Friday, June 13, 2014

Black Helicopters Rain On The Fraser Institute's Big Economic Freedom Day Parade.

TheDataAreThe
DataVille


The Broadbent Institute's Press Progress is reporting that the UN has issued a report that takes serious issue with the economic fighters for freedom out there who are doing their darndest to make sure we all vote against our best interests and treat each other like cretins.

And that includes the local regiment of the EconoFooPooFreeFightersForTruth:

The report by the Geneva-based International Labour Office (ILO), governed by governments, employers and labour, offers a "critical overview" of labour market regulations' indicators developed by the World Economic Forum, the Institute for Management Development and the Fraser Institute.

The groups all use data from the World Bank's Employing Workers Index, which was suspended in 2009 due to major conceptual flaws.

Pointing to the "trivial aggregation of de jure and de facto measures" and "a strong conceptual bias," the report pokes several holes in the Fraser Institute's Labour Market Regulations and Economic Freedom of the World indexes...



And here is the list of their most serious issues of data discombobulation by the ecofoopoofreefighters:

#1 They double count the same things.

#2 They use data from multiple sources for the same variable.


#3 They mix and match new components with old components to generate "wrong interpretations.


#4 They cherrypick which components they include in their data collection.


#5 De facto data is from Mars while de jure information is from Venus.


#6 "Military conscription" is one of the components the Fraser Institute takes into account in assessing labour market regulations.


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Look.

All of the reasons above are, essentially, peer-review firing offenses (i.e. grounds for outright rejection) in my business.

But what the heckfire do I know.

After all, I'm just an academic who has do crazy stuff like reveal any and all potential conflicts of interest when I submit something for publication.

But that reason #6 goes above and beyond all that.

Why?

Well...

Because it brings into sharp relief how convinced the fine 'scholars' at the Fraser Institute are.

More specifically, it demonstrates that the 'scholars' are so convinced that they are right that they have deluded themselves into thinking that they can use the ultimate socialist operation (i.e. conscription) to justify their extremist ideology which, at its core, insists that the race to the bottom towards the hardpan splatter landing that is full-blown Corporate Liberterianism is is actually good for you and me.

So...

Nevermind the public education and all that.

Instead...

The time has come for us to tighten our collective belts even tighter while we await the arrival of the Sparkle Ponies!

OK?


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2 comments:

Norm Farrell said...

But RossK, Fraser Institute materials are peer reviewed. Mind you, one time, a citizen journalist peered behind the peers, then wrote,

"As usual, five of the reviewers of this report are actually dead, some others are in their 90s, and one of them is also the author, a conflict of interest if ever there was one."

Sorry, I'd have more to say but I'm busy right now conducting a peer review of the article I wrote for publication at my site, where as publisher, editor and moderator, I have a delicate task to be sure I agree with everything I post.

RossK said...

Norm--

I guess I forgot to put that funny little word that has nothing to do with either the stiff(s) or the dead in front of the term.

Which is....

rigorous.

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