Year: 2007

LP attacked by spammers

John Quiggin1 Comment

Mark Bahnisch of Larvatus Prodeo writes:

Hi folks

We’ve had major problems over the last few days with a spam attack of
unprecedented size, which has rendered LP almost unusable due to
constant database errors. We’ll be upgrading and moving to a new host
over the weekend (at which point we’ll disappear altogether for a few
days).

Basically, the increased traffic we’ve had since the election began
(up by about a third on normal) has made us a more attractive target
to spammers.

In the meantime, we’ve found turning comments off keeps the site
working as the spammers posting comments is the cause of too many
database connections open at once – hence the outages. We’ve picked
the new host for greater reliability as well as more bandwidth.

In the meantime, we’ve set up a backup blog – LP in Exile – where
we’ll be crossposting and where comments can be posted:

http://larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com/

We’re also appealing for donations to assist with costs involved in the move:

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/11/06/blog-issues/

International comparisons

John Quiggin32 Comments

Not that long ago, international comparisons of income levels and so on were always done using market exchange rates. If this were still the standard practice, there would be some surprising news to report. On an exchange rate basis, Australia has a higher GDP per person than does the US (I’d guess the same would be true of more relevant measures like national income per person, though the gap would be a bit smaller because of our greater indebtedness).

Currently US GDP per person is around $US 44000. Australia’s is about $A51 300, which at a market exchange rate of 0.93 converts to about $US47700.

Before we break out the champagne, I’ll point out that these exchange rate comparisons aren’t really useful – this is obvious given that the $US/$a rate was heading for $0.50 not long ago, and is now headng for parity . Standard practice these days is to use a “Purchasing Power Parity” measure, based on the estimated relative cost of a standard bundle of goods and services. The estimated $UA/$A rate is around 0.70 which leaves us a fair way behind the US.

Although PPP estimates are better than those based on market exchange rates, they shouldn’t be treated as exact. They are statistical estimates, with a large margin of error, and the underlying economic theory (revealed preference) implies that even with perfect data, there is always a range of possible values for index numbers like this. Typical international comparisons should be taken to have a margin of error of 10 to 20 per cent.

In passing, a useful tip for students of the economy. If you want a round number estimate of the magnitude of any economic variable, you can approximate GDP as $1 trillion, population as 20 million, and income per person as $50 000. These will be accurate to within 10 per cent for another year or two.

Update In comments, Matthew Turner reminds me that he’s been making this point for years. I think I came up with it independently, but he was certainly first. Interestingly, Matthew calculates that the critical value for the euro/$ exchange rate, at which euro GDP per person exceeds US is $1.46. Yesterday, it hit 1.457.

Will Labor change it all? Should they?

John Quiggin26 Comments

A “gaffe” in Australian politics normally consists of speaking the truth when it is politically inconvenient. So, are Peter Garrett’s remarks that Labor would “change it all” after the election a “gaffe” in this sense, as suggested by the reporter in question, a joke, as Garrett said, or something in between.

My view is “something in between”. That is, there is no secret plan to junk Labor’s promises, but a lot of people wish there was.

In most elections, parties make promises, to secure electoral support, that they would rather not keep, either because they regard them as bad public policy or because they reward interest groups that are not seen as actually deserving such rewards. This election has seen plenty of that from both sides, with the biggest single example being Labor’s decision to match Howard’s tax cuts. Most Labor supporters would regard this as a bad promise in several ways. First, large advance commitments of this kind are bad macroeconomic policies. Second, it would be better to allocate more money to services like health and education. Finally, the tax cuts mostly reward the upper income groups that are the natural constituency of the Liberals.

Following the last two changes of Federal government, the incoming party fabricated a crisis and junked their inconvenient (“non-core”) promises. Much though I dislike a lot of the (com)promises Rudd has made, I hope Labor does not do the same. Democratic processes are more important then getting the best policy outcome in the short term.

Over the fold is an excerpt from a Fin article I wrote in September, suggesting that, despite the “me-too” nature of the campaign, the outcome will make a difference. I think the analysis is still right, except that the ferocity of the government’s anti-union campaign has shifted the ground a bit. If the government gets back in, even with a narrow majority, they will clearly feel justified in pushing through their maximal anti-union agenda. Conversely, the unions now know they have to stick with Rudd come what may, and he has an obvious interest in demonstrating his supremacy. So I suspect he’ll give them nothing more than the minimal changes that have been promised.
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Weekend reflections

John Quiggin48 Comments

Weekend Reflections is on again. Please comment on any topic of interest (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please). Feel free to put in contributions more lengthy than for the Monday Message Board or standard comments.

The cohort effect

John Quiggin74 Comments

Lots of commentators have been surprised by the magnitude of the swing against the government in the opinion polls. Given that the economy is going well, and that on most issues divisions between the parties are not all that sharp, why should people change their votes? There are a number of potential reasons, including the increased salience of climate change and the fact that Rudd is a more attractive leader than any of his recent predecessors.

But one fact that doesn’t get so much attention is that much of the swing to Labor is coming from changes in the population of voters, rather than in changes of mind among voters. It’s well known that the Liberals have more support among older voters, and that Labor gets strong support from young voters and recent immigrants. But no-one seems to have drawn the obvious implication. If no-one changes their mind between elections, Labor gets an automatic increase in support as young people and migrants are enfranchised, while Liberal voters are more likely to pass away through old age (I’m not sure about Australians who move overseas and stop voting as a result).

