Randomized Controlled Trials: Could you be any more scientific? The book I’m now writing, Unbeatable: The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets, insists that the randomistas of the economics profession actually have a thinly-veiled political agenda. Namely: To get economists to humbly serve the demagogues that rule the world instead of bluntly challenging their unabated…
In the last few years, especially after I started writing for this blog, I got more than a few comments about the need for bi-partisanship, not hating out ideological, let alone political opponents. What was notable about this was that they all came from the Right of the political spectrum. The Left seem quite happy […]
J. Scott Turner explains how the roots of environmental stewardship were poisoned, resulting in the perverted modern decarbonization movement. His Spectator Australia article is Environmentalism: from concern about clean air to throwing soup at the Mona Lisa. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. H/T John Ray Garrett Hardin was a professor of biology […]
One annoying thing about writing a Saturday column for the Stuff papers is never knowing whether a piece will show up in print.I’d thought this one was a banger. I’ll be talking about related issues tomorrow night as part of a panel for A City for People. 🟨🟪 Our speaker line up has dropped! 🟪🟨Join us on…
Besides the usual, that is. Max Thilo of the UK has a new and excellent study on this, here is one excerpt from the foreword by Lord Warner: Second, and critical, the Singaporeans are not fixated on delivering services from acute hospitals – the most expensive part of any healthcare system because of its fixed […]
The Housing Theory of Everything has one of those wonderful self-explanatory titles. A good title matters. The recent and thorough essay explains how the anglosphere’s unnecessarily expensive housing affects, well, everything. Or at least almost everything.Zoning makes it too hard to build houses where people want to build. Urban containment policies block new subdivisions, so…
I’ve referred to “creative destruction” as the “best and worst part of capitalism.” This short video from the Fraser Institute is a good tutorial on the topic. The core message is that entrepreneurs improve our lives by coming up with new ideas, new technologies, and new products. That’s the good news. The bad news is […]
My piece for the Saturday papers weekend before last, and now ungated here, went back to a theme that Richard Harman had noticed in the Waitangi speeches. Minister Shane Jones argued fuller debate on the meaning of Tino Rangatiratanga is inevitable, saying, “There is a deep, committed view from Pita Tipene and others that article two…
Oliver Hartwich writes – The World Justice Project ranks New Zealand 7th out of 142 countries on its ‘Rule of Law Index’, narrowly ahead of Australia’s 13th place. However, Australia still has hope – if only because of a recent decision by the Supreme Court of New Zealand. The case is easily told. Mike Smith, […]
A lot of academics who haven’t previously gone after DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives are coming out of the woodwork to criticize the philosophy and actions of DEI. New critics include Steve Pinker, who, in his Boston Globe article on how to fix the problems of Harvard, included “Disempowering DEI” as one of the […]
Interpreting the agreement made at Waitangi as a social contract is a way to move forward on treaty issues (This column follows ‘Our Understandings Of Te Tiriti Has Evolved Organically’.) Brian Easton writes – Te Tiriti is in the form of a social contract of the sort that political theorists have discussed since the seventeenth […]
This week, the argument before the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson captivated the nation as the justices considered the disqualification of former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot. For some of us, the argument brought back vivid memories of covering Bush v. Gore almost 25 years ago. While one justice (Clarence Thomas) […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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