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John Quiggin 
@Chris Warren
Ken – I dont think solution two will be acceptable to Ken! LOL
@Jim Birch
Jim Birch oversteps the mark if he is implying that First Fleet biological warfare occurred “without intention” @28. This is still in question and the position that it was deliberate is pretty much the concensus now. Consequently the onus is on dissenters to present more rigorous arguments, not weak disruptive side comments.
There is nothing “odd” about the discussion.
Culpability is a separate issue mired in political considerations. It is quite possible to review all aspects of the 1789 outbreak without interference from present day political concerns about modern culpability. Once the facts of 1789 are known, then culpability can be explored.
As some have produced a denial of the outbreak they point to the quality of Australian historical discourse and likely political interference or Bowderlisation.
In fact much of the earlier work by Judy Campbell, Alan Frost, and Quadrant stableboy Charles Wilson, can be shown to have been fabricated and based on misuse of evidence – particularly Frost’s use of Hunter’s Journal “An historical journal of the transactions at Port Jackson, and Norfolk Island : including ….”.
The underlying issue is that traditional Australian historians have not produced a legitimate history, and that it was time that the Stanner’s “Great Australian Silence” was smashed.
Unfortunately there appear to be some dying embers that need to be finally dowsed.
@wilful
eww wilfil – never could get my head around all the nasty things the yanks like to deep fry – and now the brits – deep fried mars bars are just the tip of the deep fryer!
Ken is not the sharpest blade in the Catallax draw, Alice. His posts are invariably illiterate, ungrammatical and logic-free – apart from their risible politics. Even some of the regulars have told him to lift his game and for heaven’s sake get someone literate and compos mentis to sub-edit them before hitting the sent button.
@Jim Birch
Well – I might think, given the near starvation of the white colonists from the first and second fleets…and competition from natives for available food sources…then a spilled bottle of variolus is one solution (ie intentional)
But Chris – I think you misinterpreted Jim Birch’s comment
@Philomena
Philo – you are a braver woman than I frequenting Catallyx…
I have warrior genes Alice. Much like you do I’d wager.
Tony G, you really are a nutter. Perhaps Philomena would describe you in similar terms to ken n or worse. How can you determine which species to extinguish? What if bees were to go extinct due to the Human plague? Ah, you’re not worth the effort. Get some counselling mate. No way are you at the apex of evolution because if you were, you would realise the importance of the natural world for our survival and our happiness.
Yes, Chris, but
1 penalises people who have kids or more kids than society thinks they should have. Lots of ways you can do that. Which do you prefer?
2 I will ignore
3 Fine, but are you saying immigation should match emigration? If so, asylum seekers will pretty well fill the quota.
I am not arguing for any of these options, I am just trying to clarify which levers you think we should pull.
It’s all arithmetic after all…
@Salient Green
If bees were to become extinct? If we cannot sing their song then we too shall surely die or cease to live as before.
A taste a liquor never brewed—
From Tankards scooped in Pearl—
Not all the Vats on the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!
Inebriate of Air—am I—
And Debauchee of Dew—
Reeling—thro endless summer days—
From inns of Molten Blue—
When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
Out the Foxglove’s door—
When Butterflies—renounce their “drams”—
I shall but drink the more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats—
And Saints—to windows run—
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the—Sun—
Emily Dickinson
You, mate, live in an alternate reality where you get to make up your own facts.
Thanks Philomena, it got a little blurry towards the end and I’ve only had one bourbon and a marguerita.
@ken n
I would put asylum seekers, under UN programs or well defined refugee streams, into a separate category and not counted for other purposes and not subjected to skills tests.
If Australia’s population increases because huge volcanos destroy Papua or New Zealand, or climate changes floods Pacific islands, then so be it – we just have to live with the consequences.
Anyone checked out “the projects”? Or walked near high-density housing in some of the big cities? Also first-world standards, just happens to be for poor people. It shows that the manner in which housing is managed has serious consequences of a long-term nature – certainly a huge contrast to Singapore. The fact that it is theoretically possible to pack humans into a relatively small area doesn’t mean that it is either possible in practice or is even desirable. If that is what beholds future humanity then count me out, so to speak.
More objectively for those who want to continue the argument (I mean discussion), some information on population etc, taken from 2009 World Population Data Sheet, from the Population Reference Bureau:
World Population expected to be 7 billion by 2011, compared to 6 billion in 1999 which was 12 years earlier. Natural rate of increase (ie births – deaths as rate) is globally 1.2%. Australia’s NRI is 0.7%.
