Politics (general)
« Previous EntriesThe flame of nationalism
Thursday, April 24th, 2008As the Olympic torch touches down in Australia, it is hard to see how any good can come of the entire exercise.
After Kevin Rudd’s visit to Beijing, which seemed to herald a newly mature relationship between Australia and China, we’ve spent a week or more embroiled in a petty squabble, of a kind which is [...]
Dead heats and democracy
Thursday, March 13th, 2008I can’t resist a racing metaphor to describe the problem that’s now facing the US Democrats, but one that is a more-or-less generic problem for democracy. In any system of government, there is a problem of succession, which has a large contingent element. In monarchies, for example, the absence of an adult male heir can [...]
This one’s for you, Al
Monday, February 25th, 2008For quite some time now, regular commenter Al Loomis has been decrying representative democracy as no democracy at all, and extolling the Progressive alternative based on citizen’s initiative, referendum and recall. I don’t have a strong opinion on any of these, except that none would make enough of a difference for me to fight hard [...]
What have the Romans ever done for us?*
Friday, February 22nd, 2008Most long-lived dictatorships have at least some positive achievements, and, the world being what it is, most dictators have some unattractive enemies. These facts have generated a couple of marathon threads at Crooked Timber, following Chris Bertrams post’ on Castro and mine on Suharto** , not to mention vast numbers on Saddam.
What are the [...]
Sorry
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008I watched the opening of Parliament this morning, and the speeches by Rudd and Nelson. Like lots of others I was moved by the occasion, and hopeful that we as a nation can finally make good on the spirit of reconciliation. Rudd’s speech was the best I’ve seen from him, and the promise of co-operation [...]
How big a disaster ?
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008The publication of new survey estimates suggesting that there were 150 000 violent deaths in Iraq in the first three years after the invasion, and as many as 400 000 excess deaths (relative to the death rate immediately before the war) has provoked a predictable flurry of blog activity. The main concern has not been [...]
Ergas v Quiggin on risk and social democracy
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008A while ago, I wrote a piece for the Centre for Policy Development (PDF) , making the case that risk and its management, in various forms, would be the central policy issue of the 21st century. The central idea of the piece was to show how an improved understanding of risk could contribute to [...]
Weekend reflections (Iowa edition)
Saturday, January 5th, 2008It’s time again for weekend reflections. With the 2008 US Presidential campaign now officially underway, I’d be interested in hopes, fears and predictions after Iowa. My massively premature call on the result: a relatively narrow win for an Obama-Clinton ticket over McCain-Lieberman for the Republicans. Feel free to fill in, and dispute, the underlying analysis.
Happy New Year
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008A bit belatedly, Happy New Year to everyone. Some optimistic wishes for 2008
* The end of the Bush era will prove to be the end of political power for the Republican party in its current (religious right/militarist/pro-rich class warfare) form, and will be followed by a return to reality-based politics
* The crisis in Pakistan [...]
Disciplines and deterrence
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007The NY Times has an interesting piece on statistical studies of the deterrent effect (if any) of the death penalty. For those who want to get straight into fact-free debate, the bottom line is that the evidence is too weak to allow a firm conclusion one way or the other. What’s interesting to me, though [...]
Last chance to enrol
Monday, October 15th, 2007After setting everything up to close the rolls the moment an election is called, the government has waited until Wednesday to dissolve Parliament (I suspect because they can run tax-funded ads until then), which means that it’s not too late for anyone who hasn’t enrolled.
Details here
For readers of this blog, a more likely problem is [...]
In case you missed it
Sunday, August 26th, 2007An affiliate of the neocon thinktank the Center for Security Policy (members i has published (then attempted to expunge) a piece calling for Bush to use his military powers to “the first permanent president of America” and “ruler of the world”. The full piece is preserved here at Watching the Watchers.
G8 and APEC
Friday, June 8th, 2007The deal on climate change announced at the G8 conference is, in large measure, a face-saving compromise rather than a substantive agreement.
Elsevier buckles
Thursday, June 7th, 2007Over at the RSMG blog, Nanni points out that Reed Elsevier will no longer host arms fairs.
In praise of libertarianism
Saturday, March 17th, 2007Both draw heavily on the 19th century liberalism of John Stuart Mill, who managed to write effectively in support of both classical free-market economics and, later in life, a rather abstract form of socialism.It’s not surprising then, that I broadly agree with libertarians on the classic civil liberties issues - freedom of speech, freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, opposition to government intervention in private decisions such as sexual activity and drug use and so on. The attacks on civil liberties since the Iraq war have made many of these issues more vitally relevant and led me and others to stress our areas of agreement with libertarian defenders of freedom such as blogger Jim Henley…. Particularly in relation to the environment (my main area of research) I’m a strong, though not uncritical, supporter of market-based instruments such as cost-based pricing and emissions trading schemes.I got a specific request from Terje Petersen to write about the Australian Banknotes Act of 1910, of which I have to admit I’d never heard.
What can’t be cured must be endured
Saturday, March 3rd, 2007Responding to Peter Beinart’s apology for supporting the war (unimpressive by comparison with the Bjorn Staerk piece I linked recently, but at least expressing some willingness to look at the reasons he got it so wrong) Hilzoy makes an important pointI admire Peter Beinart’s willingness to think about what he got wrong, and why. But while I think that he’s right to say that we can’t be the country the Iraqis and South Africans wanted us to be — a country wise enough to liberate other countries by force — there’s another mistake lurking in the train of thought he describes.
Warning the Czar (cross-posted from Crooked Timber)
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007A few years ago, then Opposition leader Mark Latham described Bush as ‘incompetent and dangerous’, but this accurate observation did not seem to have much effect in the 2004 US election campaign and probably contributed to Latham’s defeat in the Australian election the same year.Latham was well known as a loose cannon, and this kind of remark was in character, but Howard has generally been seen as the embodiment of cautious solidity…. Howard is scrambling to find a credible response that does not involve signing Kyoto, but hasn’t been able to find one.Finally, after a string of leaders who were unelectable for one reason or another, Labor has finally picked a winner - former diplomat Kevin Rudd, who comes across as a safe pair of hands, having enough new ideas to be interesting, but not the kind of visionary who scares Australian voters.
Connecting the dots
Saturday, January 20th, 2007Jonathan Chait connects the dots between dishonesnt conservative (fn1) arguments about income inequality (coming in this case from Alan Reynolds) to similar arguments made about evolution and global warming. As he says, to construct an alternate reality in which income inequality is not increasing, global warming is not happening and the world is near the end of its 6000 years anyway, there’s no need to prove a case - just cast enough doubt on the facts and ideology or faith will do the rest.
Pro-war bias (crossposted at CT)
Thursday, January 11th, 2007The fact that people are willing to support war is a puzzle that requires an explanation.
Friedman and Hayek
Thursday, November 23rd, 2006Social conservative Hayek can see Pinochet as a good thing: far better to have an authoritarian state that maintains the conservative moral order, if it can be persuaded to adopt laissez-faire economics, than it is to have a democracy that regulates the economy. Friedman, by contrast, hates and fears a government that prohibits use of recreational drugs in your home almost as much as he hates and fears a government that won’t let you undersell your politically-powerful competitors.
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