Bernard's Top 10 at 10: Should scientists be the 'conscience of society'?; Does our economy reward psychopaths?; Clarke and Dawe on a wardrobe malfunction story; Dilbert

Here's my Top 10 items from around the Internet over the last week or so. As always, we welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz. 

See all previous Top 10s here.

My must read is #3. It made me think a bit about productivity and employment. I'm not sure it improved my productivity, but...

1. A critic and a conscience of society? - Shaun Hendy has written an excellent blog post over at SciBlogs on the role of academics in the light of the 'Dirty Politics' revelations about the Food and Grocery Council's use of Whale Oil to pressure and abuse food scientists and water scientists who were challenging the Government's position.

Hendy points to a recent shakeup in Japan's academic code of ethics in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

It seems Japan's scientists failed to highlight the risks of the reactor or challenge the powers-that-be.

Now they're being given the mandate to publicly challenge the Government.

That 'conscience of society' clause is already in the Education Act so academics have that protection (though few use it), but it doesn't apply to scientists who are in the Crown Research Institutes, who can be subject to pressure from ministers.

Hendy asks some good questions in his post:

Most scientists accept that scientific knowledge is just one of the factors that politicians and policy-makers must take into account when making decisions. In return, scientists expect their advice to be weighed seriously by politicians, whether or not that advice is ultimately followed. Indeed, John Key was the first New Zealand Prime Minister to appoint a Chief Science Advisor, but as he says “we don’t always like his advice and we don’t always listen to him.”

However, there is a difference between weighing scientific advice alongside other concerns, and the undermining or outright rejection of that advice as being without merit. When politicians neglect to weigh the scientific evidence adequately, lives and livelihoods are put at risk. It is chilling to compare the dismissal of the risks of tsunami by Japan’s nuclear industry (‘academic’) to Key’s put down on BBC Hardtalk of Dr Mike Joy, the Massey University scientist who has drawn attention to the deteriorating quality of our rivers and lakes:

"He’s one academic, and like lawyers, I can provide you with another one that will give you a counterview."

Dr Gaston and Sir Peter have kicked off a very timely discussion of how best to ensure that the voice of the scientific community is not muzzled or ignored by politicians or policy-makers, as so tragically occurred in Japan. We have an opportunity to strengthen our Code of Ethics* in a way that would protect the ability of both academic and CRI scientists to speak out on difficult issues. The public’s confidence and trust in the scientific community rests on our ability and willingness to stand up when the public interest is threatened.

2. The worst in us -  Ghent University Psychology Professor Paul Verhaeghe has written this piece in The Guardian about how the current global economic system "rewards psychopathic personality traits and changed our ethics and our personalities."

We tend to perceive our identities as stable and largely separate from outside forces. But over decades of research and therapeutic practice, I have become convinced that economic change is having a profound effect not only on our values but also on our personalities. Thirty years of neoliberalism, free-market forces and privatisation have taken their toll, as relentless pressure to achieve has become normative. If you’re reading this sceptically, I put this simple statement to you: meritocratic neoliberalism favours certain personality traits and penalises others.

There are certain ideal characteristics needed to make a career today. The first is articulateness, the aim being to win over as many people as possible. Contact can be superficial, but since this applies to most human interaction nowadays, this won’t really be noticed.

A neoliberal meritocracy would have us believe that success depends on individual effort and talents, meaning responsibility lies entirely with the individual and authorities should give people as much freedom as possible to achieve this goal. For those who believe in the fairytale of unrestricted choice, self-government and self-management are the pre-eminent political messages, especially if they appear to promise freedom. Along with the idea of the perfectible individual, the freedom we perceive ourselves as having in the west is the greatest untruth of this day and age.

The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman neatly summarised the paradox of our era as: “Never have we been so free. Never have we felt so powerless.” We are indeed freer than before, in the sense that we can criticise religion, take advantage of the new laissez-faire attitude to sex and support any political movement we like. We can do all these things because they no longer have any significance – freedom of this kind is prompted by indifference. Yet, on the other hand, our daily lives have become a constant battle against a bureaucracy that would make Kafka weak at the knees. There are regulations about everything, from the salt content of bread to urban poultry-keeping.

3. The Great De-Coupling - This McKinsey Quarterly piece talks about how the rise of machine learning presents a great economic paradox: productivity is rising, but employment may not. The chart below suggests the solution may lie in a lower working age population. Maybe.

