Back again with another Monday Message Board. Intermittent service for the next week or two.
Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link
http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page and at my Economics in Two Lessons page
John Quiggin 
Some are suggesting that the ALP should embrace the prescriptions of the UK’s “Blue Labour”. This is not a new idea. People like Michael Thompson, Peter Walsh, Mrn Frsn and the blog The New City (egged on by the usual suspects) have peddled this prescription for some 20 years. British socialist intellectual Jon Bloomfield has written an excellent deconstruction of the Blue Labour project, and his critique has clear resonances for Australian Labor.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-923X.12770
So, good news about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, eh?
(Backs away slowly.)
According to a story in the Guardian, the recently concluded Oktoberfest produced 10 times as much methane as Boston. A material amount came from burping and flatulence.
Just as well nobody struck a match at the wrong time. It could have been the Hindenburg, all over again.
@Paul Norton
I am no fan of those people and their nostrums, but on the other hand, between 1993 and (at least) 2022, the Labor Party will have won a majority at a Federal election just once. Clearly, whatever it is the Labor Party has been selling, the Australian people have not been buying.
Smith9 – are you at least a neutral on Skidelsky below?
Paul N – our ABC [see below] must have known you were going to post this re;
Countering the crisis of the left.
by Jon Bloomfield…
“Secondly,… That means economic policies which support a high minimum wage, encourage effective protection of employment rights in the workplace and promote trade unionism, along with regional policies to tackle uneven development. ”
https://www.socialeurope.eu/countering-the-crisis-of-the-left
[ wiley is unavailable to me ]
Here is Skidelsky abc today (yes – grandma said this too);
“We should work to live, not live to work,” declared Britain’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell last month, as he announced the British Labour Party would reduce the standard working week to 32 hours, without loss of pay, within 10 years of winning office.
“The promise followed a report (commissioned by Mr McDonnell) from economic historian Robert Skidelsky on how to achieve shorter working hours.
“Mr Skidelsky is a member of the House of Lords and a biographer of John Maynard Keynes, who in 1930 predicted a 15-hour working week would be possible within a few generations.”
https://abc.net.au/news/2019-10-28/ethics-of-four-day-work-week-not-just-about-the-hours/11645006
It seems Bloomfield’s 2nd point above is ready to go… and I liked the point re public service in Skidelsky’s article and book –
“Since the 1980s these levers for hours reduction have been broken. Government has abandoned full employment and union power over the wage bargain has been weakened. As a result hours of work have stopped falling, inequality has risen, and the gains from productivity growth have gone increasingly to employers. The same process is set to continue with automation.
“Hence the need for intervention to break into the circle of stagnant real wages and flattening hours of work.
“Our four main policy proposals follow, logically I hope, from the analysis above.”
…
“Finally, it should aim to fill the vacuum left by the demise of collective bargaining by establishing social partnership forums to bring employers, employees, unions, and government into dialogue with one another over issues of pay, working time, automation, and insecurity.”…
https://robertskidelsky.com/2019/09/12/how-to-achieve-shorter-working-hours/#more-1635
Over to JQ;
“Benefits for workers and unions
“The combination of a GMI and a Jobs Guarantee would greatly improve the bargaining position of workers relative to employers, both individually and in aggregate. For the individual worker, the Jobs Guarantee weaken the ability of any individual employer to threaten unemployment. Moreover, the GMI would provide an ‘outside’ option that could be taken if employers attempted to cut costs through work intensification, removal of working conditions and so on. At the aggregate level, the power of employers as a class depends, to a critical extent, on the belief that ‘business confidence’ is essential to economic prosperity.
“These points imply substantial benefits to unions. The capacity of employers to resist unionisation will be reduced, and the bargaining power of unions will increase. ”
http://crookedtimber.org/2018/01/02/ubi-work-and-unions/
” I’d interpret it as the response of people who feel that they’ve been pressured into working excessive hours for no extra compensation.”
https://johnquiggin.com/2003/06/18/working-hours-the-worm-turns/
JQ – a better reference/s to your work re Skidelsky or Bloomfield ideas above please?
Looks like we aren’t autonomously there yet. Has 2017-1019 improvements changed this?
