Tag: Fads
Blown off course by butterflies
Economic crystal ball-gazing remains unscientific. We project current preoccupations with exaggerated speed and to an exaggerated degree and forget that our preoccupations change.
Friedman and the limits of academic pluralism
Pluralism is the mark of intellectual seriousness: recognition of the force of a wide range of arguments with which one does not agree.
There are sensible reasons for irrational behaviour
If we are persistently irrational, perhaps the behaviour is not irrational.
Blue sky thinking from McBainey and Acronym
A report to CE International plc (formerly the Church of England) on the management challenges it faces.
Forget the meltdown, worry about goo and asteroids
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of our successful escape from extinction by the Tunguska meteorite, John examines the economics of the end of the world.
Metaphors in free fall: the anti-bubble named
On 25 June, John offered a bottle of champagne for the best word for the opposite of a market bubble. This week, he reviews readers' many entries and announces the winner
The strange financial physics of the inverse bubble
Bubbles can be downward as well as up. A new term is required.
Smoking, cynicism and sheer muddled thinking
The measure of the productivity of an activity is the public and private benefit from a good or service that results from that activity.
Books: the good, the bad and the cheesy
Ideas - even those about business - often find their best expression in fiction.
Darwin’s wife and war in Iraq: a missing link
The modern world of business and politics is plagued by spurious rationality and bogus quantification. The desire to do what is right is overtaken by the necessity to do what is easy to defend.
