Dunno about grift or malice, but expecting charities to do the good things society wants is playing on easy mode. Most of the wicked problems in society are the ones about tradeoffs; which of these t… (View Post)

Which was partly a policy decision. Partly Thatcherite outsourcing, partly Big Society as a cover for shrinking the state. It turns out that when you give up control of something, you give up control. (View Post)

After seeing the inaugural winner, would anyone else actually want to join the list? (View Post)

The best version of that is the line from the Enver Hoxha speech, ““This year will be harder than last year. However, it will be easier than next year.” I once had a colleague who had that up in thei… (View Post)

Two problems. One potentially soluble, the other one not. The soluble problem is that any incentive scheme is a battle between the assessor and the assessee. In many situations, the people being ince… (View Post)