40 thoughts on “Monday message board”

  1. It seemed like a good idea at the time to place fatality/injury markers on our roads to alert us to the road toll. However within a short few years, this has degenerated into a competition for conspicuous mourning on our roadsides. See how much you can prove a loved one was loved, by decorating the Stobie pole(in South Oz) or tree, the pissed, drugged speedster careered into. What starts off as flowers and wreaths at the base of said objects of woe, are now turning into preschooler decorated, creative masterpieces, signed all over by conspicuous mourners. Also what started off as the odd wooden cross nailed to a tree or fencepost is fast turning into stone and marble monuments for more of the unwary to run into. What’s with this irrational fetish for where people died? I think our ancestors had it right. Graveyards are for monuments to the stupid, unlucky and inevitable, lest we create a world of things to trip over and run into. As for the stupidity of knocking down perfectly good buildings, because some nutter like Martin Bryant decided to shoot some innocents there, what can I say? It’s about as intelligent as listening to the whines of some Chinese house buyers, who wanted their money back because someone was bumped off in their house. Bad Feng Shui apparently, but not so bad that they noticed it at inspection time. Still, if you change your mind about a legally binding purchase to buy, you can always bleat to the sensitivities of our courts, that you suddenly sensed the aboriginal massacre that took place on what was clearly a sacred site. How could they not believe your sincerity?

  2. West Papua has been in the news recently, with 42 of the 43 refugees being given TPV’s.
    What has happened to No.43. Is it true he was not West Papuan, but rather an ‘agent’ of a nation with ‘interest’.

  6. With IR laws coming into effect, dealing with refugees who awkwardly appear to fully comply with what it takes to be refugees without tossing any kids anywhere, our PM still found time to get an “anyone can be bugged” law through as well as pave the way for uranium sales to two nations with active nuclear arms programs. Each and every issue deserved public debate and scrutiny but all this happened with barely a murmer – what a worker! Yellowcake John should be renegotiating his AWA. Unlike 90+% of us he might conceivably come out of the negotiations with more pay and better conditions instead of less and worse, like most of us are facing.
    Seems to me we desperately need an effective opposition to at least see these issues get serious attention instead of just being told after the fact. I don’t recall an ‘anyone can be bugged’ law being an election pledge, core or non-core nor sale of uranium to nations that don’t abide by non-proliferation agreements.

  7. Where can I see the Indonesian dingo cartoon and the retort by the Australian? I have read all the letters condeming/praising the two creative pieces of art but I would like to make up my own mind.

  12. John, one slow day, I would, I feel sure, enjoy your views on the Ludwig von Mises Cult, and its strangely disproportionately large (cw academic and business economists) presence in the blogosphere.

  14. Fascists would be pleased to see someone called to account for making racist generalisations? You must know different fascists from the ones I know.

  15. Fascists would love a martyr, don’t you worry about that. The real losers are anyone who believes in limited constitutional government… and of course the inconsistent fools who opposed the Coalition’s anti-sedition laws (which were to ban the incitement of violence), yet support anti-vilification legislation.

  16. Racists of all brands love a martyr and to be martyrs. Fraser more than most, I daresay.

  17. And the real losers will be the Sudanese people of Western Sydney – a delightful, friendly, dignified bunch of people, recovering from unimaginable trauma. Whether this poisonous little creep is left alone to revel in his civil liberties, or is prosecuted in a blaze of publicity, they cop it one way or another.

  18. “unimaginable trauma”

    Pah! I’ve never seen such contrived “outrage” and “hurt” in my entire life. Their lawyers must have coached them well.

    Of course, if they really are genuinely offended, then perhaps we ought to think twice about extending our welcome to people who are so accustomed to living in a controlled police state that they can’t cop criticism from a completely obscure academic in a single letter to a regional newspaper.

    And don’t give me any nonsense about the “vulnerable” position of “marginalised” Sudanese newcomers to our society – we have absolutely no moral obligations to them whatsoever, and it is entirely up to them to adjust to our society.

    Now where was I? Oh yes! What about those anti-sedition laws eh?

  19. Just curious whether any one had any views on the dissappearance of the interest differential between Australia and a mark currency such as the $US. With current Fed rates in the US at about 4.9% and ours not much higher, how long can this monetary summer continue? With household debt at historic highs and the monthly trade figures continuing their untrammeled negative path and our net overseas debt continuing to rise towards 10% of GDP, is this a new paradigm or a mango republic?

  20. John, one slow day, I would, I feel sure, enjoy your views on the Ludwig von Mises Cult, and its strangely disproportionately large (cw academic and business economists) presence in the blogosphere.

