Lars P. Syll

Feynman’s trick (student stuff) .[embedded content]

The Swedish for-profit ‘free’ school disaster Neo-liberals and libertarians have always provided a lot of ideologically founded ideas and ‘theories’ to underpin their Panglossian view on markets. But when they are tested against reality they usually turn out to be wrong. The promised results are simply not to be found. And that goes for for-profit private schools too. Sweden introduced a voucher-style reform in the 1990s and opened the market to for-profit...

50 years ago today .[embedded content]

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Angus Deaton on why and how economics must change .[embedded content]

Unlike anthropologists … economists simply invent the primitive societies we study, a practice which frees us from limiting ourselves to societies which can be physically visited as sparing us the discomforts of long stays among savages. This method of society-invention is the source of the utopian character of economics; and of the mix of distrust and envy with which we are viewed by our fellow social scientists. The point of studying wholly fictional, rather than actual...

Why the euro has to be abandoned The euro has taken away the possibility for national governments to manage their economies in a meaningful way — and the people have​ had to pay the true costs of its concomitant misguided austerity policies. The unfolding of the repeated economic crises in Euroland during the last decade has shown beyond any doubt that the euro is not only an economic project​ but just as much a political one. What the neoliberal revolution...

The youngest member of the Meyer-Syll family — Hedda. And yes — Ibsen is one of yours truly’s favourite dramatists …

.[embedded content] I loved this song when I first heard it twenty years ago. I still do.

The man who never wavered — Alan Bates In science, courage is to follow the motto of enlightenment and Kant’s dictum — Sapere Aude!  To use your understanding, dare to think for yourself and question ‘received opinion,’ authority or orthodoxy. In our daily lives, courage is the capability to confront fear, as when in front of the powerful and mighty, not to step back, but stand up for one’s right not to be humiliated or abused. As when Alan Bates decided to...