Utopia, you are standing in it!

Star Trek Generations (1994) Director: David Carson

“Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they’ll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important how we lived” -Picard

★★★☆☆

While often critically lambasted by Trekkies, I actually quite enjoyed Generations far more than expected (excluding several key moments). Generations is explicitly a fan-service film as it hands the torch from one generation to the next –James T. Kirk to Jean-Luc Picard –William Shatner plays his delightfully awkward self but the only two other actors from the original series in this film are James Doohan and Walter Koenig (the rest of the original series cast apparently wanted nothing to do with this film). While I thought aspects…

For some reason the other day I was prompted to have a look at how many research papers the Reserve Bank had published in recent years. This chart resulted.

Only one in the last two years, and that one paper – published last February – had five authors, four of whom worked for other institutions (overseas). It was really quite staggering. It wasn’t, after all, as if there had been no interesting issues, policy puzzles or the like over the last two years. It wasn’t as if universities had suddenly stepped up to the mark and were producing a superfluity of research on New Zealand macro and banking/financial regulation issues. It wasn’t even as if the Bank had suddenly been put on tight rations by a fiscally austere government – in fact, the latest Funding Agreement threw money and the Bank and staff numbers have blown out. Rather, or so…

The dates December 5 through the 7^th, 1941 mark the parameters of the most consequential week of the 20^th century or perhaps any other time in history. It was during that week that the Soviet Union began a major counter offensive against the Nazis who were threatening Moscow, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and Hitler declared war on the United States. It was a perilous time for the British who had endured Dunkirk, the Luftwaffe’s blitz over London and other cities, fears of Japanese attacks against British held territories in Asia, and Churchill’s fear that the only thing that could save his island empire – the entrance of the United States into the war against Germany would not occur as Washington would now focus on Japan after Pearl Harbor. The event that saved the British was the Nazi dictator’s declaration of war against the United States, an…

Western Nations are determined to prevent the World’s poorest from having cheap and reliable energy, a fact laid plain at the Glasgow gabfest, where the Climate Industrial Complex did its best to ensure that the likes of India will never have any hope of dragging themselves out of agrarian misery and grinding poverty.

The wind and solar obsessed in the first world are quite prepared to ensure that it stays that way. With economic development agencies peddling ridiculously expensive solar panels – seen as ‘fake electricity’ by those lumbered with it – and forcing tinpot governments to sign up to costly and pointless wind and/or solar power schemes, the ratio of haves to have-nots is likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

More than a billion humans struggle through daily life without access to power at all, and two billion more are limited to a meagre trickle…

The United Kingdom Constitution Monitoring Group published itsfirst annual reportin 2021. It described the UK Government as ‘set upon legislating over a range of substantial matters with a constitutional dimension’, with its overall programme being ‘notable for its scale, the speed with which it is being implemented’ and this being ‘far from a model of good practice in constitutional change’ (p5).

A significant aspect of the ‘constitutional dimension’ of such changes is that they expand executive power in a number of different ways. This post presents a brief summary of key expansions of executive power via legislation introduced to or passed in the Westminster Parliament in 2021. It then assesses the substance of these expansions, arguing that two key themes emerge. First, that there is an increase in the executive’s capacity to use coercive force, and, second, there is a reduction in the accountability of the executive to…

Back in 2014, I compared the long-run economic performance of Cuba and Hong Kong.

Both jurisdictions were roughly equal about 60 years ago. But the data show a dramatic performance gap ever since the communists took power in Cuba, with Hong Kong (which was very pro-market back then) enjoying much bigger increases in prosperity.

Sadly, not much has changed in Cuba since I wrote that column.

The communist dictatorship is still there, and the economy is still socialist (notwithstanding even Castro admitting its failure).

And this means ongoing misery for ordinary people.

Here are some excerpts from a story published by Agence France-Presse.

Cubans are no strangers to queuing for everything from bread to toothpaste, often standing for hours under a blazing sun with no access to a toilet or drinking water, and always with the fear of leaving empty-handed. It is a daily ordeal Cubans have endured…

David Friedman recently got into an online debate with Walter Block that could be seen as a boxing match between “Austrian economics” and the “Chicago School of Economics”. In the wake of this debate, Friedman assembled his thoughts in this piece which is supposed (if I understand properly) to be published as a chapter in an edited volume. Upon reading this piece, I thought it worthy of providing my thoughts in part because I see myself as being both a member of both schools of thought and in part because I specialize in economic history. And here is the claim I want to make: I don’t see any meaningful difference between both and I don’t understand why there are perpetual attempts to create a distinction.

But before that, let’s do a simple summary of the two views according to Friedman (which is the first part of the essay). The “Chicago”…

Pin your energy needs on the weather, and prepare for disappointment, over and over and over again.

South Australians know it, Germans know it, Texans and Californians know it, all too well.

In the latter part of 2021, as the Big Calm descended across Western Europe, Brits learned all about it, too. Quietly firing up once-mothballed, but ever-reliable, coal-fired power plants and feverishly importing nuclear power from France.

All up, the ‘inevitable transition’ to an all wind and sun-powered future has amounted to little more than a well-orchestrated high farce.

On that score, Paul Homewood takes a look at what passes for research into the likelihood of total wind power output collapses in Britain.

While Paul reckons that no one is suggesting the wind will stop blowing completely around the postage stamp of territory that is the UK, we’ll set out a couple from the archives to prove that…