“The group analyzed all the safety reports submitted from 2014-2017, covering 144 AVs driving a cumulative 1,116,605 autonomous miles. They found that for the same number of miles driven, human-driven cars were up to 4000 times less likely than AVs to have an accident. This means that the autonomous technology failed, at an alarming rate, to appropriately handle a situation and disengaged the technology, often relying on the human driver to take over.”
https://techxplore.com/news/2019-10-platform-scalable-autonomous-vehicle-safety.html
“I am no fan of those people and their nostrums, but on the other hand, between 1993 and (at least) 2022, the Labor Party will have won a majority at a Federal election just once. Clearly, whatever it is the Labor Party has been selling, the Australian people have not been buying.”
What’s more, ( think you also mentioned this) that one clear majority could be reasonably categorised as being somewhat of an anomaly. The deck was sufficiently stacked given the term span of the incumbent, the spike in concern for climate action, internet speed and work choices.
IMHO the ALP still represents bigger government and a bigger pubic service and more public spending – not really a winning tenet when you have MPs sitting less than 50 days a year, very highly paid ABC presenters presenting less than 50 days a year and infrastructure workers being paid big money to stand around playing with their phones at a time when the tax intake has never been higher. Just my humble opinion.
KT2
Lord Skidelsky, like Lee Marvin, appears to have been born under a wandering star. Originally a Labour Party member, he moved to the Social Democrats, then the Conservatives where he was on the front bench in the late 90s, then he became a cross bencher. Now he is a supporter of Jeremy Corbin. And to this I say, why not? Variety, after all, is the spice of life.
Graeme Bird,
I do not understand why you are not helping me flesh out my proposal for seperating the micro economic decision making in a socialist state from the central government. I would at least expect you to attack the idea and force me to to defend it. I am not even sure that I can defend. i might have to surrender and admit that it is a stupid idea.
Perhaps you are silent because you view such a discussion as premature. Yes I agree there is not any evidence that anyone would need to make a decision to implement such an idea now or ever. The world economic system is a system that is upheld with the active support of millions of people. The top one percent might benifit the most. But the vast majority of the next 5% to 10% probably figures that they are better off just going with the flow rather than taking risks that will make them worse off than they are now if everything foes well and much worse off even dead or worse yet tortured if things do not go as planned. That kind of thinking is no doubt common. That kind of thinking no doubt makes the status quo quite stable.
So what should you or die do in the mean time. I notice lots of people writting comments on the death of 39 people who were trying to smuggle themselves in to the UK. Ok that is a tradgedy. It is a tradgedy that will be multiplied millions of times over in the not to distant future unless the breaks of the status quo get slammed on. But hey as far as I know you are no more in a position to slam on those breaks than I am.
But what we can do is try to imagine what should come next. We can try to imagine not only what should come in the short term, which is outlined in my 19 point political platform. ( And includes the nationalization of the gaming industry which I hope is like a knife to the heart of Donald Trump and many other dip shits just like him). But we can also be writting about what sort of instituitons should be established to carry on revolutionary reforms until we all join those 39 hopefull people who had wished to start new lives in the UK, whose lives were cut short because the environment that they were in could no longer support life. We need to write about such things so that those people who are in the right places can reach conclusions different than they have been holding up until now. They have to reach a new conclusion, which is that a better ending for our story can be achieved.
“I do not understand why you are not helping me flesh out my proposal for separating the micro economic decision making in a socialist state from the central government.”
I think I’ve got established paradigms in place of what you may be after. The pre-civil war United States and modern Switzerland had that hyper-federalism that is always a good idea. I love the city state. Like Athens, or Lee’s Singapore. But the city state can easily be beaten militarily by an inferior extended Republic or Kingdom. The Greek city states went down to these clever Macedonian psychopaths. Essentially the same people but more primitive in all things except military innovation. So its almost as though we want a collection of small territories that pay a Danegeld to some centralised crowd that see to it that there will be no fighting on ones own territory. Thats being a bit extreme but in principle.
