catallaxy

7/29/2004

The use of math in economics

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 6:55 pm

Abiola Lapite opines

…why is it that people who espouse ideologies like anarcho-capitalism, protectionist isolationism and socialism are so allergic to mathematically rigorous modelling of their theses? Could it be because their beliefs are more akin to a substitute religion than anything else, and they dread the prospect of having their ideas controverted by air-tight reasoning?

I think this is the ultimate explanation for the unpopularity of so-called “autistic” (i.e, neoclassical) economics amongst those who hew to the otherwise radically different ideological systems I’ve mentioned above - it prevents them from freely indulging in the sorts of meaningless high-flown rhetoric that is typical of the output of people like Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Murray Rothbard, Pat Buchanan, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri and far too many other blowhards

A commenter in Abiola’s blog points out David Friedman as an exception to this rule but otherwise I think he’s spot-on. Note that though Hayek critiqued the use of math in economics, he was really critiquing what he saw as an ‘aggregationist’ fallacy in macro economics which conferred a false sense of precision on people who reasoned with macroeconomic aggregates, ignoring the story about relative prices going on underneath. This criticism would nonetheless have been appreciated by a mathematically-oriented microeconomist.

Incidentally many years ago when Paul Krugman actually wrote about economics (something he was very good at writing about) he made similar points about the use of math in economics in this excellent piece.

Exclusive licensing in harbour towage

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 5:15 pm

A little self-promo. The latest issue of the web-based Review of Network Economics is out now and is accessible here. I have an article co-written with Henry Ergas and Teresa Fels, the abstract of which is available here

MoveOn & Common Cause score an own goal?

Filed under: — Kodjo @ 12:42 am

The far left (by US standards) MoveOn and Common Cause scored an entirely predictable own goal this week. Having taken umbrage at Murdoch’s US Fox News channel, they decided to petition the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to prevent Faux News from using the expression “Fair and Balanced.” (You probably remember that Faux News have trademarked the expression and sic lawyers on to folk who use it.)

Now Faux News is unfair and unbalanced, if sometimes good for laughs. Conservatives love it. MoveOn and Common Cause don’t. But petition the FTC to prevent Faux from using “Fair and Balanced"? Let me count the reasons this is a bad idea:
(more…)

7/28/2004

Crony capitalism is alive and well in Australia

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 12:42 pm

From an article in the AFR on 24 July entitled ‘The big bet’ on Kerry Packer’s latest plans:

James Packer talks with intensity about his deal with British betting exchange group Betfair. “We’ve always believed at PBL that the winners in technology will be the best global businesses,” he told the Weekend AFR. Across the desk is John Alexander, the recently appointed chief executive of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited and the most powerful person in the Packer realm outside the family.

It’s a big moment for James. With the One.Tel disaster behind him, he and a small PBL team have spent 12 months engineering a joint venture with Betfair in Australia and New Zealand …

After months of lobbying, Betfair’s push was rewarded somewhat when the federal government last fortnight opted not to change the Interactive Gambling Act to prohibit online betting exchanges.

That decision, made after the federal government concluded betting exchanges would not contribute to an increase in the level of problem gambling, opened the door for organisations like Betfair to set up shop in Australia.

The decision sat awkwardly with an earlier one to ban online casinos from offering services to Australian residents. Prime Minister John Howard is not noted for his love of gambling. He clearly has a warmer regard for the Packers.

If this isn’t blatant picking of winners and worse, what isn’t? Why ban online casinos but not betting exchanges co-owned by the Packers? This isn’t the only example of favortism towards the Packers of course, as people familiar with current regulations on free to air commercial TV would realise. Kerry Packer truly is the personification of the evil stereotype of politically connected big business that gives capitalism a bad name. While the US continues to produces visionary entrepreneurs like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Marc Andressen who succeeded mostly on their merits, Australian capitalism continues to be dominated by these vulgarians who succeed through the art of political contacts.

7/27/2004

Dowd’s departure

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 7:27 pm

Should a judge retire because politicians attacked him? That is the curious reason given by former politician and retiring NSW Supreme Court judge, Justice John Dowd. According to the Sydney Morning Herald his comments on anti-terrorism legislation had led to Bob Carr calling him ‘utterly irresponsible’ and the Prime Minister accusing him of ignoring the separation of powers in ‘a very partisan way’.

One way of interpreting his decision is that he is admitting that Howard is right - that his comments did involve the judiciary in political debates that it should keep out of. My view is that judges should be more circumspect about political issues than some of them are, since their comments can raise suspicion that they would not impartially and according to law decide cases based on legislation they have criticised in the past. However, I doubt this is how Justice Dowd wants us to see his departure.
(more…)

Kristof on China

Filed under: — Kodjo @ 7:26 am

Kristof is both thoughtful & entertaining (but article requires a subscription). Two samples for your delectation:

“China is today appallingly corrupt. Some of my Chinese friends who were penniless in the 1980s have managed to skim enough state assets to become multimillionaires today; one son of a Politburo member boasted of being paid hefty sums just to have his name on projects, as a talisman against bureaucratic interference. No wonder Neil Bush gets along well with Chinese officials.”

“China’s leaders today tend to be very intelligent, colorless, cautious bureaucrats, and the average IQ in the Politburo Standing Committee in Beijing is almost certainly higher than the average IQ in the American President’s cabinet.”

Nicholas D. Kristof, A Little Leap Forward, New York Review of Books, 24 June 2004.

7/26/2004

I, Robot

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 12:47 pm

A review of I, Robot in Saturday’s SMH nearly put me off seeing the movie. The reviewer claimed that Asimov would be turning in his grave at the way the robots’ behaviour violated Asimov’s fictional Three Laws of Robotics. However despite this I went to see the movie yesterday and came away very impressed. All was explained towards the end (though I figured it out halfway through the movie). I can only conclude that the reviewer didn’t fully understand the twist given to the interpretation of the Three Laws and leveraged his misunderstanding into an anti-Hollywood rant. Without giving away too much let me say that Asimov would have approved of this latest variant on his Three Laws of Robotics stories.

More on Canberra Cabs

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 12:09 pm

I have co-authored an article with NECG Principal John Fallon in today’s Canberra Times on the Canberra Cabs proposal for a Sustainable Transport Commission that would be empowered to, among other things, decide on the number of hire-cars and taxis in Canberra. It’s available here. A snippet:

In June, the ACT Government, in response to a Standing Committee on Planning and Environment inquiry into taxi and hire-car regulations, proposed a series of reforms, including a gradual release of more taxi licences, an offer to buy back hire-car licences and make an unlimited number of hire car licences available for lease (subject to accreditation) …

However, Canberra Cabs has subsequently developed a proposal to buy all the 22 hire-car licences, provided the ACT Government agrees not to increase taxi or hire-car licence numbers as planned, unless justified by demand. The demand criteria proposed have not been clearly defined in public reports of the proposal.

As part of its alternative reform package, Canberra Cabs has also proposed the establishment of a sustainable transport commission to advise on community needs for integrated planning and various transport services, including taxis and hire cars. It appears that the proposed commission would include representatives from the taxi industry and other sectors of the community, and one of its major roles would be defining and implementing the demand criteria for issuing more taxi and hire-car licences.

The Government should … ensure that if such a commission was established that it would be truly independent of vested interests in its decision-making responsibilities and powers. In this respect it should recognise the clear conflict of interest that would arise if representatives of the taxi industry played a prominent and influential role in establishing criteria and deciding on the timing and number of new taxi and hire-car licences that should be made available. Decisions by the commission that affected entry into the taxi and hire-car industries would have implications for licence values. It is one thing for public-policy decision-makers and regulators to be open to feedback from stakeholders and another to create processes that effectively entail capture by interested parties.

7/24/2004

Things that make you go ‘Huh?’

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 1:46 am

In yesterday’s Financial Review, occupying the cosy spot right next to the editorial where many years ago one would have been entertained by the flint-dry columns of the eternally scowling Labor heretic Peter Walsh, you can find a long rant by John Hewson. Towards the end of this rant Hewson writes:

I believe that politics is about redistribution and certainly should be focused on helping the ‘have nots’. We seem to have lost all of this.
We boast about how well we’re doing in terms of growth, inflation and unemployment yet, even in our country, we are building an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor.

Huh?! What has happened to the former ‘feral abacus’? Someone please give the man a free CIS subscription before it’s too late.

7/23/2004

Don’t call the phone company

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 7:18 pm

I had my first ever encounter with voice recognition technology the other night, when I tried to ring Telstra. They’d rung me a few weeks before, offering me 50 free local calls to switch to Telstra long distance. But for some reason I had to ring them back to get the free calls, and I also wanted the annoying beeps at the start of their long distance calls turned off.

After the bad music stops, an electronic lady asks you to say, in a few words, the reason for your call. Unfortunately it is difficult to recount in a few words the story about getting free calls, or to complain about the beeps. Nothing the electronic lady suggested was right - no, I did not want long distance calls barred, and nor did I want information on Telstra plans. I already knew what the plan was; just not how to implement it.

Eventually I gave up and checked out the Telstra website. You can find there some helpful hints about dealing with the electronic lady. But the technology seems to be at best frustrating, and at worst useless, in dealing with anything but the most common and simple inquiries. I am not sure what would happen if you said ‘I want to talk to a live person’, but that’s certainly a function Telstra needs if it is not to go back to being the infuriating company it once was.

The way around the problem, incidentally, is to send them an e-mail. That way, a real person fixed my two problems within 24 hours.

Blog Comments Awards

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 1:15 pm

Commenters, feel free to nominate yourself or one of your ilk for the Blog comments award. (Link via Tim Dunlop) I’m tempted to nominate Homer Paxton for ‘most minimalist punctuation’, ‘most tangential’ comment and the ability to smuggle the phrase ‘Iron Mark’ into every comment; Dave Ricardo and Ron Mead would tie for ‘most deliberate trolling’, but aimed at different parties.

7/22/2004

Why politicians still prefer tax cuts

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 10:34 am

My CIS paper examining public opinion on taxing and spending (pdf, 29 pages) is finally out today. Part of the argument is summarised in The Australian.

One of the things the paper does is look at why politicians aren’t following polls that show more support for taxing and spending. I provide five possible, and not mutually exclusive, reasons:

1) As public support for more taxes seems linked to prosperity, it is unwise to do anything that can’t be unwound when the business cycle turns again. From the Commonwealth’s point of view, revenue losses are recouped through bracket creep etc, while spending programmes just keep on growing.

2) The public tends not to notice spending increases. The Howard government has increased spending on health and education more rapidly than the Keating government, but gets no political reward for it. People recognise tax cuts because they have more money in their pocket.
(more…)

Measuring motivation by movies

Filed under: — Kodjo @ 12:50 am

OK, this is completely not scientific, but I thought it would be interesting to compare the willingness of two constituencies to front up the cash and time to see a movie as an indicator of a similar willingness to turn up and vote. I’m thinking maybe as many as 95% of US Farenheit 9/11 viewers would vote Democrat if they vote, and conservatively at least as much as 60% of the Passion of Christ viewers would vote Republican if they vote.

In its first 27 days, FairAndHype 9/11 grossed, in the US domestic market, $95 million. In contrast, in the same time period and location, the Mashochiste grossed $297 million. For a cool website with movie grosses see BoxOfficeMojo.com

7/20/2004

Overimaginative Overland

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 8:03 pm

In the latest issue of the leftist quarterly Overland, its editor, Nathan Hollier, writes

At the recent roundtable discussion on think tanks and the media … Andrew Norton from The Centre for Independent Studies said that, as with other right-wing think tanks, the main function of the CIS now is to intervene in the cultural sphere. Intellectuals associated with these think tanks have played a crucial role in advancing a racially exclusive and culturally conservative notion of Australianness.

Huh? I think what I said was that the CIS now focuses on social policy more than economic policy, which is the obvious conclusion to draw from the CIS’s strong emphasis on welfare and education over the last few years.

The stuff about a ‘racially exclusive and culturally conservative notion of Australianness’ is pure fantasy on Hollier’s part. Indeed, this looks rather like a projection of the Left’s racial obsessions onto the ideological ‘Other’ (to use one of their favourite terms). The CIS has published very little on national identity type issues. The one reference to ‘Australianness’ that turns up on a search of the CIS website is a criticism of the concept, as used by Pauline Hanson (remember her?).

It is Hollier, not the CIS, who talks about making a racial group central to ‘Australianness’, as when he complains in this same article that

Howard has sought to position the Anzacs in the place of Aboriginal Australia as the true moral and spiritual ancestors of our nation.

A key point about the Anzacs is that though they where white, that is not why they are honoured - it is the virtues they displayed such as bravery, stoicism, and a willingness to sacrifice themselves for others. This is partly why Anzac Day celebrations tend to reflect multi-ethnic and multicultural Australia, and why it is not inconsistent to emphasise good relations with our former enemies the Turks on the anniversary of a day when their ancestors slaughtered so many young Australians. Hollier should put aside the books on identity politics next 25 April, and take a look at what really happens on Anzac Day.

7/18/2004

Political gossip

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 4:22 pm

I fear that Mark Latham’s recent pre-emptive airing of past personal problems and behaviour has set a trend. Today the media is reporting, that Tony Abbott was once accused of literally touching butt instead of metaphorically kicking it, as he does these days. Abbott himself seems to have triggered this by telling Michael Duffy, author of a forthcoming book on Abbott and Latham, about it.

The magistrate dismissed the case, and we should too. Even if Abbott was guilty, the offence was so trivial as to be a waste of court time and no guide to Abbott the poltician nearly 30 years later. I suspect the electorate won’t get any more excited about this than it has about Latham’s past. There was a poll of marginal seats in last week’s Sunday Telegraph which showed 7% of voters were less likely to vote Labor as a result… and 8% were more likely. At a guess, most of the 7% were women, and most of the 8% men. But the net result was negligible, as it should be.

7/17/2004

Does Tasmania have a depleted gene pool?

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 10:15 am

Earlier this week the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story about the apparently odd policy of allocating an extra 1,000 university places to Tasmania over the next four years, despite much more significant shortages of places in other states.

As I often have to explain to bewildered observers of Australian universities, the fact that a policy is absurd has never been considered a valid argument against it. In this case the policy is to equalise university particpation between states in the 17-25 year old population by 2008.

Devotees of Yes Minister may recall the episode involving a hospital with no patients. It’s not quite the case that the University of Tasmania has no students, but it has no existing unmet demand. As the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee unmet demand data shows, the number of Tasmanians in the top 30% of school leavers who missed out on a place in 2004 was…1. Across Bass Strait in Victoria it was 815.

It is even possible for Tasmania to fill its places? The demographic projections (published by DEST in 2002, but seemingly forgotten like everything else in the higher education review process) show that Tasmania’s teenage population is dropping rapidly. And could it be that those who remain behind are, well, let’s be as polite about this as we can, not the most likely to go to university?
(more…)

7/16/2004

Vigilantes in Afghanistan

Filed under: — Kodjo @ 5:25 pm

The Sydney Morning Herald carried a weird story on 15 July 2004 about 3 apparent vigilantes arrested in Kabul. Dressed and behaving like personel of the US armed forces these individuals are said to have kidnapped 8 Afghanis, some of which were found hanging upside down in a private jail. One of the arrested, Jonathan Idema, convinced NATO bomb disposal squads to undertake illegal raids on his behalf. Note, Idema may be a convicted felon (for prison record go to US Federal Bureau of Prisons and search for Jonathan Kieth Idema), a conman, and not a retired US Special Forces soldier as he claims. For on-going coverage, a lot more links & connections see Soj on Flogging the Simian (no warranty on my part).

Finding the negative

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 8:58 am

Conflicting headlines on the UN Human Development Report, released yesterday:

Australia third in living standards, The Age;

In human terms, advanced Australia scores poorly at UN, The Sydney Morning Herald.

7/15/2004

Short trip

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 11:06 pm

I’m off on a holiday to Uluru with the girlfriend and won’t be back till Monday evening. I don’t expect to be posting or commenting too much till then but Andrew will no doubt continue his prolific output. Otherwise keep yourselves entertained on the lively comments threads!

Close encounters of the turd kind

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 1:14 pm

Steve Edwards spots a ‘colourful identity’:

So I’m like standing at the urinal in the UWA library, I glance across to the guy next to me, and it’s Jack Van Tongeren! It was about five minutes ago and he was wearing the same hat you see him wearing in the photo.

Intellectuals and politics

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 10:33 am

It is sometimes said that intellectuals and politics don’t mix; that intellectuals are independent-minded people concerned with originality and the purity of their ideas, while politics requires conforming with the group and (at least in democracies) as often as not ends in messy compromises.

If first met my former boss, David Kemp, when he was an academic and an intellectual, and I was an undergraduate at Monash University. While I was never his student in a formal sense, I used to occasionally go up to his office, and invariably left with my head spinning with ideas and insights. Perhaps I was a bit impressionable back then, but it certainly seemed to me that he was one of the smartest people I’d come across.

But while he was an intellectual, Kemp always had strong loyalty to the Liberal Party, and when he made the decision to enter politics he resolved the tension between being an intellectual and being a politician by ending his public intellectual life. There wasn’t any floating of controversial ideas like Tony Abbott, or even anything like the out-of-portfolio musings of Peter Costello.
(more…)

7/13/2004

Lambert on Sheehan on Moore

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 5:58 pm

Tim Lambert on Paul Sheehan’s cut and paste review of Michael Moore is worth reading. And here’s a hilarious quotable quote from Lambert:

Professor Bunyip often writes about plagiarism in Australian papers … Bunyip’s verdict on Sheehan? Not guilty! And Bunyip isn’t dismissing the charge because Sheehan is a fellow RWDB, no sir. Apparently Sheehan was drummed out of the RWDB brigade because he opposed the war on Iraq and even a 3000 word rant attacking Michael Moore isn’t enough for readmission. No, to be let back in, Sheehan’s going to have to support the invasion of Iran which is apparently scheduled to occur after the election.

I know one mistake shouldn’t cost you your credibility but I have far different reasons for taking Sheehan less seriously than before, namely his being sucked in by the whole magic water hoax many years ago which I think did a great disservice to both Australian journalism and rationalism in public debate.

Empirical progress in economics

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 5:05 pm
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
~ John Maynard Keynes

Tyler Cowen lists the following eight empirical propositions that he used to think were correct but have now been cast into doubt by recent research. Hard-core libertarians take note for ignoring these and harping on as if nothing has changed casts your cause into disrepute

1. We can both control the price level and keep interest rates stable by targeting the monetary base.
2. Minimum wage boosts will generally put many low-skilled workers out of work.
3. Investment is highly elastic with respect to observed changes in real interest rates.
4. Free capital movements for developing countries should usher in macroeconomic stability.
5. Immediate privatization is more important than establishing the rule of law.
6. It is relatively easy for a disinflation to be credible, provided the government sticks to its guns
7. Fairness perceptions, envy, and a stubborn attachment to the status quo have little to do with nominal wage stickiness.
8. Human beings maximize expected utility in the same way, regardless of context.

7/12/2004

G. Washington on wartime atrocities

Filed under: — Kodjo @ 12:20 pm

Edmund S. Morgan reviewing Washington’s Crossing, by David Hackett Fischer:

Washington’s success at Trenton and Princeton… justified him in conducting the war as what it was declared to be, a defense of human rights. The enemy displayed the same contempt for those rights that the British ministery had. The “ministerial troops,” as Washington called them, were often encouraged by their… officers to take no prisoners. After the battle of Long Island an English officer observed that “the Hessians and our brave Highlanders gave no quarters, and it was a fine sight to see with what alacrity they despatched the rebels with their Bayonnets, after we had surrended them so they could not resist.” At the Battle of Princeton “wounded Americans were denied quarter and murdered by British infantry, with their officers looking on.”

Washington did not countenance this kind of warfare… [He] “often reminded his men that they were an army of liberty and freedom, and the rights for which they were fighting should extend even to their enemies.” …he gave orders to “treat [prisoners] with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army.” …After the war over three thousand Hessian soldiers elected to remain in a country where they enjoyed rights denied them at home.

Edmund S. Morgan, reviewing Washington’s Crossing, by David Hackett Fischer
Oxford University Press, 564 pp., $35.00. Morgan’s article appeared in the New York Review of Books, 27 May 2004, p. 32

The ABC and the depiction of reality

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 3:26 am

A while ago I blogged about the big fuss kicked up by the Howard government over the ABC’s decision to broadcast 20 seconds of film depicting a same-sex couple on PlaySchool. I argued that such a depiction of fundamental social realities should be no more controversial than depiction of other trends in society regardless of whether the ABC was a public broadcaster or privately owned. However to Howard and his butt-kissers, these 20 seconds were 20 seconds when the ABC supposedly involved itself in propagandisation and political controversy, supposedly a no-no.

Now we find John Howard Junior aka Tony Abbott saying that the ABC’s decision to broadcast a British documentary that shows an abortion procedure is to be commended because “It is an ugly business and it probably doesn’t hurt for the Australian people to understand just what is going on in clinics all around Australia”. Does anyone else see the hypocrisy or is it just me? Broadcasting 20 seconds of a lesbian couple equals the ABC playing an inappropriate role in trying to sway public opinion on gay rights, but broadcasting this isn’t? (Note I am not making the argument that the ABC is playing an inappropriate role in either case, merely throwing the government’s logic back at it.)

And before anyone jumps in, no, you’re not going to get any hypocrisy or inconsistency from me. The ABC is as entitled to broadcast this depiction of reality in this case as in the other. I’m pro-choice myself but not the least bit concerned about the effects of this documentary on the pro-choice cause. Frankly anyone whose pro-choice views might be affected by *knowing* what an actual abortion involves (they should have known such things before they formed an opinion) or merely seeing it it must have been an emotivist numbskull to begin with who formed his or her initial opinions on the basis of wishful thinking and insularity.

7/11/2004

New contributor

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 7:31 pm

This is a short note to announce that Catallaxy now has a new contributor, Eric Kodjo Ralph, an Australian who currently resides in the US. Eric will be writing the occasional pithy post, mostly focusing on extracting research items of interest from the US on current affairs, social trends and economics. His first blogpost is immediately below this one. He has a PhD in Economics from Duke University and his consulting practice has focused on telecommunications and infrastructure regulation, but he has a wide range of interests which he will be hopefully be exploring in his contributions.

7/10/2004

Not reading in the US

Filed under: — Kodjo @ 9:57 am

The Benton Newsletter reports: The National Endowment for the Arts will release 2002 Census Bureau data today which describes a precipitous downward trend in book consumption by Americans. The survey, called “Reading at Risk,” finds that fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry; that the consumer pool for books of all kinds has diminished; and that the pace at which the nation is losing readers, especially young readers, is quickening. In addition it finds that the downward trend holds in virtually all demographic areas. The study, with its stark depiction of how Americans now entertain, inform and educate themselves, does seem likely to fuel debate over issues like the teaching and encouragement of reading in schools, the financing of literacy programs and the prevalence in American life of television and the other electronic media that have been increasingly stealing time from readers for a couple of generations at least. It also raises questions about the role of literature in the contemporary world.
SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Bruce Weber (requires registration)

7/9/2004

Promises, promises

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 7:28 pm

Politicians routinely do badly in surveys of perceived ethics and honesty. One reason is that people think that they break promises and tell lies - in 1996, nearly 80% in one poll said that most federal politicians tell lies if they think the truth will hurt them politically.

In an interesting article in the latest Quadrant (snippet here) David Lovell notes that the public seems to want politicians to keep to higher standards than they adhere to themselves. He argues for a more nuanced view of political promise breaking, arguing that in some cases breaking promises can be a good thing (frankly, I’d rather be lied to than pay for all the ridiculous promises likely to be made between now and election day).
(more…)

ACT Taxi drivers lead the way

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 5:44 pm

A little commented on article in yesterday’s Canberra Times would put the ACT taxi industry in the running for world’s best practice in regulatory capture. I extract the article here for my fellow economic rationalists’ bemusement:

Canberra Cabs is making a $3 million offer to buy the leases of all ACT hire-car plates, subject to the Government scrapping its plan to auction up to 20 new taxi plates each year.

Based on what Urban Services Minister Bill Wood described yesterday as “this significant proposal", the Government has withdrawn its legislation which provided for an almost immediate sale of a further 10 taxi plate

Canberra Cabs chief executive Mark Bramston said yesterday it would honour all existing hire-car leases but in time, as demand increased, Canberra Cabs would be interested in obtaining more hire-car plates. Its proposal was based on the establishment of’ a sustainable transport commission which would determine the issue of new hire-car and taxi plates based on demand.

The commission would include representatives of taxis, hire cars, ACTION, disabled people and ACT Planning and Land Authority.

Let me break that down. Canberra Cabs has offered to buy the right to regulate entry into its own industry. The ACT government is seriously considering this offer.

Admin

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 5:31 pm

I’ve been remiss in not having contact details on this blog until now. Email contact details of blog contributors have been added on the left just above the blogroll. The hitherto ’silent’ Catallaxy contributors who want me to add any details for them, please email me. And no, I have no idea what’s happened to Mr Strocchi.

Bull runs

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 2:17 am

I try to be a good liberal internationalist but my extended sympathy has its limits. Like when I read this news about an Australian woman and a Frenchman joining the list of people injured over the years in the ‘historic’ Pamplona bull runs. Quite aside from the great risk that one assumes for oneself in participating in this event, there is the problem of supporting and perpetuating a needlessly cruel and barbaric ‘tradition’ which puts the animals in great psychological and even physical distress (the article I link to notes that “runners and bulls alike slipped on a few turns, with five animals getting involved a pile-up at one point in the 825-metre two-minute race") - all for the sake of a sado-masochistic adolescent thrill that if celebrated by actual adolescents as opposed to grown men and women would involve a knock on the door of said adolescents’ parents by officers from the Department of Community Services.

I have never understood what is so romantic and glamorous and brave about this practice which ultimately culminates in the slow torture of the animal in a bullfight ring (and my extended sphere of sympathy simply doesn’t extend to matadors, period) anymore than I understand the self-indulgent cruelties of hunting for the ‘fun’ of it - one really has to wonder at the demand for sadistic gratifications involved to put in that much effort for the ultimate grisly returns. The celebration of such macho bufoonery by Hemingway is one reason I have little tolerance for his writing. My sympathies are with the animal rights protestors - here’s to hoping they disrupt this event as much as possible this year and the next, and the next, until people start seeing some sense.

7/8/2004

Quote of the day

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 10:32 pm
As man advances in civilization and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.
~ Charles Darwin, The descent of man

A nice quote which clears up the confusion between the ‘is’ and ‘ought’ (or even ‘is’ and ‘is forever’) that frequently turns up in discussions of Darwinism. There are scoundrels and ignoramuses on both the Left and Right, enemies of Darwinism (even when they call themselves Social Darwinists), who wish to continue to perpetuate this confusion either to discredit scientific inquiry (in the hopes of postponing the inevitable eradication of their obfuscatory theologies) or to advance reactionary agendas.

Survival of the fittest

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 9:24 pm

Good Lord, I had no idea that pioneer of evolutionary biology Ernst Mayr was still alive, much less that he recently celebrated his 100th birthday.

7/7/2004

Degree dollars

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 6:28 pm

According to The Australian this morning ‘the gap in earnings between university graduates and those without a degree is closing’, and this challenges the ‘long-held notion that students should pay more for their education because they reap the financial rewards over a lifetime.’

The graph reproduced in The Australian’s print version is misleading - so far as I can work out this compares first-year graduate earnings with average weekly earnings and finds that they have declined. But if AWE is inflated by an increasing number of high-earning graduates, as it is, then this doesn’t tell us anything about whether the earnings gap is closing, as it compares recent graduates with a group that is also increasingly made up of graduates.

A better guide to this issue is a graph published in the latest issue of Australian Social Trends. This shows that while there is a considerable gap between graduates and non-graduates, the average graduate earns about 50% more in 2001, compared to 100% more in 1976.
(more…)

7/6/2004

Crazy quotas

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 7:05 pm

For the last four years I’ve run a lonely campaign against allocating places to universities by quota - with some rare publicity in the SMH this morning. Regrettably, in that time things have gone backwards, with the Nelson reforms imposing an even more rigid quota system than the one we have today.

One particularly silly imposition - silly because not needed to maintain the system’s integrity - is the 5% cap on so-called over-enrolments. If universities exceed their student allocation by more than 5% they will have to pay the Commonwealth the average student contribution amount for each one.

The stated reason is that over-enrolments reduce quality. That’s an intuitively plausible hypothesis, since their low funding rate (about $2,700 each) isn’t likely to cover their costs, and so staff and facilities will be stretched. Yet the government has provided no evidence of real problems. In fact record-overenrolments have coincided with increased student satisfaction.

Under the new system, there is much more capacity to enroll additional students. This is because while universities will get nothing from the government, they will get the student contributions, which in virtually all cases will be much higher than the $2,700 per student universities get now. On top of this, HECS increases will mean more income from within-quota students as well. So average income per student, what counts in measuring resources, will be much higher than now. Just when it is safe to over-enrol, the Commonwealth comes and stomps on it. Central planners hate any deviation from authorised activities.
(more…)

Great news

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 2:03 pm

Don Arthur is back!!

7/5/2004

Confucian left, right and centre

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 11:24 am

‘Communist’ China helps out monarchist Nepal:

Nepal has asked the neighbouring communist republic founded by Mao Zedong for help in putting down a rebellion by leftists who call themselves Maoists.

The chief of the Royal Nepal Army, General Pyar Jung Thapa, said China had agreed to provide military help in subduing the Maoists, whose guerilla campaign has seriously threatened the hold of King Gyanendra’s government on much of the Nepalese countryside …

China has disowned the Maoists in Nepal. “We have no connection with them; our party has no relationship with them,” said one official. “They must derive their doctrine from reading old manuals of guerilla war written by Mao.

Such old-fashioned leftism is uncomfortable for the present Chinese communist leadership, which promotes all-out economic growth and private capital with little enforcement of minimum wages, and declining social security.

Many of its domestic critics are known as the “New Left” for attacking this imbalance.

Why do right-wingers hate Michael Moore?

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 12:56 am

I have yet to see Fahrenheit 9/11 but just going on the basis of the various reviews I have read of it so far Tim Dunlop’s seems to be one of the few reviews that have attempted to be as objective as possible.

My take on Michael Moore - I’ve seen and enjoyed Bowling for Columbine, so much so that I’ve seen it twice. Technically in the way it was structured, interspersing interviews with a quite funny cartoon and pranks/stunts, I thought it was quite well done. .Surprisingly in that movie Moore doesn’t even push the line that gun control is the be all and end all and thinks that ‘national culture’ is a factor- nonetheless conservatives still hate him for that movie. I can’t quite understand why. Given my experience with Bowling for Columbine, I am quite looking forward to Fahrenheit 9/11. I do not expect any new insights but I do expect a thought-provoking and polemical delivery of some verifiable facts from the public domain presented with a certain agenda which I am well aware of and confident I can take proper account of in making up my own mind.

I cannot agree with Andrew’s comments on the movie, especially since he hasn’t seen it himself. Documentary makers should attempt to get most of their facts right but they have no obligation to be neutral. Winning an award for a documentary may mean winning an award for its being well-researched, for its being emotionally or intellectually powerful, for its being well structured or technically polished. Thus no one is in a position to say that Moore’s Cannes award stinks simply because he isn’t scrupulously fair or doesn’t present any original research.

7/4/2004

In partial defence of pedantry

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 10:17 pm

Last week, in response to a post and subsequent comments about the possessive apostrophe, Don Arthur remarked:

I’m fascinated by self-appointed language legislators. Many of them seem like those mad car drivers who career from lane to lane offering a running commentary on how bad everyone else’s driving is.

I just can’t believe that what motivates the typical language legislator is a serious problem understanding what other people are saying. Instead I suspect it’s a desire to show that they are superior to lesser mortals whose apostrophes appear in awkward places, who raise their pinkies when drinking tea, whose lawns are not regularly mowed (Oh look! It must be a RENTED house) or who say ‘haich’ like Catholics.

Lynne Truss is frequently being accused of being one of those ‘mad car drivers’. Here is Louis Menand - who can legislate my language anyday - taking her apart in The New Yorker. It’s true that the ‘language legislators’ pursue many lost causes that are not worth winning - split infinitives, Latin plural endings, ‘whom’, etc (there is an excellent chapter on misplaced pedantry, ‘The Language Mavens’ in Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct.)

But while Don has a point I don’t think he has an argument. Much pedantry is not about commas and non-restrictive clauses - on which Menand picks up Truss - but about things that do affect meaning and understanding. As Menand says about punctuation:
(more…)

7/3/2004

Phone pests

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 10:20 pm

Lindsay Tanner is doing everything right to win my second preference (and when, as I do, you plan to vote Liberal in the seat of Melbourne that’s likely to be nearly as good as a first preference). First there was his advocacy of markets, now there is his plan to crack down on telemarketers, letting phone owners put themselves on a ‘do not call’ list.

I think this scheme, which has won the conditional support of the Australian Direct Marketing Association, benefits everyone - those who are never going to buy anything anyway don’t get pestered while eating dinner or at some crucial point in whatever TV show they are watching, and the industry doesn’t waste a phone call. Now if only it could be extended to Greenpeace, UNICEF, Amnesty and all the other pests I have to dodge in Lygon St during lunchtime (a negative externality of all the affluent leftists living in the area is that the NGOs think street fundraising is worthwhile).

Oddly enough, telemarketing inspired one of the few poems published by Quadrant in recent years that was worth printing for a reason other than collecting the Australia Council grant, Jamie Grant’s Phone Message:
(more…)

7/2/2004

Bill of Rights debate

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 5:33 pm

Janet Albrechtsen doesn’t like a Bill of Rights. She thinks it will lead to ‘rule by judges’ and that it is anti-democratic. Let’s be honest - both the Left and the Right like to appeal to ‘democratic values’ when it’s convenient for them to do so. But are her objections valid in this case? She points to experiences from Canada and New Zealand but has only a brief reference to the US. A surprising omission? Not really. US democracy and public debate, aside from the hanging chads episode is as vigorous as they come, perhaps even more so than Australia’s. I really don’t see any great inconsistency between having a vigorous democracy and a Bill of Rights, in part because words and definitions are always more ambiguous than they seem. In any case. having a debate about what should be in a Bill of Rights seem to me to be a good thing in itself. So the mere process of thinking about this proposal should be encouraged.

Taking Public Choice metaphors seriously

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 1:59 pm

As a postscript to my previous comments on the inadequacy of public choice I thought it was worth mentioning some papers by Gary Becker [1].Crew and Twight [2] summarise the papers as follows:

Becker acknowledges that inefficient laws exist. Indeed his model accomodates government programs that either raise or lower efficiency. However, when Becker describes surviving laws as ‘inefficient’ he often means that they are inefficient in the sense of deviating from ideal efficiency in resource allocation and hence generating deadweight costs. That is, in Becker’s model surviving laws are acknowledged to be inefficient chiefly in relation to an ideal allocative efficiency ("nirvana") rationally disregarded under a comparative institutions approach.

In stark contrast to his acknowledgement of this kind of inefficiency, Becker in his systemic analysis argues that, given existing transaction cost constraints, competition among pressure groups exerts a powerful impetus towards implementation of the most efficient attainable redistributive scheme … True to the spirit of the comparative institutions approach (i.e. compating actually existing institutions for governance)Becker defends the view that while the existing activities of government may not be efficient in an ideal ‘nirvana’ sense, they may approximate the most efficient attainable outcome given extant constraints.

How does one reconcile this Panglossian slant of Becker’s with his other efforts to promote reforms that attempt to increase the ‘gains from trade’ whether in the political or economic marketplace?
(more…)

The NSW Liberals are truly wet

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 2:47 am

In lots of other contexts, environmentalists and lefties would deserve the appelation of ‘fairies at the bottom of the garden’, that wonderful phrase popularised by the economically dry ex-Labor Finance Minister Peter Walsh. However, in response to Sydney’s water shortage problems the greenie Labor Premier Bob Carr has shown a willingness to contemplate tough-minded solutions like a move to more usage-based water pricing, with steep rises in price for consumption at substantially above-average levels. Distributional concerns (i.e. possible impacts on the poorest families) can and should be addressed by the welfare system rather than maintaining implicit subsidies on water usage. An obvious idea for proponents of the price system, one would think, but not to the extremely wet, economically to the Left of Bob Carr NSW Liberal leader John Brogden:

Large families would be unfairly punished under usage-based water pricing in Sydney, the NSW Opposition warned yesterday, and mandatory retro-fitting of water-saving devices would anger residents.

The Opposition Leader, John Brogden, has called for a 50-year plan for Sydney and said a new dam, ruled out by the Government, should be considered.

He may well have a debating point on the necessity of retro-fitting but how does Wet Johnny Brogden propose managing water demand instead?

Gay neo-Nazis?

Filed under: — Jason Soon @ 2:10 am

Johann Hari has written what is likely to be a very controversial piece on the alleged historical links between homosexuals and fascist movements which will, if nothing else, piss off both groups. He makes a number of interesting claims and documents some interesting facts and observations. Among them:
(more…)

7/1/2004

The complexities of the class war

Filed under: — Andrew Norton @ 6:03 pm

Jenny Macklin is well-known for opposing the Howard government’s private school subsidies. After all, why should the offspring of people who can afford Kings School’s fees get public dollars while so many government schools are falling apart, both figuratively and literally?

However, when these students leave Kings (or Scotch, Brisbane Grammar etc) and head to university Ms Macklin’s tune changes. Instead of being outraged at subsidies for the rich, she suddenly insists that they take the government’s money. She promises, if elected, to pass new laws forcing universities not to enrol any full-fee paying students. Virtually every student in a full-fee place could easily have taken a HECS place, just not in one of the courses with ridiculously high cut-off marks like law, medicine, dentistry or veterinary science. Under Labor’s laws, most of them will probably take their second-preference HECS course instead - displacing somebody else who could have enrolled under the full-fee undergraduate policy.

I realise that Labor is trying to diminish the educational advantage of the upper middle class. But it is rather confusing when this means giving 17 year olds less money and 18 year olds more.

Powered by WordPress