by Thomas Rodham Wells Governments should tax the production and consumption of junk entertainment like Angry Birds and The Bachelor to correct the market failures that encourage their overconsumption. As with tobacco and alcohol, the point of such sin taxes is not to prevent people from consuming things that are bad for them if they…

by Thomas Rodham Wells Enhancement is a hot topic in biomedical ethics, though the academic conversation is coloured by a surprisingly strong – even reactionary – conservatism. On the one hand it probably is a good thing to have some critical scrutiny of the techno utopians' claims. On the other hand, should we – can…

by Thomas Rodham Wells The contemporary animal rights movement owes a great intellectual debt to Peter Singer's pathbreaking book ‘Animal Liberation' (1975). In that book Singer made a break with the dominant moral argument for treating animals well, the Kantian line that mistreating animals is a bad – inhumane – thing for humans to do.…

by Thomas Rodham Wells Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.Epicurus Economists pay a lot of attention to productivity, the efficiency with which inputs are translated into outputs. This is quite reasonable since productivity is the source of the wealth of nations. But economists tend to focus on the supply side:…

by Thomas Rodham Wells The material prosperity that capitalism has wrought is the product of technology as well as markets (and social norms and state institutions). Markets enhance the efficiency of allocation of resources, such as human labour, between competing projects, while technological innovations enhance the productivity of our use of those resources, the ability…

by Thomas Rodham Wells Parenthood is coming under increasing criticism as a selfish lifestyle choice. Parents' private choices to procreate impose expensive obligations on the rest of us to ensure those children have a decent quality of life and come out as successful adults and citizens, and that means massive tax-subsidies for their health, education,…

by Thomas Rodham Wells Clio, the ancient Greek muse of history History too important to be left to national politicians and their ideological visions of national identity and social engineering projects. First, the principle. History should be truthful, relevant, and just. As an intellectual enterprise history is a matter of fact not opinion, the discovery…

by Thomas Wells The 'new atheist' movement associated with the 'four horsemen' (Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, Dawkins) doesn't speak for me. It combines uninformed foolishness with a quasi religious dogmatism of its own and tops it all with an illiberal political programme. As a non-believer I am as embarrassed by them as many Christians are embarrassed…