Middle class revolution
One of many interesting ideas in the Ministry of Defence’s Strategic Trends study is that the middle class may become revolutionaries: taking on the role Marx expected of the proletariat. My instinctive reaction to this is that it is implausible, but, on reflection, it is more likely than it first appears. (more…)
Feeding terrorism?
This evidence appears to show that the main cause of terrorism is the lack of civil liberties (as discussed in this blog post). So where does that leave governments whose “war on terror” involves getting rid of civil liberties? (more…)
My favourite terrorists
The terrorists responsible for the London and Glasgow airport “car bombs” are my favourite kind: bumbling idiots who could not explode a jar of nitroglycerine. I feel a lot safer,knowing how incompetent they are. My main worry is that some of the suspects are doctors: if they planned this, how did they get through medical school? (more…)
Spreading greed
According to economist Robert H Frank, economics students become more selfish as a result of spending years immersed in the study of economic theory that is based on the idea that people act selfishly (or “rationally”, as economists describe it.
What effect does living in a neo-liberal capitalist society that is based on exactly the same assumptions have on people?
BAE and how to pay bribes
After the ineptness apparently shown by BAE in directly transferring cash it appears that many people do not know how to pay bribes properly. Lot of companies with ethics committees and auditors, so, for the benefit of BAE and others who need to learn how to it properly, this is how you bribe foreign government officials: (more…)
Bush-Blair memo: heros imprisoned
The heroic David Keogh and Leo O’Connor have been jailed. It is no longer news that Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in Qatar and flatten Falujah, which fits with claims that US forces deliberately targetted journalists. Peter Kilfoyle’s early day motion here, people willing to risk jail to get the truth out here (who include Borris Johnson).
Immigration and the economy
Putting together the information from these articles from the Christain Science Monitor and the Washington Post, (found via Greg Mankiw’s blog) once more emphasis the enormous economic benefits of immigration. It also demolishes the arguments of those “concerned” about immigration, in Britain as well as the US. (more…)
Silliest blog post
This has got to be one of the silliest statements ever made on any of the blogs I read regularly. (more…)
So much for free speech
I do not normally blog on American politics, but this deserves attention. A former professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, who has also been a US Marine colonel and who has been injured in action and decorated, is on a terrorist watch list. This is apparently that he has publicly criticised George Bush. This is not an isolated incident. (more…)
Free market hypocrisy
This change of heart on the benefits of outsourcing is, to me, just another example of both the hypocrisy of many supposed free markets advocates. Everyone seems to favour free markets, but as Adam Smith himself pointed out, no one wants free markets to apply to themselves. Everyone wants free markets their own way. (more…)
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