Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy
18 Feb 2020 Leave a comment
in behavioural economics, economics of information Tags: nudges
A Reading of Ross McKitrick’s “Open Letter to Lisa Raitt” on the Climate Mob Effect
18 Feb 2020 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate alarmists, pessimism bias
Which Is The Most Dangerous Car?
18 Feb 2020 Leave a comment
in transport economics Tags: road safety
Recommended readings on evolutionary psychology
18 Feb 2020 Leave a comment
I’m still a bit under the weather with an incipient cold, but I’m taking zinc lozenges, which do have some science behind them supporting the claim that zinc shortens the duration and severity of colds. At any rate, since I’ve used them I haven’t had a full-on cold for several years. (A confounding factor: I also wash my hands a lot more.) All this is by way of explaining why I don’t have the energy to brain today.
But I will call your attention to three articles on evolutionary psychology that you may want to read.
About 15 years ago, I was known as a critic of evolutionary psychology, mainly because, along with Andrew Berry, I went after what I saw as bad science promulgated in a book about rape being an adaptation (see also here; copy of my New Republic piece available through judicious inquiry). In those pieces…
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Blokes are bigger
18 Feb 2020 Leave a comment
in gender, health economics, sports economics Tags: Anti-Science left
#endcoal #endoil #globalwarming #climateemergency @Greenpeace @Greens @NZGreens @jamespeshaw
18 Feb 2020 Leave a comment
Unbridled alarmism
17 Feb 2020 Leave a comment
in economics of education, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming Tags: pessimism bias
Down Tools: Australia’s Most Powerful Workers Union Rejects Unreliable Wind & Solar
17 Feb 2020 1 Comment
Labor – aka the ‘Workers Party’ – remains determined to destroy whole industries and thousands of jobs with a 50% RET and a giant ‘carbon’ tax. Business and job destroying policies that helped it comfortably lose the ‘unloseable’ Federal election in May, and which its deluded front bench simply can’t bear to let go.
Australian industry has been a protected species since the Victorian gold rush in the 1850s, cosseted behind an insurmountable wall of tariffs and propped up with subsidies. As the tariffs and subsidies to industries – such as motor manufacturing, clothing and footwear – were slashed in the 1990s, hundreds of businesses and entire industries have disappeared.
Nowadays, mining, manufacturing and mineral processing are being treated by politicians as a class of mangy vermin – fit only for urgent eradication – with a raft of utterly insane energy policies which threaten thousands of small and large businesses…
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Simply unfit
17 Feb 2020 Leave a comment
The governor was very upset of my criticisms of the New Zealand superannuation fund’s investment strategy. rather than agreeing to disagree on the interpretation of the literature, he had to attack my op-ed as full of factual errors but could never back up any of them
In yesterday’s Sunday Star-Times another article by their reporter Kate MacNamara shed further light on just how unsuited Adrian Orr is to be Governor of the Reserve Bank, exercising huge public policy and regulatory power still (in large chunks of the Bank’s responsibilities, often with crisis dimensions to them) as sole decisionmaker, with few/no effective checks and balances. These disclosures should also raise serious questions about the judgement and diligence of the Board who were primarily responsible for Orr’s appointment and are primarily responsible for holding him to account, and of the Minister of Finance who formally appointed Orr, and is responsible now for both him and for the Board.
In this latest in her series of articles, MacNamara draws on the responses to one of several Official Information Act requests she had lodged late last year. She had sought from the Bank copies of communications between the Governor and…
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