World fertility rate is 2.6 kiddies per woman, while the lowest fertility rate is Taiwan at 1.0.
Population per sq km: World is 50, More developed nations is 27, Less developed (inc China) is 67 and excl China is 58, and Least developed is 40. Australia is 3 and Singapore is 7,486 people per sq km!
Amazing, and I mean that sincerely!
OK Chris, then if we want no net increase from migration (and ignoring climate change victims for the moment) that pretty well means not much voluntary immigration. Asylum seekers, particularly if we become more liberal which I think you and I believe we should, will just about match departures. Dunno what we do about the kiwis who are a steady flow but not subject to any quota. What would you do?
Assuming that we will not do anything to increase the death rate (and many demographers believe life expectancy is increasing faster than the ABS forecasts) then we have to do something to reduce the birthrate. That must be a penalty (or withholding of a bonus) to those who have “too many” kids. I do not believe in incentives to have more kids but am not happy with penalties to those who go over the limit.
Social engineering is all very difficult in a free-ish society. Which is why the immigration lever is the one most people reach for.
Personally, I am glad that so many people want to come to this country. Voluntary movement has been one of the most powerful forces for good over the past few hundred years. But I know many disagree, for all sorts of reasons.
@Chris Warren
i’ve argued for immigration primarily on humanitarian grounds for maybe 30 odd years. If there’s a shortfal then live with it or take in some mega skills – although I am heavily baised to actually training and educating people here and am wary of stealing skills from thems that can’t afford it. And as you point out if at times needs must a greater than desirable intake then she’ll be right, let’s do it.
On the smallpox issue – remember that many diseases cause lesions (hence “pox), and that diagnosis at the time was rudimentary. Isolated populations were vulnerable to lots of Eurasian diseases, including those which to Eurasians were fairly mild. The diseases rapidly mutated to more lethal forms when presented with a population with no immunity (this happened to Europeans with cholera in the 1840s and may have happened to humans recently with HIV). Death rates ran as high as 90%. William McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples gives a good overview. So whether or not there was a deliberate release, aborigines were vulnerable to every First Fleeter with a cough.
On the other theme – not sure what Haitians eat (other than not a lot). But they have multiplied from 3m to 9m in 30 years, presumably getting worse off with each additional mouth.
@Ken N
Its a balancing act – if we want to build a Snowy Mtns Scheme, or a rail network or similar and assist refugee from war torn Europe then we will have one population policy.
But if our manufacturing has been moved offshore and we are switching the economy into high-value services and if we have insufficient water, and a need to address climate change – then we’ll have a different population policy.
As capital increases it replaces labour. As unemplyment has been ratcheting up since the 1960’s, and the so-called natural level has supposedly risen compared to the 1950’s – then we need a different population policy to reflect this.
Once we have free trade, and we then obtain labour intensive products offshore, and export capital intensive products, then this also factors into consequential population policy.
I am quite happy foregoing future Australian economic growth if this assists the environment and buys time to look at water and carbon issues.
Chris
I agree with much of that.
But you still must say which levers you are going to pull to implement the resulting population policy.
And you’ve only got three variables: births, death, migratiion.
If we want to act quickly we must choke off immigation, except for those coming for humanitarian reasons.
I am not arguing for this – just saying it is the only lever.
Trying to influence the birthrate runs up against too many civil rights issues.
(And I mean tto influence it in either direction. Pace Costello)
Translation services for Ken N:
Keywords: levers, pull off, implement, birth-death, choke off, lever.
Says it all really.
@Peter T
Diagnosis of smallpox was not rudimentary in 1789. The First Fleet included sophisticated surgeons, and smallpox was a well understood disease for the times. However germ theory and the role of viruses was unknown but this does not impact on diagnosis of overt, observable, clinical disease.
The record appears conclusive that the 1789 outbreak was smallpox. No other disease could cause the events of 1789. Frank Fenner’s Letter in reply to Richard G Hingston [The Medical J. of Australia; v142, 18 February 1985, p278] is relevant.
Of course other diseases infected aborigines subsequently and other populations through history, as depicted by McNeill. Coughing could have been a mode of transmission, within tribes, but not the cause of the first case.
But the 1789 Port Jackson and the 1830 outbreak near Bathurst were definitely smallpox.