Generally I think that the Commonwealth government should try and take a light touch. Like if they say “Hey we need to diversify our energy and increase energy efficiency any way possible … but you guys handle this your way locally….” or “Look we won’t necessarily tell you how to run things but make sure you always have surplus budgets …”
My agenda right now is something a bit different. I’d want public servants who take sabbaticals to the private sector for 5 or 10 years to be given a guaranteed job and promotional priority when they return to the public sector. That way we can voluntarily get the size of the public sector lower. I’d want the public sector departments to be reorganised more along task-lines. Getting things done. Not by way of topic. All these topic-based bureaucracies. Completely inefficient. This goes against management theory. In management theory you want very flat hierarchies. One guy maybe with twenty subordinates and under him one guy with twenty subordinates and going so far as to have personal services for managers, like house-cleaning, productivity training. Have a really slick public service that can chew through a monstrous workload by design.
But of course I’m also looking for cash-flow based small catalytic socialist undertakings. With really long lead-in times before their daily cash-flow is increased. Such long lead-in times that they can become far more high productivity than the private sector has ever seen.
GB said “I’d want public servants who take sabbaticals to the private sector for 5 or 10 years to be given a guaranteed job and promotional priority when they return to the public sector. ”
This page mentions “customer” 13x. Who is the customer?
https://www.apsc.gov.au/work-level-standard-aps-level-6
How much consulting, lobbying, submissions come from the private sector?
I’ll rephrase it for the rest of ‘us’.
I’d want public servants to take sabbaticals to the health, education, LifeLine [ absolutely], Acoss, Oxygen [absolutely], and other nfp / social ventures sector for 5 or 10 years to be awarded with a guaranteed job and promotional priority if they return to the public sector.”
Fixed.
I urge anyone reading this to view the 1.5 min video on home page and not be keen to use as either creator or user. And comment please if ever you’ve used such. Yes, I know, another piece of software. Yet…
“The research, “FlowSense: A Natural Language Interface for Visual Data Exploration with a Dataflow System” won the best-paper award at this year’s IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST).
“VisFlow, introduced in 2017 and funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Data Driven Discovery of Models program is a web-based framework that allows the user to use simple drag-and-drop actions to interact with data easily, letting users create visual data models based on time series, networks, geographical locations, and more, all of which can be formed into a compact and interactive visualization dashboard.”
https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/natural-language-interface-data-visualization-debuts-prestigious-ieee-conference
“The Data-Driven Discovery of Models (D3M) … will enable subject matter experts to create empirical models without the need for data scientists, and will increase the productivity of expert data scientists via automation
“Toward the end of the program, D3M will target problems that are both unsolved and underspecified in terms of data and instances of outcomes available for modeling.”
https://www.darpa.mil/program/data-driven-discovery-of-models
See https://visflow.org/
1.5min video. And refs.
JQ, VisFlow & DataFlow will make for, imo, a tool for “formal and empirical models of learning and surprise.” for you, Ted & your “Epistemically Feasible Choice project” collaborators. I would urge you / EFC to place output into this software and present to DARPA.
[ Any updates on EFC project? ]
Data scientists beware. Your opportunity cost is being eroded.
Graeme Bird,
Thank you for your response. I myself am not a big fan of city state (canton) style decentralization. Here are some of my reasons for it. Take tax policy for example. One canton may pass a fuel tax increase of say 25 cents per liter for numerous possible reasons. The canton next door decideds to pass a fuel tax of only 10 cents per liter. Now a system of fuel tax avoidance tourism has been created with the people in the first canton traveling to the second to avoid paying the additional tax. The first Canton ends up much worse off than it had been. Second of all, if we are dealing with a free market economy, or even a mixed economy, the canton model not only does not take in to consideration the problems addressed in game theory that special intrests can take small risks which will lead to large rewards it makes the problem even worse. The cantons will be is a race to the bottom to make their cantons more appealing as the location for jobs which provide higher profits for the stock holders of the coperations that move their.
Also the balanced budget problem locks in a level of stratification because areas that are poorer to start with will have less money to work with than wealtheir areas. But of course with the way that people think or at least are encouraged to think if the wealtheir areas have to share their wealth with the poorer areas they are going to bitch about socialism and the “lazy” people in the poor canton sucking up the hard earned wealth of the wealtheir cantons. So allowing long term deficit spending by a poorer area or even not calling the budget of a poorer area a deficit because the federal government is investing in that area is often just used by the politicians of the wealthier cantons or regions to win elections by stoking resenment. So a country like Yugoslavia seems to be stuck in a catch 22. Which is another reason why I am opposed to allowing election campaigns in the first place.
Ok then to adress your proposal of allowing government workers to move back and forth between the public and private sector to gain expertise. Of course if we are talking about an economic system in which there is not public sector, which my proposal is directed at, then such a suggestion would not be possible. If we are on the other hand talking about a free market or mixed economy such a thing woud be possible. But, I am not sure that it would be a very good idea. That would seem to me to create a system of continuous conflict of interests for the public sector workers. But if there were other changes to the way that a free market economy works such a conflict might not be very important. If the amount of money that a family could earn was limited to 200,000 or perhaps 250,000 per year the incentives for special interest groups to corrupt the system which be much less. There would be no point in a person or team cheating to win if you can not win anymore than if a person or team just played fair.
A lot of progressives spend a lot of time trying to get what they believe isa iivable minimum wage passed. I think that a lot more damage is done to society by not putting a reasonable cap on the maximum wages plus profits that can be earned.
So if we start with a global system of large nation states(which seems to me to be a prerequsite for being able to control their air space and cyberspace to be able to protect their territory from attack) what would be the risks of dividing up the economic assests of these states into say between 7 and 15 competing systems in which service alliances between the systems would be allowed?? (for example between KLM and Delta). Keep in mind that the most that anyone could earn would be capped somewhere around 200,000 or 250,000.
Ok, here is the case for my doubts about my own suggestion.
The ability to move a billion dollars from one place to another to accomplish a task is quite a strong power. But the ability to move one small piece of lead from one place to another to accomplish a task can be even more poweful than a billion dollars. One piece of well placed led can throw a billion dollar project in to complete chaos. Words also have power. One word from the right person can move not only one piece of lead but set a billion pieces of lead in to motion.
So if institutions such as a national police (FBI in the USA or BVS in Germany for example) become corrupted and wiil do anything that those in higher positions of authority tell them is it reasonable to expect that the seperation of micro economic power from the central government can offer any protection to those who might become targets of a nations leaders?
I am sceptical. But perhaps the answer is yes. The conglomerates that I have imagined would have a nationwide presence and the national and local leaderships would no doubt have soical connections to local govenors and mayors and local police chiefs. Now none of these people may be willing to openly challenge the national police which is doing the bidding of the national leaders. But if the civil rights movement is any guide local authorities will in some cases be willing to covertly sabotage the efforts of the national authorties. Now that I think about it this was also true when slave catchers could go in to northern states to hunt for escape slaves.
So what I am triyng to imagine is how the powerful can be constrained, not nullified. I think that the best that can be created is a situation in which every battle comes with some risk for those that choose to cause the battle to be fought. If the chances for the more powerful side are say even only 10% the more powerful side will have to say to itself, you know if we fight 10 battles such as this one we are likely to lose 1. We can not really know what the consequences of losing will be. So is it neccessary to win a decisive victory at this point?
A paranoid leader or group may answer yes because an indecisive victory is a festering wound and we can not really know what the consequences of that will be. Therefire maybe the answer of whether or not the seperation of micro economic power from the central government is a reasonalbe check on the power of the central government is no, the seperation of micro economic power from the nation state can not constrain the leadership of a nation state.
Has the Supreme Court constrained the power of the executive branch of the US government? To me the answer is a big fat no. Has the supreme court prevented the military take over of the executive branch? It could not even prevent that. With no police forces of its own it should be obvious that it never would have been in a position to prevent that. Of course the generals will deny that they run the governments of the western countries and the police and prosecuting attorneys will confirm that denial by their lack of oppostion.
So are we making any progress yet??
