"When good economists die, they come back as physicists. When bad economists die, they come back as sociologists. It is an old joke, but class envy is no stranger to academics: Everyone wants to go up-market in the rigour wars." Paul Kedrosky in National Post May 5, 2001
So here's a happy story. We had a great time at Universal Orlando Resort a few weeks ago but, in what I expect is an all-too-common end-of-day experience, a happily exhausted kid lost a souvenir Ollivanders wand on a shuttle bus. And now it's back. Having contacted Universal to express appreciation over an unrelated matter during our visit, I decided to ask whether anyone happened to find it and turn it in. No one had. But Universal insisted on sending a replacement free of charge anyway. (A Hermione Granger model, if you're curious. And yes, Diagon Alley is well worth a visit. So small from the outside, so big from the inside. Almost like... magic.) And yesterday a courier package arrived with the wand in it.
What great customer service, on top of excellent rides and other attractions.
Thanks, Universal. Or in the spirit of Harry Potter, vobis gratias ago.
My latest National Post column ridiculed faith in government to solve all our woes despite its dismal record. And now we read that the Trudeau administration is going to make Canadians innovative after more than a century of supposedly disappointing sloth and timidity on the invention front. Does anyone really believe it's an appropriate use of government's monopoly on legitimate force within society to make us creative, flexible, inspired and dynamic in our laboratories, workshops, home offices and cubicles? Does anyone really believe government can do such a thing? If so, why?
Would anyone apply words like innovative to government itself except as biting satire of its endless capacity, as Dave Barry once put it, to find expensive new ways to appear ridiculous? Yet a bunch of serious people with impressive credentials and public sector salaries to match stroke their long grey beards and murmur in soothing tones that at last government will work its exciting magic on that sluggish private sector though it has no idea how, and they are not laughed off the stage.
"poor as Job’s turkey" A writer whose name I failed to record in Chronicles magazine May 1994
In my latest National Post column I satirize people's ongoing faith in government's compassionate efficiency despite all their experience with its actual performance.
Past time, actually. Long past. So I'm delighted to see that, to mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute has just reissued the paper Citizen of One, Citizen of the Whole that Brian Lee Crowley, Bob Knox and I wrote back in 2010. Perhaps it is the mark of an unredeemable nebbish to be proud of a paper on such a topic as free internal trade. But with governments including our federal one struggling with difficult policy choices to increase economic growth, it continues to amaze me that this juicy low-hanging fruit has gone unpicked.
In the paper, to which Brian has added a new introduction, we argue that it is not just economically sensible for the federal government to fulfill our Founders' vision by using their clear Constitutional authority to strike down petty protectionist interprovincial trade barriers. It is also a moral obligation.
What a great way to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday.
On March 17 and 18 I'll be helping host the Economic Education Association of Alberta annual conference on "Meeting the Climate Change Challenge." We'll be gathering in Calgary to talk about the science, the policy choices and the rhetoric surrounding the alarmist vision of disastrous man-made global warming, not because the environment isn't important but because thinking sensibly is. We've got a great lineup of speakers and panelists, which you can see here, including my talk on "The Environment: A True Story".
So register now and join us in March for a compelling discussion that dispels myths and cuts through shrill rhetoric to make sense of this crucial issue.