Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
St Thomas More, an English statesman and one of the 100 Greatest Britons, is rumored to have said the following on the eve of his execution: Some men say the earth is flat. Some men say the earth is round. But if it is flat, could Parliament make it round? And if it is round, could the […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
The best class I took in all my economics education was called “Cyclical Fluctuation,” taught by Dr. Susan Schroeder at USYD. It was a broad-scope class in the many heterodox ideas that economists have about what causes business cycles, and what makes the output, employment, and financial prosperity fluctuate so wildly around otherwise steady long-term trends. One […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Purity is a poor test for us fallen creatures: Nobody, bar perhaps the occasional Mother Teresa, is that good. Not strictly because we individually fall short of our ideals, but because it’s impossible for anyone to reach, establish, or even view the end destination – neither in scientific knowledge nor in moral virtues. With the […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
In the early 2000s, before the financial crisis, a debate dominated central banking: whether central bankers should try to rein in financial bubbles in what was called “lean against the wind.” That is, over and above their macroeconomic targets – keeping inflation at or around 2% and ensuring full employment – central banks should also […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
A spectre is haunting the Western world – the specter of a grossly mistaken understanding of the world. British kids have nightmares about the climate. Half of French respondents think it likely that climate change will cause “the extinction of the human race.” American teachers coddle students who have panic attacks when wildfires rage somewhere on the planet. Eco-anxiety […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Ronald Reagan famously said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were “I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” The pandemic, or rather how we and our governments chose to act in 2020, turned that enemy into a blessed savior and projected as the external threat an invisible and ever-lurking […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
The ironic thing about Michael Malice’s book The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics is that it mostly deals with the Left. What unites the Right, argues Malice, is that they all hate the Left. His definition of the New Right reads: a loosely connected group of individuals united by their opposition […]