Knowing and Making

Brendan O'Neill raises the important issue of how filling in a form forces us to indelibly define our lifelong identity by ticking a box. But for some reason he is only willing to tackle the easiest question: religion. There are bigger issues here. Campaigning cyclists are gear-gnashingly worried that insufficient numbers of people will tick the “Cars In This Household: None” box. The Rail Passengers Association is on a mission to encourage as many non-drivers as possible to declare their non-driving. It argues that only by getting a realistic snapshot of how many cars there are in modern-day Britain (fewer than we think, apparently) can we challenge such allegedly problematic institutions as multi-story car parks, and the privileging of Jeremy Clarkson in various prime time BBC TV programmes. But if lots of non-drivers choose not to tick “Cars In This Household: None”, I won’t be surprised. Why? Because people generally don’t like to define themselves negatively, by what th...

More on bailouts: Paul Greenberg in the New York Times says we should bail out writers. Of course, he doesn't analyse the economics properly - but what should we expect - he's a writer. No doubt it would be useful to reduce the oversupply in the writing market; but should we also then be paying bloggers not to post? Is this how farm subsidies got started? And Richard Posner follows up an earlier article about the US automotive bailout arguing that the three big US car companies are fundamentally insolvent but it is better to support them another couple of years and then  let them go bust. I sympathised initially with this view but the comments on that posting - mostly taking the opposing view - are actually quite persuasive. If the companies are going to go bust anyway, maybe now is the time to get the bad news out of the way; rather than wait till a fragile confidence is taking hold and then shatter it again. Posner's argument is (I think rightly) psychological; but so i...