    Information on Mises is here:-

    http://www.mises.org/

    I like the work of Mises although I have not read as much as I should. However I do find the prohibitionist views of his apprentice “Murray N. Rothbard” towards fractional reserve banking to be very strange and I don’t agree with them at all. In so far as there is a “mises cult” this view on fractional reserver banking seems widespread with in it. I have not seen anything in the writing of Mises himself to support this position but then again I am sure Jesus would not have been in favour of the Spanish Inquisition and yet the Jesus cult still got quite obsessed with the whole thing.

    The supply-siders that I rub shoulders with on the Internet appear to have a lot in common with the Austrian economists (ie followers of Mises). The key distiction that I can discern is on the primary fuction of money. The supply-siders place far more emphasis on the role of money as a “unit of account” where as the Mises brigade seem to put more emphasis on its role as a “medium of exchange” and on quantity theories.

    A good place to encounter lots of supply-siders and a few followers of Mises and learn about their views and beliefs first hand is at the following forum (you need to get a login account):-

    http://www.polyconomics.com:82/~talkshop

  21. Changing topics…

    The Howard Government has done a lot of things that I am deeply unhappy with (oh yeah I’m a hater), but one of his more innocuous legislative items is something that is really really quite disgustingly immoral, indefensible and should be scandalous, except for the fact that in the eyes of the totally apathetic general public, it’s a little bit complicated and abstract.

    I’m talking about the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill, as discussed in this article. This is an anti-democratic naked grab for more power. If Howard actually gave a shit about democracy, rather than about being in power and abusing his upper house majority, he would never consider this amendment.

  22. Week by Week is obviously an extremely rich person, and thus can afford to be indifferent to rising poverty, inequality, environmental degradation and the decline of democratic institutions. The rest of us, however, might be interested.

  23. Tks Terje. I know Mises. I am just bemused by the unusual level of his following on the net, cw his following anywhere else. I am guessing he is a crank-magnet.

  24. CS,

    Is it your view that the online following of Mises is mostly by a bunch of cranks?

    I have certainly met a lot of cranks online and some Mises followers that I have met were cranks. However I have not observed a higher degree of cranks amoungst the followers of Mises compared to the online population in general.

    I suspect that the reason there is little following of Mises outside the internet world is because he is a dead economist and the material involved is not easily discussed over dinner. Niche topics in general get more air time in the online world.

    Regards,
    Terje.

  25. Chris

    I too would be interested in John’s thoughts eventyually, but in the meantime I’ll have a go.

    The sociology of Austrian economics is pretty much the mirror image of the Marxian economics of the 1970s.

    The central conceit in both cases is that mainstream theories are hopelessly compromised, and that the superior ideas of the school in question are systematically sidelined due to a combination of cynical vested interest and false consciousness.

    Menger and Bohm-Bawerk were two of the dozen or so brilliant analytical thinkers who worked out neo-classical theory. The best of their ideas have long been subsumed into mainstream theories of value, business cycles and technical change.

    The continued existence of an Austrian school is mostly owing to Hayek and Mises, who made a career out of denouncing the welfare state and interventionist macroeconomics. People who are attracted to this as an ideology constitute the bulk of the ‘Austrians’ who haunt the internet. Of course the ideology is not that different from the Chicago School. The difference is that while the latter use mainstream concepts and vocabulary, permitting a fruitful dialogue with their liberal opponents, the twentieth century Austrians chose to expand the concepts and vocabulary of their founding fathers into their own idiosyncratic system, and like Marxist theoreticians, have tended to dialogue only amongst themselves.

    Thus there are distinct elements of a cult – namely a prominent role for groupthink in reinforcing prejudices, and a tendency to demonise the opponent and pooh-pooh his arguments rather than engage with them. There is also a tendency to prosecute heresy that makes the Mises blog in particular quite amusing to read – if someone admits to admiring with Friedman, or getting some value out of a mainstream textbook, there will be frantic efforts to steer him back onto the right path.

    There are a couple of quite esoteric issues about the meaning of cost and the usefulness of equilibrium, over which it possible to carve out a distinctive Austrian position, and a handful of academic economists have chosen to do so. But I doubt that many of the self-described Austrians who congregate on the web could articulate these issues, any more than your average ‘post-Keynesian’ of the 1970s could explain what re-switching is and why it’s significant. In both cases it’s enough for the devotee to know that orthodoxy labours under fundamental errors, and can be dismissed when it contradicts anything the good guys say.

