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I always wondered how people could bear years of pointless slaughter in a Great War over nothing. Having seen how hardened people are to thousands of daily deaths from Covid, it seems if that’s just the way things are The saying “one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic” may have been coined during the Great War and not, as often thought, by Stalin. (Some previous statements in similar terms, but making a different point about the way war is worshipped) Share...

That’s the title of my latest piece in The Conversation. More soon Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

from Ikonoclast (originally a comment) Comments are declining on this blog. People ARE hiding in their holes. Holes can be comfortably furnished. Just ask a hobbit. Of course, when the holes cease to be furnished and the supermarket shelves are empty then things get a little less comfortable. You will note I wrote, “Every well thought out effort at sustainability postpones catastrophe a little bit.” That is the essential nature of life in an existentialist sense: postponing catastrophe...

from Lars Syll Robert Lucas, one of the most creative model-builders, tells a story about his undergraduate encounter with Gregor Mendel’s model of genetic inheritance. He liked the Mendelian model—“you could work out predictions that would surprise you”—though not the lab work breeding fruit flies to test it. (Economists are not big on mucking around in the real world.) Over the weekend, he enjoyed writing a paper comparing the model’s predictions with the class’s experimental results....

from Ken Zimmerman (originally a comment) Uneconomic growth is growth that produces negative externalities which reduce the overall quality of life. This is also known as unsustainable growth, where the negative social and environmental consequences outweigh the short-term value of an extra unit of growth, making it uneconomic. But in spite of this quandary growth remains the primary goal. It holds that place because growth is equated with progress. The idea of  progress seems one of the...

Dan Little has a post up at Understanding Society on what authoritarianism might look like in the United States.  The whole thing is well worth reading, but here is one part: This seems about right, though of course speculative, but I have doubts about the big business piece.  Yes, some business interests will be close to the ruling party or strongman, and they may gain some degree of regulatory relief, but it would be a mistake for...

Dan Little has a post up at Understanding Society on what authoritarianism might look like in the United States.  The whole thing is well worth reading, but here is one part: This seems about right, though of course speculative, but I have doubts about the big business piece.  Yes, some business interests will be close to the ruling party or strongman, and they may gain some degree of regulatory relief, but it would be a mistake for...

I gave up hope of getting much out of a Labor government when Albanese announced that he would implement Morrison’s top-end tax cuts, and it became clear that this meant abandoning most of the spending commitments Labor took to the 2019 election. But at least it seemed that Labor would be significantly better on climate policy. Now, that difference has been reduced to a minor point of semantics. Morrison has finally crabwalked his way to a 2050 net zero commitment. In deference to the...