That's rather uncharitable of you, Peter Hume.

>>...why anyone engaged in *productive* activity, dirty or dangerous or stressful work, should have any of their income confiscated to pay for the insipid pontifications of a comfortable privilegentsia.<<

We all have to learn, you know. Not everyone springs like Athena - and, one has to assume, yourself - fully-formed from Zeus' brow.

Yes, it is a poorly thought-through article. It is possible that the author has taken too many short cuts in presenting the arguments, but more likely that it is the result of reading something that sounds perfectly logical, and simply making comments upon it. Wiser, and most likely much older, heads shake their grey locks and sigh, "it doesn't work like that, you know".

But youth is about learning from mistakes. At least the author has had the courage to put her thoughts out there, for people like you and me to point out their lack of practicality.

As for the people doing "dirty or dangerous or stressful work" disapproving of the results of the education process that leads to a Sociology PhD thesis, I take leave to doubt. Most that I have met would give their eye-teeth for their children to have the level of education required to produce this piece. One that they themselves were unable to experience.

It is ungenerous to begrudge the money we spend on education, however much we might tut tut about the results.

Take a chill-pill Peter, your anxiety is all too obvious.

Apropos my first post, above;
what most of the pundits, and even fundamentalists like Peter Hume (sorry, "Jefferson" :-), fail to realise or acknowledge is that we've been living in a neo-liberal "utopia" for some time now.
Since the 1970's the US has led a period of corporate super-eminence wherein both ideology and obscene amounts of capital are increasingly monopolised. In the US this agenda has been led by "The Business Roundtable, an organization of CEO's--"committed to the aggressive pursuit of political power for the corporation"--in concert with the US Chamber of Commerce. "Their grants have paid for a veritable constellation of think tanks, pressure groups, special interest foundations, litigation centres, scholarly research and funding endowments, publishing and TV production houses, media attack operations, political consultancies, polling mills and public relations operations". It's been a roaring success: for most of the postwar period the share of national US income for the top 1% of earners was about 8% of the total. By the end of the century this rose to 15%, similar in the UK.
"The reallocation of wealth was part of a rapid increase in wealth inequalities across the OECD countries while globally the income gap between the fifth of the world population living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest was 74 to 1 in 1997, up from 60 to 1 in 1990 and 30 to 1 in 1960. ... In the frenzy of speculation that characterised the new economy boom, the leaders of the large corporations gained enormous personal wealth. ... between 1995 and 1999 the value of stock options granted to US executives increased from 26.5 billion to 110 billion, representing one fifth of non-financial corporate profits. ... In 1992 CEO's held 2% of the equity of US corporations, today it's 12%, "one of the most spectacular acts of appropriation in the history of capitalism" ("New Capitalism", 2009, 34-39).
I think the "Wicked Problem" article is plain silly, and to reiterate, I don't see why ordinary tax-payers should part with one cent before these "evil" capitalist's are fleeced!

I forgot to mention; just as free market ideology gave the world the Great Depression, the same madness gave us the Global Financial Crisis.

bonmot
Wow, mind-reading and personal argument – how clever and persuasive of you. Perhaps you should change your nickname to mal-mot?

Pericles
There’s no need for you to second-guess whether others want to fund this kind of wasteful confused elitist nonsense, since if what you say is true, the revenue of sociology departments will be just as much even if people are free to choose not to fund them, won’t it?

Squeers
You’re in favour of forced redistributions by government, remember? I’m against them, remember?

The argument in favour of forced redistributions is that they are necessary to do social justice. The argument against them is that they are necessarily socially unjust and *make things worse when considered from the interventionists’ own standpoint*.

Now. Which has more explaining power – your theory or mine? Yours doesn’t even support your own point of view! You look on government’s economic powers intended to manage the economy for the greater good, you look on government’s powers to arbitrarily redistribute wealth to its favourites – and declare the results unjust and contrary to what you would want! Thanks for proving my point!

Your criticism supports my theory, not yours – government’s economic interventions are unjust and unsatisfactory even from the interventionists’ own point of view, let alone mine! And my theory justifies both my criticism of government – that it can’t manage the economy well or justly - and your criticism of capitalism – that it is illegitimate for big businesses, getting into bed with big government, to screw the rest of the population.

You are only showing your confusion.

As for AGW – you have the onus of proof back-the-front. I asked you to prove it WITHOUT appeal to absent authority or assuming what is in issue. So you answer by appeal to absent authority AND assuming what is in issue.

Of course if your theory of knowledge is right, and there is no objectively knowable truth, then there’s no reason for anyone else to agree with any of your policy arguments, let alone enforce them, is there?

Now - who’s “we” again?

Gee, that was devastating, Pete..

..You got anything else...... ?