Has Dan Hardie actually infiltrated the Chief of the General Staff’s private office? Mick Smith reports that Dannatt is gagging to create another brigade or so of infantry, which is not only roughly Dan’s prescription, but would just about equal last year’s four battalion cut. Hell, there are some fine old colours laid up in…
Read More Just Who Is the 5’O Clock Blogger?This DeLong vs Krugman post, and the comment from James Galbraith, raise an interesting issue regarding redistribution of income, free trade, and globalisation. Namely, as trade creates both winners and losers, but with a positive sum, it is both just and politically necessary that the winners compensate the losers. You could consider it a side-payment…
Read More Who needs remote control?After this post, my quest to grasp heterodox economics moved on to this Crooked Timber thread, in which Dsquared argues that the biggest problem with orthodox economics is that it doesn’t really account for profits. And profits are a pretty big thing to miss, especially as the entire notion of economics relies on the idea…
Read More When profit is a problemI would like to understand the current controversy going on over at many more-read blogs than this one regarding “orthodox” and “heterodox” economics. At least, I’d like to understand it better. I’m sympathetic to a general critique of what we’re apparently obliged to describe as “orthodox” economics – unrealistic standard assumptions, unrealistic views of rationality,…
Read More Heterecon BlegRemember this post on Maglev, managerialists, and creationist technology? Heavily-blogged Myers links to equally heavily-blogged article on the market for Kalashnikov rifles. Apparently, everything he reads only makes sense in the light of evolution. Funny that – think process. This is also why the Chinese textile industry wants to reopen an old mill in Wigan,…
Read More Kalashnikovs, trousers, squid, pies..How could the principles in this post be put into effect? Here’s an opportunity. Legendary trade reporter Roger Ford discusses the situation at GNER, where the company’s franchise to operate the East Coast Main Line has been withdrawn because the parent company, Sea Containers, is in financial difficulty. The details of the difficulty can be…
Read More A practical example?This post from PZ Myers raises a very important point about decentralisation and local accountability. What if the quacks get control? Families and schools are always a problem with regard to liberty – no-one has the right to experiment on the public without their consent, but youth is the one experiment that is performed on…
Read More Go to school, learn the rules, don’t be no faker!Last weekend, for the first time in years. A couple of things – first of all, they’re knocking down the first attempts at regeneration now, whilst a lot of the empty sites that used to be mills are still empty. The whole 60s grey tickytacky city centre is gone, leaving half a mile of rubble.…
Read More Back in BradfordEveryone’s vexed (h/t to Dan Hardie) about the spankin’ new city academy in Peterborough that, courtesy of Perkins Engines, will be offering education with a total ban on “unstructured play”. It’s the most expensive state school ever built at £46.4 million, but hey! Perkins put up all of £2 million out of that, always assuming…
Read More Libraries gave us powerSome time ago, I got involved in a debate about the cost of unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs. I argued that the idea that they would supplant piloted aircraft was overambitious, and that, crucially, the high accident rate they experienced would make them rather more expensive than anyone thought. After all, if their biggest advantage was…
Read More The cost of UAVs