This from behind the paywall of WSJ;
“Murray Energy Corp, the namesake company of President Trump ally Robert Murray, has filed for bankruptcy. As the coal industry has dwindled out, Murray, the last U.S. coal baron, tirelessly lobbied for the Trump administration to save his hemorrhaging company and the industry at large. Murray personally produced an “action plan” for the White House after Trump took office in 2017. The plan called for: a federal bailout of the coal industry, eliminating a tax credit for windmills and solar panels, cutting Environmental Protection Agency staff by at least half, repealing the Clean Power Plan, and withdrawing from the Paris climate accord. Trump followed through on repealing the Clean Power Plan and pulling out of the climate accord, but has not repealed wind and solar tax credits or bailed out the coal industry. Without federal help, Murray Energy Corp. bonds became nearly worthless, as investors have turned to natural gas and renewable sources such as solar and wind. Murray is the eighth coal company to file for bankruptcy in the past year.”
Algae. Australia. Alaska. Phillipines. Same day news. Global. It is getting hard not to be a pessemistic ala Ikon & Curt. Hard to explain to the kids as it becomes political and philosophic quickly. Any suggestions?
Warming. Here, there and everywhere…
Will we ever pay the cause to not pollute – fertiliser – instead of paying for baby corals?
“Scientists transplant millions of coral ‘babies’ to save choked inshore sections of Great Barrier Reef
“An overgrowth of algae is threatening the survival of coral off Magnetic Island. Researchers have generated 2.8 million larvae to restore the balance. A similar project in the Philippines created “dinner-plate-sized” coral”
https://abc.net.au/news/2019-10-30/coral-babies-deployed-in-algae-war-on-great-barrier-reef/11650614
“Deadly Algae Are Creeping Northward
“In a warming ocean, Alexandrium algae are shredding marine food webs—and disrupting beloved Alaska traditions.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/plague-toxic-algae-making-shellfish-deadly/600406/
The judging panel, comprised of members of the PHRP Editorial Board, has also highly commended the following papers:
“Built environment interventions for human and planetary health: integrating health in climate change adaptation and mitigation
“Type of program or service:
Built environment adaptations and mitigations and their connections to the ways in which urban planning, urban design and architectural practices are addressing the health effects of climate change.”
http://www.phrp.com.au/issues/december-2018-volume-28-issue-4/built-environment-interventions-for-human-and-planetary-health-integrating-health-in-climate-change-adaptation-and-mitigation/
And…
“The revolving door between government and the alcohol, food and gambling industries in Australia
“Conclusion: This study suggests that the revolving door that sees people move between roles in the Australian Government and alcohol, food and gambling industries is commonplace, creating a range of ethical and moral problems, and posing a risk to public health.”
http://www.phrp.com.au/issues/september-2019-volume-29-issue-3/the-revolving-door-between-government-and-the-alcohol-food-and-gambling-industries-in-australia/
Our host commented that the voters of Longman didn’t think the conservatives were racist enough because of an increase in first preference votes for One Nation at the previous by-election. It appears that the problem is not racist white Australians, but homophobic ethnic immigrants.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/samesex-marriage-result-why-multicultural-communities-registered-huge-no-votes-20171115-gzltjr.html
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-28/labor-warned-its-facing-losing-more-votes-to-one-nation/11638470
I suspect that this has been know by some for years. Someone I worked with a little while ago would often posit that immigrants in disadvantaged suburbs were likely to vote for ON.
NEWSFLASH: Christians are often homophobic regardless of their country of origin.
In other news, half of the seats listed in the linked articles saw 2PP swings towards Labor, or negligible 2PP swings away from Labor (50 years.
Apparently, it “spoke to other migrants” that voted for One Nation but couldn’t get a single usable piece of information from any of them, even anonymously on the record. How many One Nation voting migrants did it speak to exactly? 5? 10? 20?
(Let’s try that again without pasting directly from Word…)
NEWSFLASH: Christians are often homophobic regardless of their country of origin.
And half of the seats listed in the linked articles saw 2PP swings towards Labor, or negligible 2PP swings away from Labor ( less than 1%)
Out of the four seats that saw 2PP swings larger than 1% against Labor, McMahon was the only electorate with a One Nation candidate running.
Chris Bowen won 56.64% of the 2PP vote in McMahon. That’s down from 62.11% in 2016, when the Liberal party suffered a -10% swing in primary votes, but still up from 54.63% in 2013.
Which means the ABC article and your claims are starting to look like a beat up. Same-sex marriage was obviously a part of the Labor platform, and a major point of difference between the parties in 2016. Yet voters in McMahon still flocked to Labor in 2016?
