Utopia, you are standing in it!

by Tim Harding

(An edited version of this article was published in
“The Skeptic” Vol 32, No. 4, December 2012)

In game theory, ‘zero-sum’ describes a game where one player’s gain is a loss to other players; and the total amount of the available money or playing chips is fixed. A logical fallacy often occurs when this particular game theory is applied to real life economic or political discussions amongst non-economists – leading to false beliefs that the amount of wealth or jobs in the economy is fixed.

This mistaken view is illustrated by expressions such as ‘a larger slice of the pie’, which imply that ‘the pie’ has a fixed size and that net welfare cannot be improved by growing a bigger pie.  That is, that people can only become richer by making others poorer; or that increasing labour productivity or immigration causes unemployment.  In economics, this is…

When asked to list the worst presidents of the 20th century, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon belong on the list.

But this Reason video with Amity Shlaes shows why Lyndon Johnson also is among the worst of the worst.

You should watch every second of the video, but if you don’t have 33 minutes to spare, here’s a helpful summary.

Johnson declared war on poverty, jacked up federal spending on education, and pushed massive new entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, which promised to deliver high-quality, low-cost health care to the nation’s elderly and poor. …But did the Great Society achieve its goals of eradicating poverty, sheltering the homeless, and helping all citizens participate more fully in the American Dream? In Great Society: A New History, Amity Shlaes argues that Lyndon Johnson’s bold makeover of the government was a massive failure.

Massive failure may…

Norwegian hydro-electric site

The suspicion has to be that Britain’s ‘excess’ wind power, if any, would sell for a low price as Norway doesn’t need it, whereas a shortage of power in Britain would allow Norway to sell for a high price, assuming availability at request time. Water can be stored but wind can’t. Some reports are calling this ‘cheap hydro’, but at £1.4 billion just for the cable system such claims appear unconvincing.
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Norwegian reservoirs will begin powering homes in Great Britain today as the world’s longest subsea power cable was switched on, in a boost to renewables and tight energy supplies this winter, says New Scientist.

The 724-kilometre North Sea Link is the sixth of a growing network of electricity interconnectors between Great Britain and its European neighbours, to trade energy and adapt to grids increasingly reliant on the variable output of wind, solar…

Raging Bull (1980) Director: Martin Scorsese

“Come on, hit me… Harder. Harder.”

★★★★★

Unlike some of the other “movie brats” of the 1970s (Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg) by the late ’70s Martin Scorsese had fallen into a deep depression following the poor reception of New York, New York and fueled by drugs and self-loathing he fell into a dangerous pit of despair. He was tragically self-abusive, and wound up in the hospital after a drug overdose. Enter Robert De Niro who met his friend Scorsese in the hospital to pitch a new idea for a movie (he had just finished reading Jake LaMotta autobiography while filming The Godfather Part II). Scorsese was hesitant. He did not particularly care for sports and a film with this subject matter would no doubt be a trial to film, especially for someone struggling with his own…