As machine learning advances at exponential rates, many highly skilled jobs once considered the exclusive domain of humans are increasingly being carried out by computers. Whether that’s good or bad depends on whom you talk to. Technologists and economists tend to split into two camps, the technologists believing that innovation will cure all ills, the economists fretting that productivity gains will further divide the haves from the have-nots.

4. What New Zealand's schools look like - Here's a portrait of New Zealand society, by looking at student ethnic profile by school decile.

5. More demand! More demand! - I still find this amazing whenever I read it. David Cameron, fresh from pumping up Britain's housing market with 'help to buy' is planning to offer a 20% discount on new homes to first home buyers.

Cameron apparently said the 20% discount would be obtained by exempting these 100,000 first homes from some taxes and the zero carbon standard...

Sigh. Any guesses what might happen to prices once developers are exempted from charging the taxes or having to build warm, dry and efficient homes? The first thing he needs to do is remove the 'help to buy'.

Here's The Guardian's version of the story.

Cameron said: “We want to help more young people achieve the dream of home ownership so today I can pledge we will build 100,000 homes for young, first-time buyers. We will make these starter homes 20 per cent cheaper by exempting them from a raft of taxes and by using brownfield land.

“I don’t want to see young people locked out of home ownership. We’ve already started to tackle the problem with Help to Buy mortgages – and these new plans will help tens of thousands more people to buy their first home.”

6. This is more like it - It's amazing how determined politicians get when they smell the prospect of more revenue in the breeze. I wish our Government got serious about this issue too.

The FT reports British Chancellor George Osborne planning a genuine tax crackdown on the likes of serial multi-national tax avoiders such as Google, Apple and Microsoft.

“Some technology companies go to extraordinary lengths to pay little or not tax here,” Mr Osborne told the Conservatives’ annual party conference. “If you abuse our tax system, you abuse the trust of the British people,” he said.

His comments came as the European Commission prepared to unveil on Tuesday details of its case against Ireland over favourable tax treatment for Apple, which it says its illegal state aid.

7. The Geneva Report - Jeremy Warner from The Telegraph summarises the Geneva Report well, pointing to its warnings about rising levels of leverage and the eventual risk of mass default. That might be a bit strong. I'm sure there'd be a central bank and government response to that involving lots of taxpayer-funded bailouts, subsidies and money printing...

The UK and US economies may be on the mend at last, but that’s not the pattern elsewhere. On a global level, growth is being steadily drowned under a rising tide of debt, threatening renewed financial crisis, a continued squeeze to living standards, and eventual mass default.

I exaggerate only a little in depicting this apocalyptic view of the future as the conclusion of the latest “Geneva Report”, an annual assessment informed by a top drawer conference of leading decision makers and economic thinkers of the big challenges facing the global economy.

Aptly titled “Deleveraging? What Deleveraging?”, the report points out that, far from paying down debt since the financial crisis of 2008/9, the world economy as a whole has in fact geared up even further. The raw numbers make explosive reading.

Contrary to widely held assumptions, the world has not yet begun to de-lever. In fact global debt-to-GDP – public and private non financial debt - is still growing, breaking new highs by the month.

8. Global disinflationary pressures - Cardiff Garcia does a nice job of wrapping up the many forces around the world creating disinflation at best and deflation at worst. These are the sorts of reasons why the European Central Bank is about to fire up the printing presses and our own Reserve Bank has put interest rates on hold.

– Aging demographics, high debt loads, weak nominal wage growth and persistent output gaps in advanced economies.

– Slowing growth in emerging economies, as their catch-up period has stalled.

– The shale revolution and improving technologies across the energy landscape, along with weaker commodity price growth in recent years.

– Entrenched deflation in non-construction investment goods (and consumer durable goods) since the late 1990s.

– There continues to be a residual belief in most developed-world markets, resilient since the 1980s and the subsequent Great Moderation period, that central banks can reverse breakaway inflation. This makes it hard for inflation expectations, which can have a feedback effect on current inflation itself, from becoming too unanchored even if unexpectedly aggressive demand-side policies are pursued.

9. Totally John Oliver on Barack Obama's drone strikes.

10. Totally Clarke and Dawe - Usually I don't get a chance to put this one in because it's 'stolen' by other Top 10 writers. This is a gem from Arlo Sailor on current media practices.

"When she leant forward you could see the clock tower out the window."