  27. James
    Speaking as a neoclassical who admires Hayek, I think that’s a pretty unfair assessment of Hayek’s work. His papers on Economics and knowledge and the use of information in society are pretty insightful – though not groundbreaking in a technical sense, they outline in clear layperson’s terms the role of information and expectations in coordinating a market economy pretty well and arguably set the groundwork for a more sophisticated treatment of these issues. One of the serious economists who think Hayek and the Austrians had important insight is J Barkley Rosser (I know because he was on the now defunct Hayek mailing list).

    Then there are his rich writings on jurisprudence and liberalism. Many thinkers on the left take them pretty seriously to the point of wishing to comprehensively engage with them. You’ll find that Hayek admirers are not cultish and form quite a politically eclectic group (again I speak from personal experience on the defunct Hayek mailing list).

  28. Jason,

    The only direct reference there to Hayek is the following:

    The continued existence of an Austrian school is mostly owing to Hayek and Mises, who made a career out of denouncing the welfare state and interventionist macroeconomics.

    Which is fair comment, IMO, as both are better known for their ideological stance than their broader research.

    I read James’ criticism of the “Austrian School” and “self-declared Austrians” to be directed at the slavish followers of the ideology, rather than at Hayek and Mises, or their more enlightened admirers…

    Happy to be corrected if James wants to clarify.

  29. Jason, I endorse Comrade Boris’s interpretation. I set out my views on Hayek himself a while ago on this Troppo thread in answer to a challenge from Rafe. You made a similar comment about cultish followers.

    In any case my main point is the parallel with Marxian dismissals of opposing views as false consciousness. Cultish libertarians always preface their arguments by expressing astonishment that apparently intelligent people could fail to grasp this, that or the other, or be misled by an obvious charlatan like Keynes. The tactic is also reminiscent of defenders of Bush and Blair who insist that critics of the Iraq war are blinded by anti-Americanism or anti-semitism. This kind of analysis gives comfort to the faithful who might wonder why they’re in a minority, but it also reinforces their isolation.

  30. James,

    Technically, I think you have to BE a cultish libertarian of Rothbardian proportions to call me “Comrade Boris”, but hey, whatever rings your bell wether.

    Please excuse me while I go debauch some virgin currency.

    Mwuhahahaha.

  31. In any case my main point is the parallel with Marxian dismissals of opposing views as false consciousness.

    This passes, for it refers to what is the most popularly imagined idea of Marxism; yet it scarcely embraces the thought of Marx himself and the many streams that nod to his influence.

    The richest contestations of the idea of ‘false consciousness’ have come from within Marxist schools (ranging from Gramsci to EP Thompson).

    Still, the parallel is fair enough. Neoclassicals, for convenience, and Austrians, as a matter of divine revelation, assume an individualised economistic automaticism analagous to what Vulgar Marxists assumed for classes.

  32. Chris, I’m happy to qualify ‘Marxist’ with ‘crude’, and I like your last sentence.

  33. The cultishness of the Misesian Austrians arises from the fact that Mises advocated a completely a priorist economics derived from so-called axioms of human action. This a priorism is obviously a substitute for theology among theologically inclined minds.

    Hayek rejected the extreme a priorist views of Mises. Consequently you won’t find many Hayekian cultists, and no neoclassical ones.

  38. Finally! Today Blizzard updated World of Warcraft to version 1.10.2 Tuesday, a patch that includes a variety of small bug fixes, including a Mac-specific one. The fixes cover both character-specific changes and broader environment issues. It’s about time!

  39. Please attend this protest and forward the information onto your networks.

    Save Brisbane – Protest Against the Tunnels – Saturday 11am

    Dear fellow citizens,

    The time for talk is over, and the time for action is upon us.

    We ask that you spare 1 hour of your time now so that we can avert many
    decades of disaster.

    On Saturday the people of Brisbane will take to the streets in a protest to stop the North-South Bypass Tunnel, Airport Link and Hale Street Bridge.

    Saturday 6 May
    11am
    North South Bypass Tunnel Visitor Centre
    189 Elizabeth Street (across the road from the Hilton)

    Bring your friends, family and neighbours, and distribute this information to all of your networks.

    Stopping the tunnels will be a victory for livable communities, reducing air pollution, reducing global warming, reducing oil depletion, better democracy, more affordable transport, and more socially equitable transport.

    We must stop this “tunnel vision” before it becomes a nightmare.

    If we don’t do it no-one else will.

    Tristan Peach
    Spokesperson
    Communities Against the Tunnels
    0416478615
    notunnels [at] ourbrisbane.com
    http://www.notunnels.org

  40. I like to think of myself as a smart girl, but there are a ton who are smarter than me. At least I’m not like Dubbya who has called himself “the Deciderâ€?. HAHA – That’s so funny!

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