Alice, Alicia, Philomena
Please dial down the frequency of posting to one per day until further notice, and absolutely cease attacks on other commenters.
phew.
Tony G, by your rights, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ50PYMXDCQ"this is not nearly as important as a few more people on the planet.
Gah! THIS.
sorry JQ….Jarrah will love this! Im in the sin bin.
Wilful
You can draw an analogy between the dolphins actions and mankind’s from that clip.
At the end of your clip;
“This sort of advantage may mean the difference between life and death in the survival of the fittest.”
You should be furthering the cause of your own species and not worrying about the 100 billion + fish. Or the billion + cows; or the billion + sheep; or the billion + pigs; or the 15billion + chickens; or the 12.1 billion bushels of corn; or the 2.17 billion bushels of wheat; or the etc etc etc…… Like the other 509,m km² of earth not needed to stand on, we have more than we will ever need. (even if the population did hit 9 billion, which it wont because of the falling fertility rate)..
I was pondering something. I wonder if anyone has considered privatisation of each state education department? Government schools could be privatised into the hands of local private school boards who are large enough and powerful enough to open, buy, close, move schools within their portfolio but also small enough to compete with other local school boards. There would need to be some regulation of these entities, nothing too onerous however.
The cost of running the schools is returned to taxpayers by tax cuts, wealthy individuals do not get this tax cut which is used to fund vouchers for the extreme poor. The sale price of the schools are placed in a federal sovereign wealth fund.
Schools would be given greater autonomy and the market of ideas would ensure successful schools come out trumps. Schools could pay their teachers more, or focus on equipment or sport. Industry could invest in school boards, say the coal, uranium or other mining industries invests in a school board and through this a greater emphasis is placed on concepts like geology, engineering, technology and industrial processes rather than history or literature.
Imagine the fantastic job prospects of pupils at such an industry sponsored school! Rather than learning about abstract, obscure and largely irrelevant concepts the students are steered towards real world concepts and essentially have a foot in the door of industry before they complete University.
I assume you forgot to include an irony alert, ‘Rationalist’.
@Rationalist
University education has already been quazi-privatised following the ‘Dawkins Revolution’ with the institutions ‘competiting’ for funding and for students. As I predicted this has resulted in the ‘entertainment’ component of education starting to prevail. At many of the new institutions the real job of the ‘lecturers’ (who in many cases don’t have any knowledge to impart and have set up joke courses) is to entertain and babysit, with registries insisting that everyone who pays gets their degree and grade inflation and ignoring plagiarism and cheating has become the norm because “the customer is always right”. The problem for employers is to be landed with these ‘graduates’ who think they know everything and are far to important to do anything but immediately but take the reins from the CEO.
The real thing that I object to with this free market model is that we are paying mightily for it through our taxes. The way it is going it should be completely privatized and no government subsidies. Then ‘universities’ can entertain and babysit as the market demands.
@Rationalist
i just think people should be assigned to industry sectors at birth – or perhaps better still babies are put into a market and business can compete to own them. Of course not as slaves – people would have the right to shop where they want.
So ir-rationalist
If your successful school comes up trumps, but is 1,000 miles away, how does this benefit children?
A democratic school system provides decent education for everyone.
Yours provides different education for different people.
Yours is an abomination.
Humans FTW!!
Rationalist,
Personally I think a good way forward for the school system would be for the State governments to gift the schools to the co-operative ownership of the parents (on certain conditions, including not allowing the school to refuse students on other than disciplinary grounds) and then arrange funding through a voucher system.
The only roles then remaining to the government would be advisory on curriculum and standards (including providing information to the parents on these) and in running the voucher system.
To me, this would allow freedom of choice, proper democratic accountability and for the exploration of alternatives that are currently not possible or prohibitively expensive for most.
@Rationalist
Maybe education could be improved by having a yearly cull. Rather than ‘incentivise’ the teachers, a more direct approach of incentivising the students would be so much better. Now, the most important aspect: “What to call the reform?” Would it be “No child left behind” or would it be better described as “Tough, love” or “Guess who’s no longer coming to dinner?”
@Andrew Reynolds
Oh yes, lets rely on the natural ability of the average parent to make these decisions. If we go down this route, why stop? Why not simply get out of the education business all together and let the parents suffer less taxation and with there freedom be completely free to chose whether or not, and how much education their offspring gets? If we did that then Australia could truly be called “The Clever Country”.
