What’s wrong with TED talks – hint: quite a lot
I have almost certainly fulminated in various asides against TED talks on this blog, and even one full on cri de coeur against retail profundification. (I promised one on business class...
View ArticleOperation 2770: TACSI’s Family by Family expands to Mt Druitt
(For the full 27 minute video from which this 6 minute video has been extracted, click here.) Family by Family about which you’ve heard before is spreading its wings. We’ve started in Mt Druitt where...
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All that was implicit was made explicit
Wendy_Bacon Talk about clamping down on Pub Servants’ social media reminds me of how as journos we used to interview them before access to info stopped 10/04/2014 10:09 am This tweet reminds me of...
View ArticleNietzschean evolutionary psychology
I have a strange habit of looking for bargain books. Why is this a strange habit? Because it looks awfully like a false economy. After all, even if you don’t read a book through, just reading a few...
View ArticleManagers wresting control from owners: it’s nothing new …
Contractual Freedom and the Evolution of Corporate Control in Britain, 1862 to 1929 by Timothy W. Guinnane, Ron Harris, Naomi R. Lamoreaux – #20481 (DAE) Abstract:British general incorporation law...
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Paul Krugman the academic, Martin Wolf the economic journalist: Bottom line –...
I’m a big, though not uncritical admirer of Paul Krugman – of his straightforwardness and his aggression in what is almost always a worthy cause. And yet, reading Martin Wolf’s magnificent book rather...
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The middleware of democracy. Or from knowledge to wisdom: or at least...
Simon Heffer’s High Minds presents us with a portrait of the mid-Victorians in which they consciously set about building the world which became ours. A liberal democratic world. To do so they...
View ArticleShock! Good government improves wellbeing
Actually the magnitude of the effect is a bit of an eye-opener. Empirical Linkages between Good Government and National Well-being by John F. Helliwell, Haifang Huang, Shawn Grover, Shun Wang Abstract:...
View ArticleComplexity, reducibility, integrity and bullshit: the general untheory
I Some readers may recall an earlier post which I christened an ‘untheory’ of innovation. It argued that there’s not much use in ‘theories’ of innovation if they’re taken as recipe books for senior...
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Speaking of bullshit . . .
A brief note – with a long appendix – about my recent re-reading of Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit” in the writing of a recent post. I remembered the article fondly, but on re-reading it I found it was...
View ArticleVox pop journalism as a system of domination: Syriza edition
When the French and Russian Revolutions occurred, the existing order asserted itself through the intervention of foreign nations. Recognising this, and decrying it is not to endorse either revolution,...
View ArticleDaniel Ellsberg on life and groupthink
HT Paul Monk who cites this as one of his favourite passages. It’s now one of mine. And a nice explanation of how easy it is – whether within an organisation or the caverns of one’s own riotous psyche...
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On Democracy: Against elections
Some readers of this blog with know my preoccupation with the shortcomings of Vox Pop Democracy. Here are some aphorisms from David Van Reybrouck who’s book Against elections does not appear to have...
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Fair trade coffee: so much more (or less) than it seems, depending on your...
From the latest Journal of Economic Perspectives Fair trade coffee is a cup half full, according to Raluca Dragusanu, Daniele Giovannucci, and Nathan Nunn in “The Economics of Fair Trade” (Summer 2014,...
View ArticleA film and a couple of poems in the lead-up to Anzac day
Regular readers will know of my enthusiasm for the recent movie adaptation of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth about the disaster that was WWI and how it blighted the lives of a generation. It’s...
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Neoclassical economics: what is it good for?
I sent the passage below to my friend Alex Coram noting “I like this post from Brad Delong – though you may not”. Alex, you see, has a deeper understanding than me of these things. I was right – he...
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Professionalism as tyranny: a liberationist fantasy
Adam Smith put it memorably above. I’ll be forever grateful for my time at the Australian Centre for Social Innovation because it has shown me the generality of that statement. Whether Smith intended...
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Politics in the Courtroom: Political Ideology and Jury Decision Making
by Shamena Anwar, Patrick Bayer, Randi Hjalmarsson. Publication is available here. This paper uses data from the Gothenburg District Court in Sweden and a research design that exploits the random...
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The generative commons of generalised social capital
Paul Krugman has an interesting blog post on the extent to which there might be contagion from one area of social capital (or lack thereof) to another. He’s responding to the claim CEOs made to him...
View ArticleSyriza: the latest disaster for the left
I don’t have much time to offer anything very considered but want to just say how bemused I am at the carryings on of Syriza. The whole sorry business has been horrible to watch with creditors showing...
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