Fabian Michael Wadel (born 18 May 1963), known professionally as Fabian Tassano, is an economist and author, known for his radical views on the medical profession, and for his

critique Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic study of a written or oral discourse. Although critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgment,Rodolphe Gasché (2007''The honor of thinking: critique, theory, philosophy''p ...

of ideological aspects of modern culture.

Biography

Tassano was born in Munich to German parents. He changed his original family name of Wadel to Tassano on the marriage of his mother to Michael Tassano, a Major in the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

. He has lived in the United Kingdom as a British citizen since 1973. In 2003, his mother's marriage to Michael Tassano having been annulled, he formally reverted to the surname Wadel, while maintaining the name Fabian Tassano for publications. Tassano studied Natural Sciences at Churchill College, Cambridge, specialising in Physics and Philosophy of Science. He graduated with a First in 1984, winning the Bronowski Prize. In 1991 he qualified as a Chartered Accountant, having trained first at

Grant Thornton Grant Thornton is the world's seventh-largest by revenue and sixth-largest by number of employees professional services network of independent accounting and consulting member firms which provide assurance, tax and advisory services to private ...

and subsequently at

KPMG Peat Marwick KPMG International Limited (or simply KPMG) is a multinational professional services network, and one of the Big Four accounting organizations. Headquartered in Amstelveen, Netherlands, although incorporated in London, England, KPMG is a netw ...

. He came tenth nationally in the Institute of Chartered Accountants' qualifying exam. He also qualified as a chartered tax accountant with the Institute of Taxation. From 1992 to 2000 he was first a postgraduate student, and subsequently college lecturer in economics, at the University of Oxford. He carried out research on vertical integration policy in the UK and Germany, and on the economic effects of vertical mergers, for which he was awarded a doctorate by Oxford in 1998. From 1994 to 2000 he held College Lecturerships in Economics, successively at Jesus College,

Balliol College Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

, St. Peter's College and Pembroke College. From 2000 to 2002 he was a senior economist at

PricewaterhouseCoopers PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounti ...

in London, working on

transfer pricing In taxation and accounting, transfer pricing refers to the rules and methods for pricing transactions within and between enterprises under common ownership or control. Because of the potential for cross-border controlled transactions to distort ...

policy. He is currently a Research Director at

Oxford Forum Oxford Forum is a research organisation based in Oxfordshire, England, founded in 1998 by Celia Green Celia Elizabeth Green (born 26 November 1935) is a British writer on philosophical skepticism and psychology. Biography Green's parents wer ...

, where he collaborates with

Celia Green Celia Elizabeth Green (born 26 November 1935) is a British writer on philosophical skepticism and psychology. Biography Green's parents were both primary school teachers, who together authored a series of geography textbooks which became know ...

and

Charles McCreery Charles Anthony Selby McCreery (born 30 June 1942) is a British psychologist, best known for his collaboration with Celia Green on work on hallucinatory states in normal people. Biography Charles McCreery was born at Stanton St. John in Oxfor ...

Books

In 1995 Tassano published ''The Power of Life or Death: Medical Coercion and the Euthanasia Debate''. The book had a Foreword by

Thomas Szasz Thomas Stephen Szasz ( ; hu, Szász Tamás István ; 15 April 1920 – 8 September 2012) was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate M ...

, an American psychiatrist known for his libertarian views on mental illness, and was described by the philosopher

Antony Flew Antony Garrard Newton Flew (; 11 February 1923 – 8 April 2010) was a British philosopher. Belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, Flew worked on the philosophy of religion. During the course of his career he taught a ...

as 'intellectually first-class'. ''The Power of Life or Death'' attempts to bring free-market and libertarian philosophical ideas into the medical ethics debate, in particular in relation to the treatment of the terminally ill, and examines the ideological subtext of the medical ethics literature, which Tassano argues often gives greater weight to collective interests than to the preferences of individual patients. Despite its radical approach the book received serious, if guarded attention from the medical profession, the '' British Medical Journal'', for example, commenting: 'We would not recommend this book as comfortable bedtime reading. ... If you like an intellectual challenge this one is for you.' The book was also reviewed in ''Nature'', which commented, 'His view goes straight to the medical jugular', and the ''

Literary Review ''Literary Review'' is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at the University of Edinburgh. Its offices are on Lexington Street in Soho. The magazine was edited for fourteen years by v ...

'', according to which 'Tassano presents hair-raising case studies ..his book is a timely polemic.' The book was shortlisted for the Skrabanek Prize. Tassano analyses the ideological content of modern culture in general in ''Mediocracy: Inversions and Deceptions in an Egalitarian Culture'' (2006), characterized by

Patrick Minford Anthony Patrick Leslie Minford (born 17 May 1943) is a British macroeconomist who is professor of applied economics at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, a position he has held since 1997. He was Edward Gonner Professor of Applied E ...

as a book that 'delightfully dissects the language of modern egalitarianism and political correctness'. The book argues that both ‘

dumbing down Dumbing down is the deliberate oversimplification of intellectual content in education, literature, and cinema, news, video games, and culture. Originated in 1933, the term "dumbing down" was movie-business slang, used by screenplay writers, mean ...

’ in the popular media, and the

obscurantism In philosophy, the terms obscurantism and obscurationism describe the anti-intellectual practices of deliberately presenting information in an abstruse and imprecise manner that limits further inquiry and understanding of a subject. There are two ...

prevalent in academic discourse, are manifestations of the same underlying ideology: one which appears egalitarian but in reality is designed to privilege a paternalistic elite and exclude those who might criticise it. ''Mediocracy'' received favourable reviews from a number of online commentators. Johnathan Pearce of the libertarian website

Samizdata Samizdata is a British group weblog. Founded on 2 November 2001 by Perry de Havilland and originally named ‘Libertarian Samizdata’, it dropped the label due to the unhappiness of editors to subscribe to a particular label. Edited by " anarch ...

called it 'a rather fine book'.

Curtis Yarvin Curtis Guy Yarvin (born 1973), also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, is an American blogger, software engineer, and Internet entrepreneur. He is known, along with fellow theorist Nick Land, for founding the anti-egalitarian and anti-dem ...

described it as 'a comprehensive and witty dictionary'. In 2019 Tassano published a collection of essays entitled ''The Ideology of the Elites''.Tassano, F., ''The Ideology of the Elites: Critical Essays'', Oxford: Oxford Forum, 2019.

Other selected publications

*'Tax aspects of corporate activity', ''Energy Utilities'', February 1996. *'Are vertical mergers harmful?’, '' European Competition Law Review'', 7, 1999. *'Information Complexity as a Driver of Emergent Phenomena in the Business Community' (with J. Efstathiou et al.), ''Proceedings of the International Workshop on Emergent Synthesis'',

Kobe University , also known in the Kansai region as , is a leading Japanese national university located in the city of Kobe, in Hyōgo. It was established in 1949, but the academic origins of Kobe University trace back to the establishment of Kobe Higher Comme ...

, 1999. *''Tax for the Terrified'', Tassano & Co, 1994.

References

External links

Tassano's website

Tassano's blog

‘Flatter, wider, virtual corporations’
online paper on effects of internet on

market structure Market structure, in economics, depicts how firms are differentiated and categorised based on the types of goods they sell (homogeneous/heterogeneous) and how their operations are affected by external factors and elements. Market structure makes it ...

, 2000. * Article about mediocracy on German-language Wikipedia {{DEFAULTSORT:Tassano, Fabian 1963 births Alumni of Churchill College, Cambridge British economists British libertarians Living people German emigrants to the United Kingdom Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom

Biography

Books

Other selected publications

See also

References

External links