I don't understand how an employer can refrain from hiring anyone because he mysteriously intuits that some potential employees lack "work ethic".

Moreover, that simple phrase conceals a wealth of assumptions - not all of them reasonable or healthy. Many of us grew up with the belief that "work ethic" was normal and anyone lacking it was bound to fail through their own lack of moral fibre.

But such assumptions cut both ways, or ought to in a decent society. If "work ethic" says that employees must work hard and continuously, obey orders diligently, and sincerely try to further their employer's interests, shouldn't it also dictate that the employer has some reciprocal duties?

How much "work ethic" is it reasonable to expect of intelligent, observant people who notice that their employer treats them as fungible "resources", to be hired and fired in mindless response to the twitch of a spreadsheet, and exploited to the bone while they are employed? Which is normal behaviour for many bosses who sincerely believe that it is their moral duty to squeeze out every last ounce of effort and ingenuity from their subordinates before tossing them heartlessly aside as soon as "computer says"?

Shouldn't bosses treat their employees morally as part of their own "work ethic"?

Thanks for your valuable and well-documented contribution, and for your exemplary courtesy. Of course the opinion of a well-known celebrity such as yourself is quite decisive.

However, the following report shows that your opinions are wrong.

https://www.aims.gov.au/sites/...

It's a cunning business plan. If it goes through and in a while it's found that the reefs are actually flourishing - it will be thanks to the clever American scientists! If not, it will be blamed on global warming.

Incidentally, do those people have any legal right to interfere with coral reefs along "...the coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras..."?

Last I heard, the Great Barrier Reef was thriving. Maybe that's why the focus is moving elsewhere.

Or, more probably, art imitating prior art.

Myself, I used to buy things. Actually, I still do. But then I'm British.

Truly magnificent!

If you must break into French, try to get it right. Keynes was a man, so it should be "au John Maynard Keynes". You may have been thinking of "a la mode", a fancy way of saying "served with ice cream".

Unfortunately all sorts of inferior and "me-too" economists have hung onto his coat-atils and call themselves "neo-Keynesians". Keynes himself was extremely sceptical about models - natural as he was highly intelligent and a careful thinker. The following passages illustrate his views on models and their use. They can be summed up by the last sentence: "to convert a model into a quantitative formula is to destroy its usefulness as an instrument of thought".

'Too large a proportion of recent "mathematical" economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols'.
- John Maynard Keynes, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" (1936).

"In chemistry and physics and other natural sciences the object of experiment is to fill in the actual values of the various quantities and factors appearing in an equation or a formula; and the work when done is once and for all. In economics that is not the case, and to convert a model into a quantitative formula is to destroy its usefulness as an instrument of thought".
- John Maynard Keynes, letter to Roy Harrod (1938)

A "free market" is a contradiction in terms. But politically, it is a wonderful illusion to sell.

No market of any size, dealing in goods of substantial value, can exist or survive without a robust regulatory framework. There must be police or guards to prevent pilfering and outright theft or robbery. Courts are essential to arbitrate the inevitable disputes over quality, payment, delays, cheating, etc. Standards and enforcement officials are desirable if goods such as food and drink are being sold - and so on. Once such an official framework exists, the market is no longer "free". The US government has long been making these facts crystal clear by preaching about free enterprise, free trade, and free markets while habitually preventing them from happening. Where is the "free market" when "sanctions" are imposed (illegally) on arbitrary traders?

The USA itself is the best demonstration that free markets do not generally exist, and if anything like one does appear, it quickly decays. Because corporations and other entrepreneurs hate competition and do their very best to destroy it. Their best weapon is the cartel - evrywhere illegal, but in practice impossible to prevent.

The authors do not make that claim. They say that more intelligent parents will tend, on average, to have more children who survive to reproduce successfully.

Here's a rather beautiful case in point, from Substack the other day:

"...excessively aggressive mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial".

Don't you love pompous official jargon? In English,

"...trying to stop CO2 emissions may do more harm than good".

Climbing a molehill may give you a tiny dopamine bump. But climbing a real hill, or even a mountain, will give you feelings you can't get otherwise.

Nietzsche was right when he recommended walking in the mountains. Nowadays that takes willpower, organisation, and persistence.

Still, it's worth it.

I was very sad when I first noticed Amazon reviews of books with reader comments such as, "Too many long words", "Old-fashioned language", etc. Try reading Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", or anything by Dr Johnson, or even light reading like Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope. Some people nowadays would find Mark Twain too heavy and complicated.

"At Our Wits' End: Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What It Means for the Future" by Edward Dutton and Michael A. Woodley of Menie.

We are becoming less intelligent. This is the shocking yet fascinating message of At Our Wits' End. The authors take us on a journey through the growing body of evidence that we are significantly less intelligent now than we were a hundred years ago. The research proving this is, at once, profoundly thought-provoking, highly controversial, and it's currently only read by academics. But the authors are passionate that it cannot remain ensconced in the ivory tower any longer. With At Our Wits' End, they present the first ever popular scientific book on this crucially important issue. They prove that intelligence -- which is strongly genetic -- was increasing up until the breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution, because we were subject to the rigors of Darwinian Selection, meaning that lots of surviving children was the preserve of the cleverest. But since then, they show, intelligence has gone into rapid decline, because large families are increasingly the preserve of the least intelligent. The book explores how this change has occurred and, crucially, what its consequences will be for the future. Can we find a way of reversing the decline of our IQ? Or will we witness the collapse of civilization and the rise of a new Dark Age?

Translation of the article: "If you talk gibberish, people may not understand you".

Of course, that may be the speaker's intention.