Category Archives: Ideas

A bearish view of global governance

If there were a rat­ings agency for the cred­i­bil­ity of “global gov­er­nance” insti­tu­tions, the WTO’s would have been down­graded to a “B” at best[1] after the col­lapse of the Doha Round nego­ti­a­tions. The triple crown of benign global gov­er­nance — a pros­per­ous, well-regulated global “com­mons,” the sov­er­eignty of nation-states and the assent of the gov­erned …

January 22, 2012 – 9:21 am | By pwg | Posted in Ideas, Trade | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The unanswered question about 9–11

Robert Fisk is such a reward­ing his­to­rian of inter­na­tional pol­icy because his con­tacts are so broad and his expe­ri­ence is so long and because he writes so clearly, pas­sion­ately and thought­fully about the per­sis­tent fail­ures of West­ern policy—and humanity—in the Mid­dle East. There, the UK, France and the United States directly or through their occa­sional …

September 4, 2011 – 8:55 am | By pwg | Posted in Foreign policy, Ideas | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Larkin ascending

Nearly missed it; an intel­li­gent, allu­sive, gos­sipy memo­r­ial of Philip Larkin by Mar­tin Amis in the FT. A teaser for Amis’s forth­com­ing col­lec­tion of Larkin poems. Amis aptly quotes lots of them in his arti­cle; which is, in part, what makes it such fun to read. This is the key to Larkin: his fric­tion­less mem­o­ra­bil­ity. To …

August 26, 2011 – 9:17 am | By pwg | Posted in Ideas | Tagged | Comments (0)

The Vignelli Canon

A won­der­ful, short book of the rules (κανών: kanón, mean­ing a rule) of design cho­sen and illus­trated by Mas­simo Vignelli and his wife Lella. Down­load it here. I have always said that there are three aspects in Design that are impor­tant to me: Seman­tic, Syn­tac­tic and Prag­matic. That is: the mean­ing of the design, the …

August 24, 2011 – 4:43 pm | By pwg | Posted in Ideas | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Recognising phoney on-line reviews

Sur­prise, sur­prise! The mar­ket­ing value of pos­i­tive on-line user-reviews has cre­ated an indus­try of liars-for-hire, ready to pimp any prod­uct with phoney “user” endorse­ments. Hotels, cafs, pub­lish­ers, music labels and (hor­ror!) even blog­gers can read­ily find cut-price on-line tes­ti­mo­ni­al­ists to pimp their prod­uct on sites like fiverr.com. Unfor­tu­nately, there’s a good chance we’ll fail to …

August 23, 2011 – 9:33 am | By pwg | Posted in Ideas | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Collaborate or control

The task of eco­nomic sci­ence, since Adam Smith, has been to explain the ori­gins of wealth. John Kay observes that the the­ory most favoured, even by Smith—that pro­duc­tiv­ity is ‘almost’ all that matters—is not by any means the only expla­na­tion for per­sonal wealth. Nor is it, his­tor­i­cally, the most suc­cess­ful expla­na­tion (because the arbiters of …

August 18, 2011 – 7:20 pm | By pwg | Posted in Ideas | Tagged | Comments (0)

The tough go shopping

Can you really doubt that the Aus­tralian econ­omy will resume its recent strong growth in a year or so? Are you wor­ried that the rapid accu­mu­la­tion of wealth in the vast, still-poor economies of China, India and cen­tral Asia might be about to sud­denly stop? Do you fear that Aus­tralian firms will never again be …

August 9, 2011 – 8:48 am | By pwg | Posted in Ideas | Tagged | Comments (0)