In my last post, I said that governments wont open up the free trade of food because domestic prices would increase, leading to discontent. But perhaps, I should make the point a bit stronger. Domestic consumers will starve.
Here’s Bryan Caplan, from his book The Myth of the Rational Voter:
“Maybe the rich are less protectionist because [...]

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Tyler Cowen writes in his latest column:
Lately, it’s become fashionable to assert that, in this time of financial market turmoil, the market-oriented teachings of Milton Friedman belong more to the past than to the future. The sadder truth is that when it comes to food production — arguably the most important of all human activities [...]

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From a recent post:
The physicist told me not to worry at all–and not to worry about trying to be environmentally cautious. It’s already too late. Over a decade ago he worked with a Nobel prize winner who at that point said the situation was hopeless–and his estimates were more conservative than the optimistic ones today.
I [...]

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Regarding the pioneer of genetics, James Watson’s, remarks that Africans are less intelligent than Westerners:
“What is ethically wrong is the hounding [of Watson], by what can only be described as an illiberal and intolerant “thought police”, of one of the most distinguished scientists of our time, out of the Science Museum, and maybe out of [...]

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I got myself into an annoying conversation with climate denialists on the overground train when a couple were pointing excitedly at Singer’s “Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years“. I found myself having to justify and defend the entire discipline of climate science against claims of lying to get research funding and secret edits made to [...]

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“Female values” have not been shaped for public purposes nor under conditions of freedom but rather have been developed under conditions of oppression and bent to the service of power in the private sphere. Moreover they do not, any more than their masculine counterpart, bear our full humanity. Although we may find some of women’s [...]

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This via an old colleague:
However, I thought that some of you UK folks (and others, for that matter) might like a heads-up on this. I just found out that tomorrow night the UK is planning to deport one Pegah Emambakhsh, a lesbian from Iran, back to Iran after denying her request for political asylum after [...]

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MarginalRevolution is hosting a book forum on Gregory Clark’s “A Farewell to Alms”. Clark attempts to explain how up until recent history, economies existed in a state of Malthusian equilibrium. High downward mobility made rich children poor. The values of the rich filtered into the poor, kick starting massive economic growth and an escape from [...]

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There’s something disparaging about paying £10 to see two people discuss radical politics whilst Tina Brown launches “The Diana Chronicles” to champagne in the room below. Such was the case last Wednesday when Michael Hardt (Empire) and Simon Critchley (On Humour) discuss their latest ideas in radical theory.
Critchley opened with an introduction to his new [...]

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This second part of my report on the religion and politics conference is rather late. I was busy.
Specifically, I was busy madly dancing to this:

The first afternoon session was entitled “Europe’s Soul”. For some reason, this was heavily Italy-based with papers on spiritual conceptions of politics in the catholic church and the development of Secularism [...]

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