The People's Economics

Edward IV married Elizabeth Woodville and their son became Edward V – that is until his uncle Richard declared him illegitimate, on the basis that a...

One recommendation in Moral Thinking, Fast and Slow is that, in an argument, rather than countering the points our opponents are making, we should...

In the past many families would keep a pig, feed it on scraps, and then have it slaughtered to provide meat for the winter. Pigs are intelligent...

Some have claimed that slavery wasn’t as profitable as it was made out to be – that it would be cheaper just to employ people. This claim looks like...

At Henry George’s Oxford talk a Mr Conybeare claimed that Land Taxes were immoral. George took this as a personal insult, and demanded an apology. I...

How well off were agricultural labourers in Britain in 1775? Adam Smith thought free trade had brought prosperity, whilst Thomas Malthus saw misery...

How can the fact that GDP divided by working population is over 4 times the median income be reconciled with roughly 2/3 of national income going to...

There are those who see Socrates as a martyr, willing to die for his principles. Is it plausible to view him as more like Winston Smith in the book...

In the Beatles' song We can work it out McCartney arguing for a deliberative approach to life (we can work it out) against Lennon's heuristic (life...

One might expect to give any sort of performance it is necessary to have a substantial amount of training if one isn’t to appear totally inept. So...

In Innocent fun or “microslavery”? An ethical analysis of biotic games the authors tell of responses to an online game where players interacted with...

Is it likely that there will be a breakthrough in life extension in the near future. Is this something we should be worried about.

Putting very high taxes on the rich may seem fair, but it may mean they put more effort into avoiding taxes, and less into contributing to the...

In Lewis's 1954 inaugural speech he looked at how we divide up history, and in particular what separates us from 'Old Western Man'. His conclusion...

In this Kindle book the inclusion of the Gödel sentence doesn't actually take up that much space. It's about 20kb, which is less than the smallest of...

I have a negative view of Postmodernism, but I can believe that its original arena of literary criticism it may have had something useful to say. In...

Story A: A thief steals a world-famous painting, worth hundreds of millions of pounds. During his getaway he takes a sick child hostage, and then...

Are works on philosophy excessively wordy because that is the only way to do it? Is it possible to envisage philosophy put forward in a more concise...

(Adapted from Belief in the law of small numbers )The mean IQ of the population of 2500 eighth graders in a city is known to be 100 and the standard...

What puzzles or trick questions have you seen which fall apart on further scrutiny? Is it right to highlight these problems, or should you just...

Does discounting the future at a rate of 1 to 2 percent make any sense? Isn't the choice between a discount rate of about 5% or not applying a...

Is the Socratic Method a good way of discussing a topic? Or is it just likely to irritate your opponent.

Do you think of professional as primarily meaning 'having a high level of a skill'. Or does it also imply consistency and substitutability between...

If you were asked to predict someone's future performance would you think of taking regression to the mean into account? Would doing so cause more...

Who do you think of when the 1% is mentioned? Is it misleading to apply this to the global richest !% by wealth (which includes a lot of moderately...