Is devolving or centralizing power better? This is a central question at the heart of Marc Dunkelman’s book, Why Nothing Works. Dunkelman worries that those people in the US who believe in the power of government to make the world better, basically the center and left, have set the rules to prevent themselves from achieving…
Academics Can Be Biased Too
Academics are human beings. Pick a human flaw and they have it. Of course, human beings are better at seeing the flaws in arguments that they don’t approve of than those they nod along to. This holds for academics. After all academics can be biased too. Allen Mendenhall and Daniel Stutter, two senior scholars one…
Do Americans Believe In Climate Change?
Today I’ll look at some data from the Pew Research Center. Pew is a wonderful resource for understanding public attitudes. They even make a lot of their data available for additional research. It is a center I admire. One of the things they do investigate is the US public’s views of science, including what they…
Greenhushing Is A Big Problem
The Economist recently highlighted the phenomenon of greenhushing. This is when firms keep quiet about their genuine sustainability achievements. This is the opposite of greenwashing — which is when firms trumpet dubious claims to sustainability. At first glance greenhushing doesn’t really seem to be a big problem. After all the firm is doing the good…
Polarization And Brand Preference
For pretty understandable reasons people worry about political polarization in the world. The US seems to be a classic example of this. It is easy to see strong tensions between people with radically different views. Given this, it makes sense that marketing researchers have studied the topic of political polarization and brand preference. How does…
Can Virtuous Capitalism Be Sustained?
Can virtuous capitalism be sustained? That is one of the questions that motivated James O’Toole and David Vogel in their discussion of the conscious capitalism. They are mostly positive — but being academics they have to have some reservations. New Lanark And The Challenge of Sustaining Virtuous Capitalism The authors discuss Robert Owen. Two hundred…
What Market Research Can Teach Politics
Polling and market research are twin disciplines. Polling is a crucial way of understanding what the public thinks. This is obviously central to developing any strategy to give the voters what they want. Yet, we all know that asking people questions can be tricky. We need to get questions right or else we risk supplying…
Using Rationality To Combat Nonsense
Steven Pinker is a well-known academic and public intellectual in the US. I appreciate much of Pinker’s writing. He seems relatively optimistic about what we have achieved and can achieve. He is a big promoter of rationality and using rationality to combat nonsense. You might think that was what all academics are doing, but that…
Can Any Single Country Make A Difference?
Can any single country make a difference to climate change? I could make this a short post by just saying, YES. That said, I will give a few more details. Bad Reasons To Do Nothing The other day I was hearing about someone who was relatively well-informed talk about how the US couldn’t really achieve…
Is Now A Good Time To Give Up?
David Suzuki, the famous Canadian environmentalist, just gave a pretty gloomy interview. According to Suzuki in respect of climate change, “it’s too late”. It led me to the question: Is now a good time to give up? It Is Too Late? I’ve never said this before to the media, but it’s too late. David Suzuki…