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/chris-bowen-drops-opposition-to-samesex-marriage-20150503-1myp1v.html
“ABC chief elections analyst Antony Green said it was difficult to tell from demographics whether the vote for One Nation and UAP was coming from the migrants or native-born Australians in the electorates.”
To state the obvious. The ABC article’s ‘analysis’ seemed to be based mostly on the anecdotal opinion of one Maltese person who has lived in Australia for >50 years.
Apparently, it “spoke to other migrants” that voted for One Nation but couldn’t get a single usable piece of information from any of them, even anonymously on the record. How many One Nation voting migrants did it speak to exactly? 5? 10? 20?
@rog That’s some good news.
Nick, I’m all for sinking the boot into religion, but why do you single out Christianity? It’s not like any of the others are any better.
Nick, did you read the whole article? Did you miss this:
Are you not aware of One Nation running Asian candidates?
How do you explain the swing to One Nation in conservative immigrant suburbs?
mycraw, I singled them out because the article was about Christians. It was the follow up to this one, which was published a day earlier:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-27/the-labor-migrants-voting-for-pauline-hanson-one-nation/11634408
Nobody is suggesting that Muslims voted for One Nation.
Labor romped it in in all of the seats mentioned. McMahon was the lowest at 56%, MacArthur was 58% with a swing towards Labor, Barton was 59% with a swing towards Labor, the rest were all 62-68%.
So again, I find the claims presented by the ABC to be overblown. There is no evidence Labor is ‘bleeding votes to One Nation because of migrant voters’ views on homosexuality and same-sex marriage’.
All of the seats mentioned saw sizeable swings to Labor in the 2016 election (between 4-11%, with the exception of Bruce which was 2%), when legalising same-sex marriage was very much a part of Labor’s election platform.
Hugo: “Are you not aware of One Nation running Asian candidates?”
Who apart from the candidate in mycraw’s video above? Is Petrie a “conservative immigrant” electorate?
Dai Le is a former Liberal candidate, who now runs as an independent in NSW state politics. The Vietnamese community represents roughly 3% of the electorate of McMahon. How many Vietnamese-born voters asked Dai Le for One Nation how to vote cards?
Are Vietnamese people “conservative immigrants”? Are Vietnamese communities even especially religious? Are you aware Vietnam legalised same-sex marriage several years before Australia?
Hugo: “How do you explain the swing to One Nation in conservative immigrant suburbs?”
a) The fact that One Nation hadn’t previously run in those electorates. Any votes they received were a “swing to One Nation”.
b) The small percentage of people, typically no more than 3-7%, who *really detest* the high numbers of immigrants in their electorate, and especially detest Muslims.
Are you seriously asking that question?
ScoMo thinks he can outlaw fossil fuel divestment. However, it seems that the market will do its own thing and abandon those fossil fuel stranded assets in favour of renewables
“RMI analysts expect lithium-ion to remain the dominant battery technology through 2023, steadily improving in performance, but then they anticipate a suite of advanced battery technologies coming online to cater to specific uses:
Heavier transport will use solid-state batteries such as rechargeable zinc alkaline, Li-metal, and Li-sulfur. The electric grid will adopt low-cost and long-duration batteries such as zinc-based, flow, and high-temperature batteries. And when EVs become ubiquitous—raising the demand for fast charging—high-power batteries will proliferate.”
https://rmi.org/insight/breakthrough-batteries/
[ sand-pity. Know sigh-tations?Except Nick ]
Nick Hugo mycraw. & Smith9.
How many flavours of christians in Australia?
I have a relation who – converted to catholisism, gained a masters in religious education, been teaching in catholic schools 29+ yrs, president of vinnies, and attended the bishops conference for many years but excluded from higher office – because she is a she. She votes greens too.
So with your comments on christianian ‘voters’, after looking up…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members
… I rang her to discuss “christian” flavours.
She says there are 2,000 flavours in Australia to choose from plus their inherent biases to deal with. She scoffs at the label ‘christian’ now. But she won’t do a kristina Kenealy and turn her back.
I used to – 1990’s – give seminars on system dynamics. Prof who was the main brain made us all deliver SD without labels or jargon. Tricky yet doable. Very tricky at first.
