Oxymoron

Did you know that

"Ethical Lawyer" was an Oxymoron?

 

Oxymoron means a paradoxical or self-contradictory ｅxpression.

Sometimes it makes sense, other times not.

 

Examples of those making sese:

 

Benign Neglect

Creative Destruction: By the great economist Joseph Schumpter

Equlibrium Unemployment Rate (aka natural rate of umemployment)

Forced Choice

Gratuitous Insult

Guided Discretion: Korea's college admission

Graduate Student

Green Capitalism: Capitalism is all about economic development, which in turn means

destruction of the natural environment. Capitalism is anti-green by nature.

Green Consumerism: Same logic as Green Capitalism

Grown-up child: Adult son or daughter

Global Marketing: Marketing is something to localize.

Joyful Scream: Your business is painfully booming.

Mass Customization: Mass production and customization are kind of opposite.

Monopolistic Competition: a mixture of perfect competition and monopoly

Most-Favored-Nation principle at WTO: Never to allow a  special favor to a country.

Protectionist policy: Never to protect the majority (consumers) in democracy , the majority ruling

Single Mom: Human proliferation is by-sexual.

Silent Alarm: Think of Info-Tech security services.

Sustainable Development: Same logic as Green Capitalism

 

 

Those making little sense:

 

Business with Conscience (Paul Hawken)

Corporate Social Responsibility: accoring to Milton Friedman (Joel Bakan)

Ethycal Lawyer: It is said not to make sense in America.

Ethical Tycoon: Think of Lord Acton's famous comment.

       <“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

         Great men are almost always bad men.”>

Caring Dad: At my home

"[HD] management in an oxymoron": Quoted from D. Kirk Korean Dynasty 1994

 

Quality Beaujolais: It's No Oxymoron

Also, did you notice that

 

1) Freer trade was less free than free trade.

2) A high-quality life was of higher quality than a higher-quality one.

   And so on? 

 

3) "Trade policy" never promotes trade.

4) Supranational institutions are inferior to national ones.

5) Control Paradox: "The more control you seek, the less control you'll have."

(Please refer to the separate "Control Paradox.")

6) In economics, all the real variables (real GDP, real interest rate, etc.) are fictitious.

7) In the science of business administration, only one valid answer is "It depends."

(Interpretation: "It depends." → "There is no answer.")

8) Keynes was not a Keynesian: J.M Keynes famously commented in 1944 after dining with a  

            group of economists in Washington, "I was the only non-Keynesian there."

9) (Henry Ford) "Whether you believe you can, or whether you believe you can't, you are

absolutely right."

10) (Henry Ford) "You can have any color you want as long as it is black."

11) (Henry Ford) "Our double-the-market-rate wage was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made."

12) (Heraclitus) "The only constant is change."

13) (John Elkington)  The only certainty about today's business environment is uncertainty.  

14) (Milton Friedman) Moral virtue [corporate social responsibility] is immoral when it does not

serve the bottom line [profitability], because a corporation is the property of its stockholders. It can be virtuous if it is used as hyocritical window dressing.

15) (Peter Drucker) Heresy is often closer to the truth than conventional wisdom.

             16) (Principle of the market economy) Competition for profits is to compete extra profits away.  

17) An (internaional) sanction is to dis-sanction something of a country.

18) Mr. (Carlos) Slim from Mexico could not be fatrher from being slim. 

19) Alice in Wonderland has to run as fast as she can in order to stand still.

20) (Paul Cootner) "If you're so rich, why aren't you smart," in response to an anti-economist crack "If you're so

   smart, why aren't you rich."  (Interpretation: Wealth doesn't have anything to do with intelligence, and vice versa.)

21) (Apple Company) Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

22) (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) "An organism begins to die from the very moment of its birth." 

23) (F.A. Hayek) only fools believe they know all." (1979, p.130)

24) (F.A. Hayek) "Good things are negative." (e.g. Peace, freedom, and justice mean non-presence of violence,

    sickness, and vice, respectively.)

25) (Hegel) "What people have learned from history is that people never learn from histroy."

An author with the name Dr. Mardy Grothe published a book titled Oxymoronica (HarperCollins 2004), which is full of such funny comments as:

 

1) (Everett Dirksen) I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be

    flexible at all times.

2) (Jimmy Durante) I hate music, especially when it's played.

3) (W.C. Fields) The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.

4) (Kenneth Boulding): We must always be on the lookout for perverse dynamic processes

    which carry even good thing to excess. It is precisely these excesses which  become

    the most evil things.... The devil, after all, is a fallen angel.

.....Think of the global financial turmoil in 2008--All financial excesses! 

.....How about a Confucian teaching :

     Excessiveness is no better than shortness (過猶不及)?

5) (Moliere) A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one. (半識者憂患?)