Ah, I have forgotten my high school lessons. A reader named Zack Kennedy has reminded me:
"The mean takes the average of a set of values, while the median takes the middle value of a set of values. To get a sense of how much the "average" person has, it is better to look at the median value since it is unaffected by outlier values - e.g. if the the wealthiest person of the society has $500K or $1 trillion. If we were measuring the net worth of a group of roughly equal individuals, we would assume that the mean and median values for this group would be similar. If Jeff Bezos walked into the room, the mean would increase by ~100 billion dollars, but the median would be relatively unaffected."
Mea maxima culpa. Which is very much more than both mea mediana culpa and mea submedia culpa.
As a Scot, a Brit, and a European (married to an American) I didn’t quite appreciate the squalid view some have of our continent. A continent of as many variegated cultural and social nuances as any other land mass.
Though I shall not become too truculent: Scotland, to our shame, has the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe. A multifactorial causal web no doubt but one that, as a physician, is heart-rending to witness first hand.
Nothing is more enjoyable and stimulating than DBH in splenetic vein. I write, while grounded at Gatwick airport (courtesy of the Uk's suicidal embrace of Brexit which has caused an inevtiable lack of staff available for air duties), as one who lay on a trolley in a Texan hospital bleeding copiously while the hospital authorities "checked out" my husband's health care insurance as a visting academic, which, it transpired, had been improperly registered. Only the intervention of John Archibald Wheeler, who stood as guarantor of the medical fees, saved my life. That experience plus captial punishment made me realise I could never live in the US, much as I admire many of its citizens who are not to blame for these disgraceful human violations.
Long time fan of your work. (I also attended three of your public lectures in the past. We talked about John Ruskin after one of your talks). I read this essay in one sitting in an airport. As a Nigerian immigrant in the US, I really appreciated three things about your review. First, the painstaking comparison of various facets of American life with that of some European countries. Second, the attention you paid to Mr. Harsanyi’s argument even as you savagely debunked it - with your characteristic wit. Last but not the least, I loved your description of how a moral grammar still animates many parts of European life. As an immigrant who lived in England as a child and now lives in the US, all what you wrote rings true to me. Thank you, once again.
My only serious point of contention is with the delegation of the casserole to merely 'ordinary human virtue' - perhaps it's a holdover from my Baptist days, but they are certainly almost sacramental. ;)
Could you explain what you mean by Orphic? I am not very knowledgeable about ancient Greek mystery cults and I've observed you using this expression a few times. Once you called toll houses an Orphic, gnostic heresy, and in this review you talk about an Orphic faith in a personal Lord and savior. From a brief Wikipedia search it seems like you might be calling them mind/body dualists. Is this correct or could you expand on this more. How is the low church evangelical protestant belief in a personal Lord and savior is Orphic? Thanks
A while back when I tried learning Danish I remember attempting to read a book called the almost nearly perfect people. It was this political book half travelogue, written by this curmudgeonly British conservative about his wife's home country and how he hates it. The journalist engaged in similar styles of argumentation to the ones you mentioned in the review. He had this odd habit of not citing anything, just describing certain facts in specific detail so anyone who wished could look them up. Here and there he'd just imply the Nordic countries were totalitarian hellholes in passing while making unrelated arguments. He'd make useless points that weren't political, such as pointing out Denmark has the world's highest cancer rate.
I remember at one point he praised Sweden for its wave of deregulation in the 90s. I thought this was totally misleading and myopic. Sweden suffered a huge economic crash due to those policies. Poverty and income inequality significantly increased, and 20 decades later the country is still reeling from the effects. Sweden is better than the US, but arguably it's the worst among the nordics because of what happened.
Also, I remember reading Coming Apart by Charles Murray. There was one part where he says "Well you might think Europe has better economic systems, but I'm opposed to all of it in principle so I'm just gonna ignore it." Then he listed several books he thought debunked those systems, much like the one you reviewed. I still need to read more theory, but wading through all that statistics is exhausting.
If I had written something that prompted even a thousandth of the scathing brutality and precision guided intellectual munition that it this review, I would walk into the sea.
