Russell Brown wrote:

Woah, Ken: you're in danger of tilting into nihilism here.

The British Parliamentary expenses system, established in good faith, turns out to have been unacceptably abused by many MPs. That abuse reeks of entitlement. But many other MPs have not behaved in this way -- some of them seem quite saintly in their claims. Operating a democracy does cost some money.

And who brought this to the attention of the public? The newspaper owned by the billionaire Barclay brothers, The Daily Telegraph. I'm not sure it's all as cut-and-dried as you suggest.

Most parliamentarians behave honourably, just as most citizens do. It is, of course, quite reasonable to expect all parliamentarians to behave honourably. What we have witnessed is unreasonable and dishonourable assault on the public purse. Saintliness transcends honour, and if some have exhibited unexpected sanctity, then let us be grateful.

Don’t shoot the messenger. Even if he is false, within his lies there may yet glint scintillas of truth.

Tom Semmens wrote:

Woah, Ken: you're in danger of tilting into nihilism here.

I am not so sure. The fact that the attack on the credibility of the democratic institutions is being led by a flagship newspaper of the very oligarchs that Ken says are incapable of reform surely reinforces his argument, more than those MP's who behaved well weaken it.

I don’t think that any person or any system is incapable of reform: rather that the cure of the present disease requires desperate remedies. Not explosives, one would hope, but more akin to the “incoherent” fuss of the Tea Party-goers.

Shay Lambert wrote:

Kafkaesque bureaucracies

Don't knock 'em - lots of people are employed by Kafkaesque bureaucracies. Their work maybe pointless and contribute nothing to society, but no more so than most jobs if you look at them from a high enough perspective.

Most jobs are not unproductive – if they were, we would all be starving. What is a concern is not the existence of non-contributing bureaucracies – they are the waste product of any large organisation and just have to be tolerated. In firms subject to the discipline of the market, they must be regularly purged or the firm fails. Organisations that perform tasks which the market cannot are in danger of suffering a fearful expansion of this waste, examples of which are the proliferation do-nothing commissions and university bureaucracies over the past 30+ years.

Angus Robertson wrote:

Has the purchasing power of the majority actually faded? Adding together the poverty reduction that has occurred in China, India, Brazil and other developing countries over the last 50 years gives a figure that would seem higher than any possible number of middle class 1st worlders who have seen their relative income drop.

Purchasing power has not diminished absolutely, but relative to the goods and services available for purchase, it certainly has. It plainly has increased in mainland Asia, but the present problems stem more or less entirely from the US, whose economy remains overwhelmingly dominant.

Alright. Anything amazing is usually interesting. But the application of thermodynamic concepts, which concern very simple things such as boxes of molecules, to something as forbiddingly complex as an economy has about it the odour of new-ageism. At least they steer clear of crystallography.

Ayres and Warr start their little effort on physical work with the assertion: "This paper tests several related hypothesis ...". Papers do not, however, test anything; they are used to report things such as new ideas or the results of tests conducted by the authors and observations made by them. Since the first sentence of the paper is palpable nonsense, can any encouragement be offered for my persevering with the rest of it?