traceable empirical sources—the V-Dem Executive Constraints Score, Gallagher Index of Electoral Disproportionality, Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, and World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators. Sensitivity analysis demonstrates robustness of cross-country rankings under varying component weights. A dynamic extension models temporal trajectories of M, revealing tipping-point dynamics consistent with UBFF tolerance limits. Comparative application to Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Philippines yields manipulation risk scores of 0.48, 1.18, and 5.08 respectively, illustrating how federal parliamentary design choices directly modulate institutional integrity. -/- . (shrink)

With quantum computing nearing practical implementation in 2025, concerns over the vulnerability of classical cryptographic algorithms in cloud networking have intensified. This research addresses the urgent need for quantum-resilient communication protocols in federated and multi-tenant cloud environments. The study explores the integration of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) into cloud-native networking layers, focusing on protocols such as TLS 1.3, IPsec, and gRPC. It also investigates the performance trade-offs, key management challenges, and compliance implications of transitioning to PQC in large-scale, geographically distributed cloud (...) systems. A hybrid implementation model is proposed, blending classical and quantum-safe algorithms to ensure forward secrecy and interoperability during the migration phase. Experimental results suggest that lattice-based and hash-based key exchange mechanisms can be integrated into existing protocols with acceptable performance overhead and minimal disruption. (shrink)

As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to grow, the security challenges in these networks increase in complexity and scale. Traditional intrusion detection methods often struggle to handle the dynamic and diverse nature of IoT environments. Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a promising solution to enhance privacy and scalability in IoT security, allowing multiple devices to collaboratively learn from data without sharing it. However, due to the heterogeneity of IoT devices and the limited data available on individual devices, Federated (...) Transfer Learning (FTL) is gaining traction as a means to improve model performance across diverse devices. This paper explores the integration of Federated Learning and Transfer Learning approaches to enhance IoT security, particularly in intrusion detection systems (IDS). By leveraging pre-trained models and transferring knowledge across devices, FTL helps overcome the challenges posed by limited data and diverse network environments. We propose an FTL-based framework for intrusion detection, focusing on its ability to generalize across various IoT devices and network conditions. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, providing enhanced detection accuracy, faster convergence, and reduced communication overhead compared to traditional methods. (shrink)

Review of two recent works on J.G.H. Feder: -/- Johann Georg Heinrich Feder. Ausgewählte Schriften. Hrgb. Von Hans-Peter Nowitzki, Udo Roth, Gideon Stiening. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. Werkprofile Band 9. -/- and -/- Johann Georg Heinrich Feder (1740-1821): Empirismus und Popularphilosophie Zwischen Wolff und Kant. Hrgb. Von Hans-Peter Nowitzki, Udo Roth, Gideon Stiening. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. Werkprofile Band 10.

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly agentic AI systems capable of autonomous decision-making, has exposed significant gaps in existing federal regulatory frameworks. This paper examines the regulatory barriers inhibiting AI innovation and adoption identified in the Office of Science and Technology Policy's (OSTP) Request for Information (RFI) on regulatory reform. We analyze five categories of barriers—regulatory mismatches, structural incompatibility, lack of clarity, direct hindrance, and organizational factors—and propose a comprehensive governance framework integrating technical standards, risk management protocols, and (...) policy recommendations. Drawing from extensive literature on AI governance tools and frameworks, we present actionable solutions for modernizing federal regulations to foster responsible AI innovation while maintaining public trust and safety. (shrink)

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has significantly expanded the attack surface for cyber threats, necessitating robust security measures. Traditional Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) often rely on centralized architectures, which can compromise data privacy and scalability. This paper explores the integration of Federated Learning (FL) into IDS for IoT networks, enabling decentralized model training while preserving data privacy. By leveraging local computation and aggregating model updates, FL facilitates collaborative learning across distributed IoT devices. The proposed approach aims to (...) enhance detection accuracy, reduce latency, and maintain user privacy, addressing the challenges posed by the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of IoT environments. (shrink)

Mobile and wireless networking infrastructures are facing unprecedented loads due to increasing apps and services on mobiles. Hence, 5G systems have been developed to maximise mobile user experiences as they can accommodate large volumes of traffics with extractions of fine-grained data while offering flexible network resource controls. Potential solutions for managing networks and their security using network traffic are based on UAA (User Activity Analysis). DLTs (Deep Learning Techniques) have been recently used in network traffic analysis for better performances. These (...) previously suggested techniques for network traffic analysis typically need voluminous information on network usages. Hence, this work proposes OFedeMWOUAA (optimal federated learning-based UAA technique with Meadow Wolf Optimisation) and DNN (deep Neuron Networks) for minimizing risks of data leakages in MWNs (Mobile Wireless Networks). In the proposed OFedeMWOUAA, the need to submit data to cloud servers does not arise because it trains DLTs locally and only uploads model gradients or knowledge weights. The OFedeMWOUAA approach effectively decreases dangers to data privacies with very minor performance losses in simulations. (shrink)

