Scientific consensus
Scientific consensus seems a reasonable concept. If a great number of individual scientists arrive at a similar opinion this is generally a sufficient reason to have confidence in those views. Skeptics about scientific consensus often use examples of scientific views that started out as a minority view to become the majority view later. Although these [...]
Competition vs coordination
If there is one consistent theme in the fallout of the financial meltdown it is the demand for more policy “coordination.” In the case of the sovereign debt problems in the European Union it seems inconceivable that the “low debt” countries that are negatively impacted by the “high debt” countries would respond by withdrawing from [...]
Ayn Rand: Russian fanatic
In some respects, Rand is almost Soviet. Her habit of remaking the past in accordance with her wishes or needs of the present is most striking… Allied to this tendency to remodel the past was Rand’s megalomaniac notion that moral philosophy had been nothing but a tissue of sentimental error until she came along….In her [...]