The Irony of Economics

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness".

Charles Dickens' tome, "A Tale of Two Cities", set against the backdrop of the French revolution and the storming of the Bastille has thrown up an uncanny parallel 220 Years later as protesters at the London G20 summit storm the gates of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Maybe the noughties street slang paraphrasing of Dicken's line would have it as "we've never been smarter, we've never been dumber".

How can we produce an iPhone, a device that fits into the palm of your hand and effectively contains the sum of all human knowledge yet we cannot adequately care for all the children in sub-Saharan Africa - instead we have to leave it to Madonna.

How can we produce a machine that can actually video the mobility of carbon atoms yet not figure out that someone earning $20,000 dollars a year probably shouldn't be buying a house worth $500k.

There was no one bright enough to head off the credit crunch but there are 662,832 people "following" Britney Spears Twitter feed. Man that's more depressing than the credit crunch!

Isn't the fundamental problem obvious? Specifically, we don't have bright people with science backgrounds (preferably Mats Sci.) running the show.

To illustrate this extensively documented, cast iron piece of organisational science research, let's take a look at the hosts of the G20 summit, Great Britain and examine the backgrounds of Prime Ministers since 1960.

• Gordon Brown - studied History although claims to have saved the world
• Tony Blair - Jurisprudence (Law to you and I) - now seeking religion as it's easier to find than WMD's
• John Major - 3 O levels in History, English and English Lit. - left school at 16
• Margaret Thatcher - Chemistry
• James Callaghan - Tax collector
• Harold Wilson - Modern History graduate
• Alec Douglas - Modern History
• Harold Macmillan - Classics

Is there an obvious pattern here? One scientist out of 8 Prime Ministers ~ 12.5% scientific leadership spread over a fifty year period?

Conclusion
Don Eigler to take over as Emperor of the Planet and Sergey Brin (quite smart at maths) to be in charge of economic policy operating along the lines of;

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery."

What a smart idea Mr. Dickens!

Editors Note:

For those of you who are gluttons for punishment and who send in kind words about Materials Thoughts, after seven years of blood sweat and horrendous topical gags with a materials slant the author has finally cast off his mask of secrecy and his collected dribblings can now be found at Social Materials or be followed on Twitter, with a wonderful archive of past Materials Thoughts on the AZoNetwork Blog Page - he says he'd love to hear from you.