Utopia, you are standing in it!

In a decision handed down just prior to Christmas, DP (a pseudonym) v Bird [2021] VSC 850 (22 December 2021), a judge of the Victorian Supreme Court ruled that the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Ballarat could be sued as vicariously liable for child sexual abuse committed by an assistant parish priest against the plaintiff DP when he was 5 years old (in 1971). The decision (as noted in a recent online press report) seems to be the first time a diocese has been found vicariously liable under common law principles for the actions of a priest, in Australia. In this note I will suggest that the reason for this is that the decision is wrong, as inconsistent with clear High Court of Australia authority. This does not mean that I think that the organised church ought to be allowed to escape liability for harm committed…

Throughout the pandemic, our politicians have been urged to “follow the science” or, more accurately, the advice provided by medical scientists. Other disciplines play only a bit part. There are Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) sub-groups assessing the impacts of Covid on the provision of social care, or minority ethnic groups, but what about the economy?

Indeed, it appears that economists are only asked to put a cost on policy decisions that have already been made, or come up with schemes to mitigate the impacts, rather than influence decisions in the first place. In my admittedly biased view, this is a mistake.

Any decent economist has a toolbox of concepts and skills that can be applied to the policy responses to a pandemic. This begins with communicating the case for state intervention.

For example, protection from a deadly virus is a classic example of what economists call a “public…

The biggest mistake of well-meaning leftists is that they place too much value on good intentions and don’t seem to care nearly as much about good results.

Pope Francis is an example of this unfortunate tendency. His concern for the poor presumably is genuine, but he puts ideology above evidence when he argues against capitalism and in favor of coercive government.

Here are some passages from a CNNreport on the Pope’s bias.

Pope Francis makes his first official visit to the United States this week. There’s a lot of angst about what he might say, especially when he addresses Congress Thursday morning. …He’ll probably discuss American capitalism’s flaws, a theme he has hit on since the 1990s. Pope Francis wrote a book in 1998 with an entire chapter focused on “the limits of capitalism.” …Francis argued that…capitalism lacks morals and promotes selfish behavior. …He has been especially critical…

“Ideology is a menace” Paul Collier says in his forthcoming book The Future of Capitalism and I couldn’t agree more: ideology (and by extension morality) “binds and blinds”, as psychology professor Jonathan Haidt describes i. And ideology, especially utopian dreams by dedicated rulers, is what allows – indeed accounts for – the darkest episodes of humanity. There is a strange dissonance among people for whom political positions, ideology and politics are supremely important:

• They portray their position as if supported by facts and empirical claims about the world (or at least spit out such claims as if they did believe that)
• At the same time, believing that their “core values” and “ideological convictions” are immune to factual objections (“these are my values; this is my opinion”)

My purpose here is to illustrate that all political positions, at least in part, have their basis in empirically verifiable claims about the…

In 1969, Colonel Luke Quinn, a U.S. Army Air Force officer in World War II, was diagnosed with inoperable gallbladder cancer. Surprisingly, he was referred to Dr. DeVita, the lymphoma specialist at National Cancer Institute, by the great Harvard pathologist Sidney Farber — famous for developing one of the most successful chemotherapies ever discovered. Nobody imagined back then that Colonel Luke Quinn, a wiry man with grey hair and a fierce frown with his unusual and likely incurable cancer, would significantly impact how we look at cancer as a disease.

Having been coerced to take up the case of Colonel Luke Quinn, despite gallbladder cancers not being his specialty, Dr.DeVita began to take a routine history, much to the annoyance of Luke Quinn who was used to being in command. Though Quinn glared at Dr.DeVita for reinitiating another agonizing round of…

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin on November 30, 1667 –only a handful of years after the end of Puritanical rule in England– to an English mother and an English father, who died of syphilis just before Jonathan was born, supposedly the disease was contracted while he was away from home sleeping in a pair of “dirty sheets.” Jonathan was an only child, raised by various friends and family members. His English lineage as well as Irish ethnicity together affected his sense of civic duty as he maintained a lifelong sympathy for the Irish struggle. His upbringing was of an upper-crust variety among Anglo-Irish ruling class. He attended Kilkenny School from 1674-1682 and then Trinity College in Dublin from 1682-1686.

In 1689, Swift moved to England to reside at Moor Park in Surrey where he served as secretary to its owner, Sir William Temple, a retired diplomat who had pretensions…

The politicians seem to have steered clear of the controversy over matauranga Maori and science in which the Royal Society of New Zealand has become embroiled.

This is perturbing. The meaning of “science” in this country – and how it is taught – will be influenced by the way the controversy is resolved.  So, too, will the difference between truth and belief.

Soon the government will be evaluating feedback after launching the Te Ara Paerangi – Future Pathways Green Paper to prompt a consultation on the future of the country’s research, science and innovation science system.

Associate science minister Ayesha Verrall ominously said at the launch:

“Te Tiriti needs to be embedded right across the design and delivery of the system, and more opportunities need to exist for mātauranga Māori.” 

Does she mean opportunities for a belief system? An alternative view of the world? Or what?

She has also declared: