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Andrew Bolt has a post up this afternoon reporting that some well informed people have dropped a bomb on the $42B National Broadband punt by the ALP.
Could you ever call it a plan? Not long ago Andrew was speculating that the industry would keep quite and just feather their nests out of scheme , a la the School Hall Miracle and the Pink Bats Feeding Frenzy.
Great debate on ABC Counterpoint, run by the token non-lefties on the roster, Michael Duffy and Paul Comrie-Thomson, Does Being Green mean Going Nuclear? Featuring Ian Lowe in the red NO corner, and in the blue YES corner, Barry Brooke, who is also a green but in favour of nuclear power.
A key feature of the debate is the revelation that modern nuclear power does not have to involve materials that can be made into bombs without using a plant equivalent to the Manhattan Project. The Plutonium produced from reprocessing nuclear fuel is not weapons grade.
Is there a convenient reference work on the history of the nuclear mining and power debate in Australia?
The Critical Rationalist Scholar award is handed out on the basis of the criteria used for the Rhodes Scholar.
The award is usually given to encourage young scholars but a break from protocol was allowed in the case of Popper. The first CR Scholar was (or is) an Australian, Dr Struan Jacobs at Deakin University.
The awards to date.
BTW I have an idea that the original Rhodes bequest specified as the second criterion “participation and proficiency in manly outdoor games”.
So what are we complaining about?
If they can we are in deep trouble.
Up to date the Greens have been able to travel under the radar of serious examination of the consequenes of their policies. Now they are anticipated to hold a clear-cut balance of power in the new Senate, the question is, what sort of legislation can get through unless it has bipartisan support from Lab and Lib.
Assume for the moment that the ALP get the first crack at government, then consider the kind of provisions that the Greens will demand to pass legislation in the Senate. Wait until Joe and Jane Citizen find out the costs and other downsides of Green thinking. It is well documented that a lot of people are prepared to talk green but keep their hands firmly in their pockets (or out of them) when it comes to parting with their hard-earned.
The Greens appear to attract two very different kinds of people, some of the hard core activists appear to be people who would have been communists in a previous generation and most of their followers are probably young people who think that Green is Good without having enough economic savvy or experience to know that they are doing. Their capacity to learn and re-think their position will be the key to whether the Greens have reached the high point of their popularity, whether they can gain more support, or whether they sink.
Currently reading Simon Benson’s book Betrayal which describes the sacrifice of NSW Premier Iemma on the altar of the prejudices and personal ambitions of a handful of trade union powerbrokers. Rudd also emerged with blood on his hands when he reneged on an agreement to support the sensible and appropriate policy in NSW when the time came, in return for Iemma holding back the privatisation until after the Federal election.
This extract describes the meeting where Rudd persuaded Iemma to hold back on the eve of announcing firm plans to proceed, at a time when the plan would have gone ahead before the trade union resistance firmed up to the point where it could be blocked at the State Labor Conference in the following year. The delay cost the state of NSW many billions of dollars and it spelled the end of Iemma’s premiership.
Some interviews with the author and also Costa.
Next time you are amused or exasperated by the anti-smoking rules and regulations, spare a thought for the original anti-smoking Nazis.
BTW I am in favour of encouraging people to give up smoking.
Last year the History of Economic Thought Society of Australia (HETSA) held a conference with a main theme on Austrian economics. The other main theme was the history of economics in Western Australia, presumably because the conference was at the Notre Dame University, Fremantle campus. Actually I didn’t even know we had a Notre Dame University.
The abstracts are on line and the papers can be downloaded.
Jeremy Shearmur talked about The Road to Serfdom, both to explain the context of the writing and what it really meant – was it a warning or did Hayek really think we are destined to go all the way down the road. It is almost certainly a warning to mend our ways, and not a prediction. To the extent that we have mended our ways, serfdom is still a distant prospect.
Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is often (and understandably) seen as a piece of popular war work, or (and I believe mistakenly) seen as written against a ‘Keynesian’ welfare state. In this paper, I will sketch what I will argue to be a more adequate picture of its contexts, and will say a little about its character in the light of these. The three themes that I will highlight are: (a) Hayek’s concerns about ‘planning’; (b) a wider intellectual enterprise, the significance of which has been stressed by Bruce Caldwell in recent work. Parts of this were published as his ‘Scientism and the Study of Society’, ‘The Counter-Revolution of Science’ and ‘Individualism True and False’ – while The Road to Serfdom was a popular account of what was intended to be a final part of this project; (c) Hayek’s reflections on the character of the Nazi regime in Germany (e.g. as formulated by way of a memo and book reviews concerning Germany in the Nazi period, but prior to the Second World War.)
Steve Kates has a paper on the subversion of Say’s Law by Keynes and others.
Japanese students are prominent on the list, possibly reflecting the work being done on the contents of Menger’s library, the economics section of which ended up in Japan.
I am informed by an email that fell off the back of a truck that Grace Collier, an IR consultant, has a piece in the Fin Review today with the (apparently leaked) details of Mr Rudd’s Unfair Dismissal Application against the THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR CORPORATION PTY LTD.
The application notes inter alia the fair processes that did not occur prior to his dismissal.
My employer failed to advise me of concerns with my performance. I had no opportunity to respond, and no options other than dismissal were explored.
Training was not offered to improve my performance; nor was anger management classes, leadership coaching or mentoring by experienced co-workers.
No warnings were given. Well, there might have been a half hearted verbal one on the night of the dismissal that sort of came with a performance improvement plan with an agreed timeframe for review in several months.
My employer is not being called to question at all; in fact she is able to remain smugly tight-lipped. She can continue like this unchallenged, despite the fact that it resulted in the removal of me, the company’s shareholder-elected CEO, without consultation with shareholders.
Please also consider my service to this country when weighing my application; 12 years of dedicated loyalty and years of a 24-hour, seven-day-week role, with no overtime or penalty rates ever paid. My family relocated so I could take my position. My wife restructured her company to reduce conflict of interest. Commissioner, I gave it my all.
I guided the organisation and its shareholders through its greatest economic challenge in 80 years. And this is the thanks I get?
You are duty bound to reinstate me into my position as Prime Minister. I am ready to report for duty as soon as your decision is handed down.
This comes from Amitai Etzioni, a professor of international relations at the George Washington University and the author of Security First (Yale Press, 2007 ). Whole text reproduced below for people who are too busy to follow links.
The point is to find a middle way between the not-negotiable demands of extremists on both sides. The suggestion is a kind of joint administration of the occupied territories. He wants a different way of thinking, one in which Israel’s legitimate security needs are fully attended to, but also one that treats the Palestinians as a partner in a new Israeli-Palestinian Cooperative Security Alliance.
Between 1945 and 1955, the U.S., U.K. and France patrolled the center of Vienna jointly with the USSR, which was already emerging as a Cold War adversary. Although the arrangement was not without friction, overall it worked quite well. Small units, composed of military police from the four powers, jointly patrolled the streets and ensured public safety. There were no reports of any violent conflicts among the forces, although disagreements about how to deal with infractions (for instance, of curfews ) did arise, and their resolution had to be negotiated. Call it the “Vienna treatment.”
As I see it, the legitimate security needs specified in the Ya’alon document could be met if they were to be framed as a joint Israeli-Palestinian security arrangement. Thus, the report calls for fighting terrorists. The PA is building a respectable track record in this regard, and its forces should be treated as a security partner rather than as a troublesome appendage. And, as the Vienna experience suggests, joint border controls and patrols are another option, and these could be extended to the airspace. The demand to stop incitement in the educational system and media, too, could be reframed – to great benefit – to apply to both states.
Full text.
In the last week alone, the prospects for direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have improved. The Associated Press reported that the White House is pressuring Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to agree to such talks with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The premiers of the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy all also called on Abbas to drop his preconditions for direct negotiations. The pressure may have been connected to yesterday’s meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo. The Israeli government, too, recently reaffirmed its position that the negotiations should be direct. Indeed Netanyahu was reported to have traveled to Jordan to urge King Abdullah to pressure Abbas to agree to just that.
The churches are right to lament the destitution of the masses in the economically backward countries. But they are badly mistaken when they assume that anything can wipe out the poverty of these wretched people but unconditional adoption of the system of profit-seeking big business, that is, mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of the many.
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