The study investigated assessment of sex and age impersonation as academic dishonest behaviour among post graduate students’ of Federal Universities of South-South, Nigeria. The study which is a survey research, involved a multi-stage stratified random sampling technique of 440 males and 490 females from 3 universities and 3 faculties of the same universities in South-South, Nigeria. Sample was selected through stratified random sampling approach. The study adopted frequencies, percentages, factor analysis and multiple classification analysis statistical tools. A questionnaire developed and (...) validated by the researcher titled: “Academic Dishonest Behaviour Questionnaire’’ (ADBQ) with Cronbach coefficient alpha reliability of 0.83 was used for data collection. Two research questions and one hypothesis were formulated for the study. The findings indicated that the students used for this study were involved in Sex and Age impersonation aspect of academic dishonest behaviours. Female students were seen to be more involved than male in impersonation, Students ages 25-29years are more culpable in impersonation as academic dishonest behaviour. It is therefore recommended among others that there should be synergy among stakeholders in the educational process to fight this art of impersonation. (shrink)

The article overviews all known approaches to formalization of a problem of Liberty / Freedom (« Liberty from », « Liberty for », « being for her/his own sake, not a other's », « absence of sovereign other », individual freeing in a context of the Master-Slave Dialectics, Social Freedom) and problems of emancipation (« restricting privileges of upper class minorities », « giving privileges to marginalized minorities – affirmative actions »). Then, the article discusses a version of formalization of (...) level of social freedom through comparison of what is allowed for an individuals in the society with what is allowed for «a sheep in herd »: each additional degree of freedom gives unit in plus, each additional restriction gives unit in minus. The proposed model was tested for a case of the post-Soviet transit, when the level of freedom evolved from minus two for the USSR up to plus two for the contemporary Russian Federation. It also shows the ways for further emancipation of people in Russia in « politically easy version » - i.e. without essential change of its political system. (shrink)

The 2004-5 essay competition set by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis asks, “Why are some countries rich and some countries poor?” It has information which strangely does not feature the name Amartya Sen. But I have conceived of a defence against the charge that this is bad practice, which resembles appealing to the descriptivist theory of names.

In its January 20th, 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the United States Supreme Court ruled that certain restrictions on independent expenditures by corporations for political advocacy violate the First Amendment of the Constitution, which provides that “Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Justice Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 majority, (...) held that “[b]y suppressing the speech of manifold corporations, both for-profit and non-profit, the Government prevents their voices and view-points from reaching the public and advising voters on which person or entities are hostile to their interests” (Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission 558 U.S. 38-9 (2010); emphasis added). Much of the language of the opinion, and some of its reasoning, as this passage illustrates, presupposes that corporations are agents capable of speech, and that it is (at least in part) in the light of this that limitations on political advocacy by corporations are prohibited by the Constitution. -/- While there are other strands in the argument, they are interwoven with the conception of the corporation as agent and speaker, with its voice and its viewpoints. The dissenters on the court objected on precisely this point (among others). Justice Stevens wrote sarcastically in his dissent, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, that “[u]nder the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech” (558 U.S. 33 (2010)). Justice Sotomayor suggested in oral argument that the Court’s century-old practice of treating corporations as persons rests on a conceptual mistake. -/- My concern in this essay is not with the question whether the restrictions violate the Constitution. There are many issues that bear on this which will be outside the scope of my discussion. My concern is with the proper conceptual framework for understanding the agency of corporations and corporate speech, and the role that conceptions of these play in the background of the majority’s reasoning. The issue is legal, but it also has philosophical, conceptual and semantic aspects. It will be the latter aspects, and their potential to shed light on legal reasoning, that are my main focus. An adequate framework requires saying what properly speaking the corporation is, how agency is expressed through the corporation, whose agency it is, centrally whether the corporation is an agent or person in its own right, and in what sense it can be said to be capable of speech. I draw on recent work in collective action theory, particularly with respect to the semantics of collective action sentences (Ludwig 2007) and the analysis of the proxy agency in collective action (Ludwig 2014), to show (i) that corporations are neither genuine agents nor (therefore) capable of engaging in genuine speech, (ii) that consequently the First Amendment does not apply to corporations per se, and (iii) that a better understanding of the mechanisms of corporate agency casts doubt on more indirect arguments for extending the First Amendment to “corporate speech” as well. (shrink)

Recent interpretations of Kant’s international political philosophy have argued that the formation of a coercive world-state (Völkerstaat) is morally required. While these interpretations highlight the importance of a strong world government, they ignore Kant’s alternative to a Völkerstaat, a world-federation (Völkerbund). For both theoretical and practical reasons, the Völkerbund plays a crucial role in cosmopolitan right, and Kant can only justifiably reject the formation of the Völkerstaat because of the structure of the Völkerbund. This article explains the constitution and functions (...) of the Völkerbund, and thereby shows why Kant was not ultimately committed to supporting a coercive world-state. (shrink)

Kant claims that the transcendental self can be represented as a “feeling of existence” (Gefühl eines Daseins). Some interpreters take this claim to be inconsistent with Kant’s larger theory of self-consciousness. I consider the extent to which two eighteenth-century philosophy texts that Kant knew well - Tetens’ Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung and Feder’s Logik und Metaphysik - can contribute to our understanding of Gefühl eines Daseins. I point to some continuities between Kant’s characterization of “Gefühl” (...) in Gefühl eines Daseins, and Tetens’ and Feder’s conceptualizations of Selbstgefühl. I show that Gefühl eines Daseins is prima facie consistent with Feder’s clear “I” (or Selbstgefühl) and Tetens’ clear Selbstgefühl; and both Gefühl eines Daseins and clear Selbstgefühl relate to higher cognition. Finally, I discuss whether the notion of Selbstgefühl is compatible with key aspects of Kant’s conceptualization of the self - the transcendental-empirical distinction, and the atemporality of the self. (shrink)