So I have become utterly sick and tired of labels. Christian. Muslim. Buddhist. Breatharian. Social – capital ist ism ians anything! Virue tribal signalling.
Nick showed actual numbers of humans voting – thanks, I didnt realise one nation were first timers in all those seats – is a much better way of discussing this than c m or viet this or that. Like the generation game JQ rails at, same with -insert flavour label -ians voting. It is NOT binary or christian. It is a big grey gausian? mass of labels needing topological descriptors & definitions at every step. Not isms. As JQ / Tom Switzwr / Jeremy Gans Between the Lines discussion shows. [ and why I liked JQ’s line about his perceived future – “not much different ” ]
How about a thread JQ where comments are only posted if zero labels, only definitions? The post and comments would need to be thesis each. Yet it would be far less divisve, way more inclusive, not so polarising and way more enlightening, and allow for 2,000 flavours. No wonder coordinating social soft way harder and capital hard.
Yes – I too am guilty.
And I have an email back from the AEC so I can put numbers to highlight Smith9’s assersion in this comment…
“We have a long enough run of data (118 years) to prove the point conclusively.” … IF you just see it as “government’ & 2pp not absolute votes. Eg… Greens v Nationals is the biggest gerrymander.
https://johnquiggin.com/2019/09/07/why-labor-lost/comment-page-1/#comment-213850
Perhaps Smith9, are able to cite 118yrs of votes. Please. The AEC has last 4 elections and I have to go to 2 other sites to find data going back to 1901.
Clip from AEC reply to me yesterday:
“You will find results for federal elections held from in 1993, 1996, 1998 and 2001 in the zip files at https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/Federal_Elections/Stats_CDRom.htm .
Results for 2004 onwards can be found at https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/Federal_Elections/ .
For earlier years, please see the following website: http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/
I hope the above information helps you.”
[ thanks psephos – data back to 1901. I’ll be emailing Adam at psephos later ]
Our government [ not labor as per smith9! ] nor electoral commision can provide data to prove or disprove Smith9’s comment. Proof!
Just because “Labor” -ONE flavour – isn’t IN GOVT – doesn’t mean Smith9 isn’t revealing smith9’s flavour – or taste buds. Another both ‘true’ and a proportional setup 2pp inevitability.
Labels. 2pp. = perhaps justified opinions???
All. Very. Tricky.
“Are Vietnamese people “conservative immigrants”? Are Vietnamese communities even especially religious?”
Yes, rather more so than less.
“Are you aware Vietnam legalised same-sex marriage several years before Australia?”
Are you aware of any difference between Vietnam and the Vietnamese communities in Australia?
Do you read the local Vietnamese media?
Are you aware of the different positions Whitlam and Fraser took over Vietnamese immigrants, and their difference in response?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191021111826.htm
‘Artificial leaf’ successfully produces clean gas
Date:October 21, 2019 Source:University of Cambridge Summary:A widely-used gas that is currently produced from fossil fuels can instead be made by an ‘artificial leaf’ that uses only sunlight, carbon dioxide and water, and which could eventually be used to develop a sustainable liquid fuel alternative to gasoline.
…”You may not have heard of syngas itself but every day, you consume products that were created using it. Being able to produce it sustainably would be a critical step in closing the global carbon cycle and establishing a sustainable chemical and fuel industry,” said senior author Professor Erwin Reisner from Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry, who has spent seven years working towards this goal. …
Although great advances are being made in generating electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind power and photovoltaics, Reisner says the development of synthetic petrol is vital, as electricity can currently only satisfy about 25% of our total global energy demand. “There is a major demand for liquid fuels to power heavy transport, shipping and aviation sustainably,” he said.”
Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen: My conservative Vietnamese family from western Sydney voted ‘yes’ – stop blaming migrants
How about the views of the highest ranking Vietnamese-born Catholic prelate in Australia?
Bishop Vincent Long: pastoral letter on the same-sex marriage postal survey
As an aside Bishop Vincent Long is also open about the levels of sexual abuse in the clergy, and his own experiences of being sexually abused by clergy as a young adult. He is also open about the numbers of gay clergy in the Catholic church.
