I don’t have much to stay about this – I just need a place to keep a quote.

Here is an paragraph from Saturday’s (May 6) Kitchener-Waterloo Record, which ran a survey about the most important issues that Waterloo Region will have to deal with in the next five years.  The big ones are public goods: transport, healthcare, population growth, and clean water. There is a significant fall-off after that to taxes, almagamation, infrastructure, education, and housing.

Anyway, here it is:

Statistics from Waterloo regional police suggest residents here are fond of their cars. Since 1993, the region’s population has increased about 15 per cent while the number of cars registered in the region jumped about 34 percent. Registered vehicles in the region totalled 228,000 in 1993. Today, that figure is 390,000.

You do see this logic all the time. It uses an implicit revealed preference argument: we have bought more cars, so we must like them (be fond of them). It’s at the root of a lot of the claims about consumer sovereignty and the economy.  But it’s wrong, of course. Buying a car (or not) is a reaction to the transport system you live in, not an expression … Continue reading

There have been many reflections on JK Galbraith and his impact on economics over the last few days, of course. They provide some insights into how the course of the economic mainstream is guided, and the role of politics and culture in that guidance.

From this morning’s Globe and Mail appreciation on page B1, B4 (not from the obituary).

But for the last 30 years of his life, Mr. Galbraith was increasingly a voice in the wilderness, as the conventional wisdom grew ever more skeptical of the ability of government to intervene constructively in the economy, and ever more confident in the marketplace.

In a similar vein, here is Brad DeLong in his review of the Galbraith biography [J. Bradford DeLong (2005), "Sisyphus as Social Democrat: The Life and Legacy of John Kenneth Galbraith," Foreign Affairs 84:3 (May/June) ]

The right-wing claim that the most efficient
economy is one in which the gales of perfect competition scour the land
is, in Galbraith’s view, nonsense. Modern industrial and
post-industrial production is a large-scale process, large-scale
processes require planning, and planning requires stability — which
means that the gales of the market must be calmed.

… Continue reading

Author of one of my favourite books of all time, and one of the clearest and most original thinkers I’ve ever read. A real loss.

Link: CBC News: Urban thinker Jane Jacobs dies.

Toronto-based urban critic and author Jane Jacobs died Tuesday morning.

• RELATED: Remembering Jane Jacobs

Jane
Jacobs, shown in 2004, influenced a generation of urban planners with
her critiques about North American urban renewal policies. (Adrian
Wyld/CP)

Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and most recently, Dark Age Ahead, was 89.

Her powerful critiques about the urban renewal policies of North
American cities have influenced thinking about urban planning for a
generation.

Born May 4, 1916, in Scranton, Penn., Jacobs had made her home in Canada since the late 1960s.

Educated at Columbia University, she met her husband, architect
Robert Jacobs, at the Office of War Information in New York, where she
began writing during the war.

Known for protesting sprawl

The strong themes of her writing … Continue reading

So far as I know, there is only one person in history who can legitimately claim to have saved the world. We only found out about him in 2002, and still seem to know very little about him (here is the little that Wikipedia has to say – no birth date, no indication when he died, even the rank is not clear).

He was some kind of second-in-command on a submarine during the Cuba
missile crisis and made the call not to launch a nuclear torpedo when it
seemed like perhaps the US had attacked them with depth charges.

It is wonderful that the person who can make this singular claim was so unlike the usual idea of a hero. Not a "visionary leader", not at the pinnacle of a career, not a Dirty Harry/Rambo go-get-em type. Basically he was a civil servant doing his job, calming someone down (in this case the captain), and advising caution and wait-and-see.

How very non-heroic for a hero.

Update: perhaps Stanislav Petrov can make the same claim.

Continue reading

Following up a fine article on why the BBC should make video games, I came across the McDonald’s Video game, which looks like an enjoyably subversive pastime.

Continue reading