How about instead of posting here you go away and do something useful, like losing all of your client’s money?
@Andrew Reynolds
This proposal has problems. If schools are controlled by parents, those in rich middle-class areas will be hyperactive in fundraisings and seeking sponsorships through Lions Clubs, Rotary, churches and charitable Foundations.
Parent controlled schools in deprived areas will be less motivated and less able to do this.
Also parents are only involved at a school while they have a child enrolled. Proper education planning, development, assessment and provision needs a much longer, dispasionate approach.
@nanks
They’re not slaves as long as the corporation gives them an allowance. After all “Who ever heard of a ‘slave’ getting an allowance?” And, nice touch, they could use that allowance to shop anywhere!
The problem with these sorts of proposals is that they can float, pure and untouched, completely unmoved by reality. Lovely thoughts, completely irrelevant and impractical.
What would happen if something liek you proposed was implemented is that the children of well-off parents would all group together, their kids would be as well educated as currently, possibly even maybe slightly better educated (oh and they could taste the frredom), but many kids without as educated or perhaps motivted parents, or ones that simply lived in the wrong place, would get a significantly worse education, and would then be unemployable. I guess some could be employed ase security guards, because that would be a growth industry. but about teh only one, since we’d all be worse off in teh long run.
I know you and your ilk don’t get this, but looking after poor people is not just good for the soul of the community, it’s actually good for the economy in the long run. Making peopel employable makes us all better off.
“would get a significantly worse education, and would then be unemployable.”
That sounds like two big assumptions.
What if the vouchers were graduated?
if we had to unpack all of our assumptions in the school voucher debate, we’d be here forever. (Oh as an aside, my second ‘assumption’ is that uneducated = unemployable. I don’t think that’s such a big assumption)
But there would be a flight to quality, just like happened in the US (more for racial reasons) and some schools would become even bigger ghettoes than they currently are.
Permanent underclass is the result. Not good for any economy, despite superficial short-term gains (oh the freedom).
What do you mean by graduated? Povvo kids get more $$? Wouldn’t happen, the middle class wouldn’t like it.
@Rationalist
That would be a recipe for radically ineffective and inequitable education. Ironically, it wouldn’t even produce what the industry wonks want.
What the industry people say they want are people who are able to problem solve, collaborate and have a strong sense of the connectedness of variopus areas of knowledge. Schools that lacked a coherent syllabus, a strong pedagogy and a lack of accountability for teaching programs across the sweep of the whole jurisdictions would rapidly degenerate into educational marketing exercises in which least advantaged students were excluded. There would be no problem at all “losing” high maintenance kids under one excuse or another. It’s already quite hard to keep students who are educationally disadvantaged from running afoul of discipline measures. Under your system you could set them up to fail, and then shrug your shoulders as they were rejected.
In the end you would have one set of schools that were well funded catering to middle income and high income earners and holding pens for all the others. And hardly any of them would deliver most of what industry wants. It’s worth noting that kids who go to kindergarten in 2010 and are successful at school will get to early mid-career in 2035. If you can specify precisely what the industry of the time will want, you’re a lot smarter than you have shown above. It’s likely that 20-30% of the jobs of that day don’t even exist now.
Turning the school system into some sort of designer fashion statement for the wealthy and low level security for the poor would be utterly reckless.
@wilful
“if we had to unpack all of our assumptions in the school voucher debate, we’d be here forever.”
Well, that makes for a simple discussion then – you make assumptions, I’ll make assumptions, and we’ll each have nice happy conclusions that might contradict each other but we can’t evaluate them because we can’t examine our conclusions. Sounds just great.
“(Oh as an aside, my second ‘assumption’ is that uneducated = unemployable. I don’t think that’s such a big assumption)”
You’re changing your tune. You went from the heroic assumption that an inferior education means they’re unemployable (which I think is obviously wrong – schools and universities vary in their quality, but people get jobs regardless) to a new assumption which is less objectionable. It’s also irrelevant – we’re talking education here, not uneducation (if you’ll forgive the neologism).
I detect further, unexamined, assumptions – that more money gives a better education, and that schools can’t improve once on a downward trend. The first is wrong, and the second debatable.
“What do you mean by graduated? Povvo kids get more $$?”
Yes. And I can’t see the “middle class” genuinely objecting – reams of welfare is targeted, means-tested, and the like.
