Entries by Matt Nolan

A good question for civil servants

From the excellent Overcoming bias blog (ht Offsetting Behaviour): This is a great test case for paternalists; if you feel that your superior minds justify ruling the lives of others, would do you accept having your life ruled by future folk with greatly enhanced minds? To all those civil servants who tell me we should […]

Caricature of the libertarian, economist, statist divide

In my mind there is a simple distinction between the broad brush strokes of libertarianism, the underpinning beliefs of economics, and statism as statements for the scope of government. It goes like this: Libertarian: Market prices are a good allocation mechanism – therefore market prices make sense. Initial endowment of resources is fair – therefore […]

Beer goggles and “demand”

A recent study suggested that the idea of beer goggles did not exist. The study stated that men who had been drinking actually rated women lower than men who had not been drinking – the author went from this empirical “fact” to a claim that the idea of beer goggles is false. Now even if […]