Utopia, you are standing in it!

This piece was originally published on the Genetic Literacy Project. Genetic engineering of food is a controversial topic that stirs up a lot of emotions. How should we talk about it? Will anything we say make a difference?

I think a useful perspective comes from framing the question somewhat differently: Can the way we behave in our interactions with others make a difference in how people consider controversial subjects?

Let me explain. When I first encountered harsh skepticism toward GMOs–at a Facebook mommy-group–I pasted several links to scientific sources to help address the participants’ concerns. All in a friendly manner. But the thread went south. The original poster called me a bully for posting five links during the discussion!). I was stunned. I stated that I was not trying to push my opinion on anyone but wanted to ground the discussion in science because the issue was so important. Some posters did not…

Fabio

A few days ago, I wrote about Ron Paul’s amazing $4 million single day fund raising feat. At the least, it shows that there’s a lot of angry antiwar libertarians inside the GOP. But what does this incident say about third parties more generally? I’d argue that the lesson is that 3rd party politics is useless. If you want to make an impact, work inside the two major parties, unless you want to blow the election for the candidate who is closest to you.

In the American system, it’s always been hard to be a third party since the country is run on a district based winner takes all system. Up until the early 20th century, third parties could occasionally get traction by exploiting election rules, and some third parties got some victories in the midwest, such as the Socialists. Over time, the state governments have made it…

Image problem for VW
Clive Crook at Bloomberg says there are several scandals linked to the VW diesel debacle. Here we’ll focus on one of them, related to so-called climate policies. Was the ‘dash for diesel’ ever a rational policy?

A third scandal, even more costly than the first two, also needs to be noticed and examined. It concerns the economic and environmental policies that first set European car manufacturers and consumers on course to this pile-up.

Remember that “clean diesel” was a government-led initiative, brought to you courtesy of Europe’s taxpayers. And, by the way, the policy had proved a massively expensive failure on its own terms even before the VW scandal broke.

It’s this scandal that teaches the most important lessons.

Has John McDonnell really committed Labour to supporting George Osborne’s fiscal charter? A report in the Guardian at the weekend said:

To the possible surprise of some on the left, McDonnell will announce that Labour MPs will be expected later this autumn to vote for the chancellor’s fiscal charter unveiled in the budget in July.

It quotes the shadow chancellor:

“We will support the charter. We will support the charter on the basis we are going to want to balance the book, we do want to live within our means and we will tackle the deficit.”

Confusingly, the Guardian reports also says that Labour would borrow to invest, which suggests something similar to Ed Miliband’s policy of eliminating the current spending deficit while still borrowing for capital expenditure. That would give the government more leeway but it would still require cuts or tax increases. It was the policy condemned as austerity-lite by…

You see the occasional article about how we are now in a “libertarian moment” or that the GOP has been captured by libertarians. It is true that libertarians are getting more publicity than before, but it truly hard to argue that libertarianism – a consistent demand that the state scale back across the board – is actually here. For example, in the Real Clear Politics average of presidential primary polls, Rand Paul, the most libertarian candidate, has a huge 2% of support from GOP voters. Gary Johnson, the libertarian GOP former governor of New Mexico, could barely register support above the margin of error of polling, also gaining 2%. Ron Paul has done the best with an enormous 8% of polling in 2008 – and he ran against only two other people! And of course, the Libertarian Party itself has done very poorly at the polls…

I have often come across claims that wish to contest the existence of herd immunity. I find these puzzling. First of all, they are usually offered without proof. But mostly what befuddles me is that the argument approaches the topic backwards. It starts at the wrong end. Let me explain.

There is a simple way of breaking down the factors that make up herd immunity.