@Chris Warren
Chris, I’m certainly not qualified to say whether smallpox was spread intentionally. I’d guess that it would be hard to find some unequivocal evidence but I could be wrong and I’ll leave that to others who know what they’re talking about.
I was more commenting on immune biology: the immune system appears to be designed to often knock diseases down to a “carrier” level that has limited impact to the individual without eliminating them totally but can still allow them to infect competitors. So, it’s more a case of when than if smallpox would hit indigenous populations that have minimal resistance.
If this is the case, real problem for the locals is colonisation itself (which is obviously not acceptable these days, irrespective of epidemiological impacts.) I think I’ve read some reports of American colonisation that indicate that the wave of infection and death preceded the European movement into areas so that the invaders found empty dwellings and met little resistance from sick and decimated local people.
That’s how it works on the internet, don’t you know?
No I’m not, not unless you want to be a pointless pedant. Getting ten years of education from east bumcrack high isn’t going to get you very far at all, and you (or your compatriots) will be vastly overrepresented in the unemployment statistics.
So my assumptions (assertions really) are bad, yours are good? Please…
That’s right. How much money does the Australian government give to private versus public schools?
“That’s how it works on the internet, don’t you know?”
Good point 😉
“So my assumptions (assertions really) are bad, yours are good? Please…”
I’m happy to defend them. But apparently you think this will take too long.
“How much money does the Australian government give to private versus public schools?”
In 2005, private got about $6.6 billion, public schools about $24.2 billion. Source – http://www.acer.edu.au/documents/PolicyBriefs_Dowling07.pdf
To deal with those attempting to be useful in the discussion:
.
Chris Warren,
On the funding issue – Yes, some parents are more likely to get involved than others and, as a result, some schools are more likely to be better than others. This already happens. I do not see that decentralising control to the actual parents concerned is going to make this worse. On the contrary – IMHO parents are more likely to get involved when they have a real sense on control, something sadly absent today.
On the issue of long-term control I do not see the 3 to 4 year election cycle and the occasional education “revolution” as being a longer period than the norm that parents have children in a school. For example, I know that several parents in my local school have been involved for more than 10 years as they have had several children go through. In any case, a real amount of the power in a school will be in the person of the head, deputy head and the teachers – all of whom (IMHO) are more likely to stay (and be appropriately paid) if they are able to be properly involved in the running of the school.
.
wilful and a few others,
I remain staggered that those who profess to have the interests of the “poor” at heart are the ones that seem to be the most committed to bossing them around and taking their children off them.
IMHO the “poor” are capable of working out what is a good education for themselves and then putting their children in there. At the moment, they are effectively prohibited from doing so. The system I have proposed above allows allows (IMHO) them to make that decision and then to change it, at no financial cost to themselves.
Can you please actually discuss it rather than showing your own prejudices that the “poor” are stupid and incapable parents.
If you graduated the vouchers, who would employ them? And if anyone was silly enough to employ the vouchers, how would they get any work out of them?
Vouchers are, for the most part, equivalent to cash, unless you have onerous and very expensive regulatory oversight. In which case, you might as well do away with the vouchers and have government directly organise the provision as that is considerably cheaper.
Have some pity for the poor taxpayer. They have enough to pay with providing schooling to those who would be better off doing something else than to provide the schooling through an incredibly expensive voucher libertarian looney toons scheme.
Most people don’t like paying tax, even if they recognise that governments need to raise revenue to provide certain services and that they and society are better off with these services provided. But paying tax just to have the money wasted on some fantasy Milton Friedman wet dream is not something that non-libertarians are terribly keen on.
There is a wealth of material indicating how dopey the ‘voucher’ idea, in its various guises, is.
Many are disappointed that Friedman and Hayek did not live long enough to find themselves shipwrecked on some God forsaken island, and upon opening their emergency provisions chest finding a stack of vouchers entitling the bear to one emergency first class rescue by the provider of their choice. They could them wave them about and wait for ‘the market’ to provide their triple A class rescue. They, of course, would be so much happier with that, than having someone mess with their freedom of choice and have provided them instead with things in a provision chest like food, a radio, flares and so on…
These libertarian posts as well as not being at all original, and are so risible that it is very difficult to take them seriously.
Please continue to ‘contribute’.
Freelander,
Care to point to any of this “material”? As there is a “wealth” of it you should be able to show where it has been experimented with and it has failed.
Sweden perhaps?
“If you graduated the vouchers, who would employ them?”
Heh, I see what you did there.