How big is this swing? My rough guess is that we’ve added a million new voters since the last election and lost around half a million. If we assume two-thirds of the new voters go for Labor, and two-thirds of the departed supported the Liberals, that leaves the Liberal vote unchanged, but adds half a million votes for Labor, equal to a bit over 4 per cent of the total number of voters. Since the number of voters has increased, that should be reflected in, roughly, an increase of 2 percentage points in Labor’s share of the 2PP vote, and a decrease of 2 percentage points in the Liberals.

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Half a metaphor

John Quiggin17 Comments

I’m writing a piece (in the form of a debate with Jason Potts) on the Internet and non-market innovation (open source, blogs, wikis and Web 2.0 more generally) and the editors asked us to say something about digital literacy. I’ve never paid much attention to this metaphor, maybe because of excessive exposure to its predecessor, computer literacy.

It strikes me though, that discussion of digital literacy focuses almost entirely on reading (how to navigate the Web, find reliable information and so on). The things I’m talking about are forms of writing.

Thinking about the rise of text literacy, the distinction tends to be blurred a bit, because most (not all) people who learn to read also learn to write. Still, there’s plenty of discussion of the importance of writing to groups (women, working people) traditionally excluded from written culture.

So, I’m surprised at the neglect of this point in relation to digital literacy, especially because the Internet has done so much to break down the asymmetry between a small group of writers and a large group of readers that characterises most communications media. Having said this, I’m sure this point has been made many times before, and I invite readers to write in with good references.

As an aside, “computer literacy” programs in the late 70s and early 80s had, if anything, the opposite problem. Lots of emphasis on how to code in BASIC and very little appreciation of the potential for computers as tools for general use.

The end of shmibertarianism (updated)

John Quiggin22 Comments

As Andrew Sullivan notes, Glenn Reynolds no longer even claims to be a libertarian[1], and his repudiation of this former position is shared by a number of leading shmibertarians, who are now happy enough to identify as orthodox Republicans. I haven’t yet seen anything similar from some others, such as the Volokhs, but the idea that a relaxed attitude to sex and drugs, and support for economic policies that favour your own social class, can trump the authoritarian implications of militarism, from Gitmo to collusion in government lies, is now pretty much dead. Insofar as an idea can be tested by experiment, prowar libertarianism has been tried and failed (a bit more on this from Jim Henley)

The implications go further I think. Given that the Republicans are now definitively the war party (not that the Democrats have yet become the peace party, but that’s another story), it’s hard to see how libertarian Republicans can survive, any more than Dixiecrats survived Nixon’s Southern strategy. The recent decision by RedState to ban Ron Paul supporters is a pretty clear indication of how real Republicans think about this. This has big implications for a thinktank like Cato, which has opposed the war (but very sotto voce – a visitor to their website would be hard pressed to tell that there even was a war) while remaining within the Republican tent.

Of course, it goes the other way. It’s hard to witness the catastrophic government failure that has characterized every aspect of this war without becoming more sympathetic to certain kinds of libertarian (and also classically conservative) arguments, particularly those focusing on the fallibility of planning.

fn1. Apparently my ignorance of the further reaches of US party politics may have led me to overstate Reynolds’ candor. What’s being announced is, apparently, a break with the Libertarian Party, leaving him free to label himself a (small-l) libertarian. Thanks to Kevin Drum for pointing this out. Jim Henley, linked above, also commented on this distinction, concluding “I doubt it matters. In a corrupt political discourse, no label is much use.” and that’s about where I stand.

On the bleeding edge

John Quiggin108 Comments

I’ve been trying out various new technologies lately, with mixed results

My first attempt to present a paper using videoconferencing from my desktop Mac came to grief as a result of software incompatibilities, so I’ll be using standard videoconference methods again, to present a paper on Urban Water Pricing to a seminar at LaTrobe Uni, Albury-Wodonga, on Thursday. I’ll get started earlier next time and see if I can’t get these problems overcome.

During my recent visit to Canberra, I hired a Prius, which was an interesting experience. A few random thoughts about implications.
* I was particularly struck by the way it sits silently at traffic lights, and more generally how much quieter it is, most of theh time. than a standard car. That alone would be a big plus in a move towards electric cars.
* As this piece in Salon points out, a hybrid is not necessarily more fuel-efficient than smaller conventional cars. Then again, you can save even more just by driving less. The more options there are the better. I expect the price differential noted in the article will decline over time as production volumes increase.
* Looking at how easy it would be to switch to hybrids, I’m more convinced than ever that a peak in oil production (which may already have been passed) will not been the end of industrial civilisation as we know it, or even a major change in our way of life.
* s regards the more serious problem of global warming, a hybrid still uses electricity, so the gains aren’t as great. Still, many small reductions add up to big reductions Reader canberra boy points out that the Prius is not a plug-in hybrid as I thought . Rather the battery is recharged entirely by regenerative braking or, when that falls short, by the engine. As usual, Wikipedia has the details

Finally, I upgraded my Mac OS to OS 10.5 (Leopard), and am a bit grumpy. It seems as if it went smoothly for everyone but me, and in fact I nearly always have trouble with system upgrades. But, in between I really love my Mac, and my experience running Windows XP under virtualisation has only confirmed me in this.