Trahison Des Clercs

Oscar Wilde wrote "The Unspeakable in Pursuit of the Inedible". I can confirm that description is as relevant today!

An unholy alliance exists between the left and the right over the perceived blight of outsourcing. It either has the stench of 'what about the children?' emotionalism or 'these colours don't run' nationalistic fever. But what about the objective analysis? An interesting article is offered by Bertrand (2011, What goes around, comes around: Effects of offshore outsourcing on the export performance of firms, Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 42, pp334-344). Here's the abstract: ...

Gun control? We know the evidence points to significant positive gains. Hip hip hooray! Despite that we are confronted with an united front of zombies that ignore the empirical evidence and makes outlandish claims of empirical bias, just because the multiple studies involved aren't from the source of their virus. These post-folk though aren't ignorant shufflers that should be kept in a locked barn. I sneer at those that suggest that they should. They are merely infected in playing the anti-intellectual ...

Napier and Jost (2008, Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?, Psychological Science, Vol 19, pp 565-572) write:

"In this research, we drew on system-justification theory and the notion that conservative ideology serves a palliative function to explain why conservatives are happier than liberals. Specifically, in three studies using nationally representative data from the United States and nine additional countries, we found that right-wing (vs. left-wing) orientation ...

The M25; arguably the most miserable road in existence. A circular route around London; you know that as you crawl around you're not actually getting anywhere. It does allow a moment of contemplation. Just a moment mind you. There is sneer and snarl to be had whilst you listen to Radio 1's chart music dirge.

Is there an issue more characterised by market failure? Congestion: social costs; with the only entertainment being the broken down posh car. Pollution from fuel: social costs; ...

24 hours in the day. 1440 minutes. 86,400 seconds. As a nipper that was a jolly long time. With time to burn one’s main fear was indeed boredom. But how does that change as you grow older and contemplate balding, divorce and a motorcycling midlife crisis. A static understanding would suggest a simple substitution effect. Sleep dusting is a time-intensive product that yields zero return. One should therefore achieve a reservation amount, a minimum that allows one to maintain one’s physical efficiency. ...

The US has a relatively poor record in terms of child fatal injury rates (e.g. UNICEF 1991-1995 data has the US child fatality at 14.1 per 100,000. Sweden was down at 5.2). It would seem to be a tad of a stretch, but could the US's abortion restrictions offer one explanatory variable? Consider, for example, Sen et al. (2012, The relationship between state abortion-restrictions and homicide deaths among children under 5 years of age: A longitudinal study, Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 75, pp. ...

One recommends the offering by Tilman (2001, Ideology and Utopia in the Social Philosophy of the Libertarian Economists, London: Greenwood Press). Here's some background info via Toruño's (2002, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 36 Issue 1, pp 211-213) book review:

"The Libertarians, Tilman argues, are driven by a vision of society that is so unrealistic that it can only be defined as utopian, while at the same time providing such elaborate rationalizations for the distribution ...