Skip to content

Ah, yes, well, senior lecturer

A dream of a world where economics is the liberating and not the dismal science

The source of the name being Carlyle, who was most upset when it was proved to him that paid labour was more productive than slave found that his ideas about who how and why there should be slavery were proven invalid.

All of which makes that an entirely valid dream for the Senior Lecturer, doesn’t it? I dream of an economics which can ignore reality.

15 thoughts on “Ah, yes, well, senior lecturer”

  1. Socialism and socialist economics doesn’t work because of people.

    Which is why socialists want so much control over people.

  2. Andrew C

    Nailed it – indeed in the pub last night when I mentioned that self-driving cars would need to be universal a prominent Corbynite asked the questions ‘Why?’ precisely because I guarantee if you had human drivers amongst the AI controlled cars a small minority would deliberately make it their business to bugger them up – it’s a statistically mall minority but the Left seems to want to wish such people out of existence or argue that more money simply needs to be spent on them. It’s a delusion that has been ongoing for six decades.

  3. The heavens have shaken, for today the wrath of Murphy has been provoked:

    “I pretty much make it a matter of policy to ignore whatever Tom Worstall has to say. He is a fellow of the Adam Smith Institute (which probably says all you need to know about him) who has over the last decade or so written a very great deal about me. It is fair to say very little of that output has been complimentary. To get some flavour of the man, and his curious obsessions, it may be worth reading this.

    I have, however, decided to break my usual rule.”

  4. @Bravefart,

    You can tell he’s worked hard on that. Published 3 days after Tim’s post, and it’s without the usual raft of amusing typos. I bet he been typing, redrafting, checking, and correcting that for days as it’s not like his usual fist typed angry retorts.

  5. “He is a fellow of the Adam Smith Institute (which probably says all you need to know about him)”

    He’s clever, well informed, articulate, with an underlying belief in people’s inherent goodness and ability to pick the best outcomes for themselves?

  6. “He is a fellow of the Adam Smith Institute (which probably says all you need to know about him)”

    He’s able to do background research to support his assertions to a sufficient standard to become a fellow. Otherwise, any old tayta would get in.

  7. Social Justice Warrior

    Tim, you’re mistaken about Carlyle: his problem was that on the sugar plantations paid labour was, for the owners, much less profitable than forced labour.

    After the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, and the termination of the sham transitional “apprenticeships”, it cost a lot more to grow sugar on Caribbean plantations. The plantations were protected for a while by sugar tariff barriers, but with the rise of free-trade economics, those protections were being legislated away, leaving the Caribbean plantations unable to compete with plantations in Cuba and Brazil using slave labour.

    The dismal economists Carlyle railed against were the free-traders.

    Carlyle was enraged in particular to learn that former slaves would rather grow pumpkins on their own farms than work for the low wages offered by the sugar plantations. His proposed solution was to force them to work for free, by whipping them. This, he argued, would allow West Indian whites to live well, and benefit the blacks also because hard work is good for them.

    It’s a thoroughly nasty essay.

  8. Like you he is an enemy of freedom and free markets so of course the essay is –like you–a nasty piece of work.

    But there is consolation that he isn’t a brazen supporter of a mass murdering death cult–unlike you.

    At least your lies and bullshit SJW are delivered in short compass.

  9. Social Justice Warrior

    Give it a rest X. I’m in favour of freedom, and I’m in favour of (properly regulated) free markets, in all the circumstances where they work well (which is a lot). I am opposed absolutely to murderous governments.

    I’m in favour of redistributive taxation, because without it resources get misallocated.

    I’ve told you this before, and having done so usually ignore your stupid insults. But I suppose there must be some facts somewhere you allow to influence your view of the world, why not this one?

  10. I don’t recall–indeed I might be wrong about that if you mentioned it in passing in some long obscure post–your claims to not be a supporter of socialism.

    But if you chose a name that all but proclaims your allegiance with the enemies of everything worthwhile you can hardly claim to be ill-treated if your are regarded as a friend and ally of said enemy.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *