Painting Fakes

Last year I paid a lightning visit to Adelaide for work.  Normally if I go to Adelaide it's to visit family and the visit consists of lots of cups of coffee with hospitable rels, but this time I was there for such a short time that I didn't tell anyone.  After I had finished work I went for a stroll around inner Adelaide, through the university, along the Torrens River and ended up in the Rundle Mall, drawn as if by a magical force towards a bookshop that was having a closing down sale.  There I laid out two dollars for a copy of Henri Alain-Fournier's The Lost Estate,  which is quite possibly the best two dollars I have spent for a long time. The front page of this edition says: " The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes) was published in 1913, the year before Henri Alain-Fournier was killed on the Western Front."  He was just 28 when he died, and this was his only published novel. Its French title is simply drawn from the name of its central character, Augustin ...

Apparently, Australians are in the grip of toilet paper panic.  Supermarkets all around Australia have had their toilet paper aisles cleaned out as shoppers load up whole shopping trollies full of jumbo packs.  Poor pensioners who can only afford to buy a few rolls at a time are getting there too late, or worrying that the aisles won't get re-stocked in time.  And it's not just in Australia.  Our friends over the ditch in New Zealand, and over the sea in the US and UK, are also wiping out toilet paper supplies. We all know it's about COVID-19 and the possibility of widespread self-quarantining, but why toilet paper?  How much toilet paper do you need to get through a 14-day quarantine period?  While some Australians are stocking up, others are laughing at them, or scratching their heads at the stupidity of it all.  I think the main reason they are confused is because they have not yet seen my World Diagram™ on the subject.  Now is your, and the...

Climate change is a toxic process for our (or God's) planet, and is also a toxic subject in Australian politics which has brought down, at last count, three Prime Ministers.  No aspect of climate change policy is more toxic than the idea of a carbon price. Most economists will tell you that if you want to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases in a capitalist economy, the most efficient tool in our policy toolbox is a price mechanism.  While the details of such mechanisms are complex and varied the concept is simple - companies that emit greenhouse gases (CO2, methane etc) need to pay a price for every tonne they emit.  This price will give them an incentive to reduce their emissions, and provide an advantage for no- or low-emissions technologies to be developed and deployed. As with so many things economists see as obvious, there are many reasons why this is not as easy as it sounds.  Chief among them is the fact that companies which emit greenhouse gases don't...