Neener-neener

Sheldon Cooper, the anti-social supernerd star of the Big Bang Theory, has a better knowledge of growth sceptic theory than most greens. In the episode of the CBS comedy called Large Hadron Collision he notes that:

“There’s an economic concept known as a Positional Good in which an object is only valued by the possessor because its not possessed by others. The term was coined in 1976 by economist Fred Hirsch to replace the more colloquial but less precise ‘neener-neener’.”

The episode’s subsequent discussion of happiness is more intelligent than that coming from most growth sceptics.