Inequality. Stumbling and Mumbling. Nobody will thank me for saying so, but I have a bit of a mancrush on Ed Smith.
Yet again, he has raised a profound point in the social sciences: Nakedly ambitious people rarely achieve their ambitions...Simplistic self-interest is not just bad PR, it is often bad strategy. It suffers from a fatal flaw: it is predictable. This draws our attention to the fact that, in some domains, randomness is the best policy. This is most clear - and has been formalized by game theorists - in the case of games such as rock-paper-scissors where predictability leads to defeat. To what extent do such games exist in the real world? I suspect they exist in other fields. However, randomness doesn't just work when the other player is trying to anticipate our actions. Take a simple example. But it doesn't follow that it is the optimum strategy. To maximize the chances of survival, a mixed strategy is needed.
As John Kay showed, very often our goals are reached not through direct optimization, but obliquely. Marxism vs social democracy. One oddity of this blog is that it is often better-regarded by righties than by lefties.
One reason for this, I suspect, is that we Marxists are as sceptical about social democracy as rightists, albeit in different ways. It might be worth outlining the differences between Marxists and the non-Marxist left; I'm writing here of the differences as they apply today, rather than of historical ones, and this list might be idiosyncratic and incomplete. Perhaps the biggest difference concerns the role of the state. Social democrats seem to think leftist objectives can be achieved to at least some degree if only Labour could win control of the state and show the courage of its convictions. Marxists are more sceptical. In similar vein, whereas social democrats are apt to see social change as being implementable by government, we Marxists conceive of it differently, as the complex outcome of interactions between technology and social norms.
Other significant differences are: Ca s’en va et ca revient. S’il est une idée en vogue, c’est bien de penser que les anciennes vagues d’immigration (italiennes, polonaises, espagnoles, belges …) se sont parfaitement intégrées au contraire des vagues, plus récentes, maghrébines et africaines.
Les anciennes vagues d’immigrés étaient travailleuses, ne posaient aucun problème et les français les ont d’ailleurs parfaitement acceptées, entend-on souvent. Constatons donc que les propos actuels sur les immigrés les plus récents ne sont qu’une répétition d’idées reçues anciennes et qui se sont exercées à l’encontre de toutes les communautés migrantes (qu’elles viennent de province ou de pays étrangers). Historiques des vagues d’immigrations : - Première moitié du 19eme : anglais, allemands, autrichiens - Avec la révolution industrielle : belges. Au début de la 3eme république, les belges représentent la majorité absolue de la population à Roubaix.
En 1886, ils représentent 40% de la population immigrée. - A partir de 1850 : italiens. 1. 2. L. Tony Abbott, prime minister? Above: Opposition leader Tony Abbott chairing the first shadow cabinet meeting of the year in Canberra last week.
Photo: Alan Porritt/ AAP Image THE story is told in Canberra that back in 1995, soon after he entered parliament at a by-election, Tony Abbott had lunch with some old friends who were keen to celebrate his arrival on the national stage. Gently brushing aside all the handshaking and backslapping, Abbott was at pains to play down his achievement: a backbencher, especially one so newly arrived, is the lowliest of the low; it really counted for very little. After the 1996 election brought the Coalition to power, Abbott, who had hoped to become a minister, was instead named a parliamentary secretary. The same group lunched together, only to hear the guest of honour explain just how insignificant a parliamentary secretary really was. Which brings us once again to the ambitions of Tony Abbott. Despite his fervent ambition, Abbott pales significantly in comparison. Related articles.