Robin has many-many clever and insightful observations, but I think the history books will only remember him for these unbelievably naive em posts. People of the future will find his idea of an em just as charmingly ridiculous as we see flapping-wing aeroplanes, and they will often quote him for comedic effect. At least that's my hope, because I think he would deserve that for the hubris with which he builds these complex intellectual constructions on quicksand.

More seriously, this whole em series is another sterile example of what I called Individualism Bias at this old thread. Johnicolas' short comment there points to the same direction as Carl's paper, but from a different angle. (I am not an economist, but it seems to me that Robin failed to address Johnicolas's points.)