Ah! Yet another reason to subscribe - your joyfully splenetic reviews aside - I’m effectively paying you, David, to read books so that I won’t be tempted to do so myself. Rather like having someone to eat the poisonous food . . . . (I ought to add that I have three books presently on my desk to which your writings have led me. Just for balance. Indeed yesterday evening I put a copy of ‘That all shall be saved’ in the hands of my son-in-law, like me an Anglican Priest at the End of the World) Thank you
I love it. I wouldn't have the patience to read this book. I'd just say, "He's an idiot" and be done with it. So glad I can read reviews like yours. The best paragraph is the antepenultimate about our social pathologies. A great rant. Sadly accurate.
The main thing I dislike about Americans and Europeans taking potshots at each other's political systems and engaging in cartoonish caricature is that you can just feel the apostles of neo-despotism lurking in the wings, rubbing their hands together with glee.
Indeed, for many reasons and of course the American people are not to blame. But my point - as I know you will have grasped but for clarity - is that not many people have the likes of JAWs to save them from a system that puts money before life. There's alot worng in the Uk at prsent but for the NHS I put up a prayer.
What a brutal review! Because of that, I enjoyed it immensely. I would quibble with your celebration of government-run health systems elsewhere if only because the US healthcare system is thoroughly, even painfully regulated, so we're talking about which sorts of central planning do and do not work well. This is not to say the U.S. system works well, because clearly it does not. But reducing rather than expanding market based incentives in certain areas can improve quality, efficiencies, and cost as against centrally planned approaches, so we should not so readily toss out of the box this important tool.
David: Have you written any sustained piece on government, economics or business?
If not, when will you?
As you write in the review of Harsanyi:
There is much, therefore, that needs seriously to be thought out and thought through again. The successes need to be sorted out from the failures, the just practices from the unjust, the wise decisions from the foolish. This is a burden that needs to be shared by the whole late modern world, and it requires a willingness in good faith to attend to the details of our common situation,
Ah, I have forgotten my high school lessons. A reader named Zack Kennedy has reminded me:
"The mean takes the average of a set of values, while the median takes the middle value of a set of values. To get a sense of how much the "average" person has, it is better to look at the median value since it is unaffected by outlier values - e.g. if the the wealthiest person of the society has $500K or $1 trillion. If we were measuring the net worth of a group of roughly equal individuals, we would assume that the mean and median values for this group would be similar. If Jeff Bezos walked into the room, the mean would increase by ~100 billion dollars, but the median would be relatively unaffected."
Mea maxima culpa. Which is very much more than both mea mediana culpa and mea submedia culpa.
As a Scot, a Brit, and a European (married to an American) I didn’t quite appreciate the squalid view some have of our continent. A continent of as many variegated cultural and social nuances as any other land mass.
Though I shall not become too truculent: Scotland, to our shame, has the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe. A multifactorial causal web no doubt but one that, as a physician, is heart-rending to witness first hand.
Bravo! I have no intention of reading Harsanyi's book, but your critique of American culture and social policies are devastatingly on the mark.
Nothing is more enjoyable and stimulating than DBH in splenetic vein. I write, while grounded at Gatwick airport (courtesy of the Uk's suicidal embrace of Brexit which has caused an inevtiable lack of staff available for air duties), as one who lay on a trolley in a Texan hospital bleeding copiously while the hospital authorities "checked out" my husband's health care insurance as a visting academic, which, it transpired, had been improperly registered. Only the intervention of John Archibald Wheeler, who stood as guarantor of the medical fees, saved my life. That experience plus captial punishment made me realise I could never live in the US, much as I admire many of its citizens who are not to blame for these disgraceful human violations.
Long time fan of your work. (I also attended three of your public lectures in the past. We talked about John Ruskin after one of your talks). I read this essay in one sitting in an airport. As a Nigerian immigrant in the US, I really appreciated three things about your review. First, the painstaking comparison of various facets of American life with that of some European countries. Second, the attention you paid to Mr. Harsanyi’s argument even as you savagely debunked it - with your characteristic wit. Last but not the least, I loved your description of how a moral grammar still animates many parts of European life. As an immigrant who lived in England as a child and now lives in the US, all what you wrote rings true to me. Thank you, once again.
My only serious point of contention is with the delegation of the casserole to merely 'ordinary human virtue' - perhaps it's a holdover from my Baptist days, but they are certainly almost sacramental. ;)
Could you explain what you mean by Orphic? I am not very knowledgeable about ancient Greek mystery cults and I've observed you using this expression a few times. Once you called toll houses an Orphic, gnostic heresy, and in this review you talk about an Orphic faith in a personal Lord and savior. From a brief Wikipedia search it seems like you might be calling them mind/body dualists. Is this correct or could you expand on this more. How is the low church evangelical protestant belief in a personal Lord and savior is Orphic? Thanks
A while back when I tried learning Danish I remember attempting to read a book called the almost nearly perfect people. It was this political book half travelogue, written by this curmudgeonly British conservative about his wife's home country and how he hates it. The journalist engaged in similar styles of argumentation to the ones you mentioned in the review. He had this odd habit of not citing anything, just describing certain facts in specific detail so anyone who wished could look them up. Here and there he'd just imply the Nordic countries were totalitarian hellholes in passing while making unrelated arguments. He'd make useless points that weren't political, such as pointing out Denmark has the world's highest cancer rate.
I remember at one point he praised Sweden for its wave of deregulation in the 90s. I thought this was totally misleading and myopic. Sweden suffered a huge economic crash due to those policies. Poverty and income inequality significantly increased, and 20 decades later the country is still reeling from the effects. Sweden is better than the US, but arguably it's the worst among the nordics because of what happened.
Also, I remember reading Coming Apart by Charles Murray. There was one part where he says "Well you might think Europe has better economic systems, but I'm opposed to all of it in principle so I'm just gonna ignore it." Then he listed several books he thought debunked those systems, much like the one you reviewed. I still need to read more theory, but wading through all that statistics is exhausting.
If I had written something that prompted even a thousandth of the scathing brutality and precision guided intellectual munition that it this review, I would walk into the sea.
Ah! Yet another reason to subscribe - your joyfully splenetic reviews aside - I’m effectively paying you, David, to read books so that I won’t be tempted to do so myself. Rather like having someone to eat the poisonous food . . . . (I ought to add that I have three books presently on my desk to which your writings have led me. Just for balance. Indeed yesterday evening I put a copy of ‘That all shall be saved’ in the hands of my son-in-law, like me an Anglican Priest at the End of the World) Thank you
I love it. I wouldn't have the patience to read this book. I'd just say, "He's an idiot" and be done with it. So glad I can read reviews like yours. The best paragraph is the antepenultimate about our social pathologies. A great rant. Sadly accurate.
The main thing I dislike about Americans and Europeans taking potshots at each other's political systems and engaging in cartoonish caricature is that you can just feel the apostles of neo-despotism lurking in the wings, rubbing their hands together with glee.
Indeed, for many reasons and of course the American people are not to blame. But my point - as I know you will have grasped but for clarity - is that not many people have the likes of JAWs to save them from a system that puts money before life. There's alot worng in the Uk at prsent but for the NHS I put up a prayer.
What a brutal review! Because of that, I enjoyed it immensely. I would quibble with your celebration of government-run health systems elsewhere if only because the US healthcare system is thoroughly, even painfully regulated, so we're talking about which sorts of central planning do and do not work well. This is not to say the U.S. system works well, because clearly it does not. But reducing rather than expanding market based incentives in certain areas can improve quality, efficiencies, and cost as against centrally planned approaches, so we should not so readily toss out of the box this important tool.
David: Have you written any sustained piece on government, economics or business?
If not, when will you?
As you write in the review of Harsanyi:
There is much, therefore, that needs seriously to be thought out and thought through again. The successes need to be sorted out from the failures, the just practices from the unjust, the wise decisions from the foolish. This is a burden that needs to be shared by the whole late modern world, and it requires a willingness in good faith to attend to the details of our common situation,
It's Socialism, innit?