Nick says:
I can only assume you don’t take much notice of Australian politics. There are numerous other examples, including Tshung Chang in WA ***www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-21/one-nation-candidate-says-hanson-has-nothing-against-asians/8199466
Shan Ju Lin was sacked as a Qld One Nation candidate for being too conservative/reactionary in her opinions about gays ***www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-08/one-nation-pauline-hanson-dumps-anti-gay-candidate-shan-ju-lin/8168388
What point is everyone trying to win?
Hugo, Nick etc. Would you agree that sexual abuse + catholicism + bishop, rank ahead of born in Vietnam? See my comment above. It seems like debating priors.
And talk about hard work ” for being too conservative/ reactionary in her opinions about gays “. Good example of political candidate selection processes tho.
Speaking of parties & candidates, I spoke today with an ex secretary of Libs. They won’t even visit their local branch as it is toooooo right wing and fundamentalist now for them. Blue ribbon seat north of Sydney. The partner of the Secretary was Pressident at the time and was offered to be parachuted to any seat. Reply “and become a politician – you must be joking!” ( retired qc now a first line responder councellor ). Consequently they both resigned. I urged them to restack. After 3rd restack last 15yrs. No. Chance.
If many political parties branches now – not just liblab – have moved to overton window past the bbq, and ex senior small L and and centrist lab can’t or won’t bother to debate at local level – I’m with Ikon ” we’re roon’d”. 🙂 for the mediun term.
Remind me, what is this %issing contest about again?
Thanks Hugo. I think your stretching it at “numerous”, and last time I checked exceptions don’t make rules. I must admit though, I’m also baffled as to what your point was in bringing this up, and what it has to do exactly with the ABC article? None of those candidates ran in “conservative immigrant” electorates, as you termed them. Which church is Tshung Chang a member of? He doesn’t strike me as religious, and I don’t think he’s ever mentioned religion in interviews.
KT2, my point was that Vietnamese-born Australians aren’t generally regarded as “conservative immigrants”, nor are they overly religious in any “conservative fundamentalist” sense. How many strict conservative fundamentalist Buddhists do you know? Nor can they can be shown to have voted for One Nation in any significant numbers, therefore of what relevance are they to the claims of the ABC article in question?
That the only Vietnamese-born Catholic bishop in Australia is clearly progressive on the issue of same sex marriage should speak volumes I would have thought. Svante is welcome to submit some data points of his own though, and I’m willing to stand corrected. Perhaps some articles from the Australian-Vietnamese newspapers he reads?
Does this come across as a pissing contest? I apologise if so, that wasn’t my intention, and I don’t think it was really anyone else’s intention either.
I never said all Christians were homophobic. I know many Christians of various denominations and none of them are homophobic. I agree that it’s unhelpful to put them all in the same basket – as per the ecological fallacies JQ is referring to – but it’s the ABC article seeking to do that, not me.
KT2, in response to your last comment, Giselle Nguyen said in her article:
“Many do not have access to the conversations we do. Many were neglected altogether by campaigners, could not access the information due to language barriers.”
I was listening to similar feedback from Carrie Hou earlier today, and it resonates a lot I think with what you’re saying:
The problem being not that Labor needs to have less progressive policies if they want to hold onto the votes of ostensibly conservative migrants in suburban seats – but that progressive Labor and Greens campaigners need to make more of an effort and spend the time engaging with them.
Nick, thanks for your generous reply.
I have not time to listen today to Carrie Hou. Probably Monday.
“but that progressive Labor and Greens campaigners need to make more of an effort and spend the time engaging with them” -yes yes and yes.
I have also noticed percieved betrayal may be a force for for swing voters to protest vote.
As with persoanl relationships, betrayal is usually a cick up not a conspiracy, and openndialogue and apologies close to the perceived betrayal usually clear the air if done in good-faith by all parties to the betrayal. If left to fester – ie we didn’t “make more of an effort and spend the time engaging with them” the slight, condecentiin, betrayal becomes metastisized and costs at the ballot box. Not to mention making society ever mired in mediocrity.
As JQ talks about how we don’t talk about the ‘R’ word, imo we also don’t seem to be able to surface and talk about the ‘B’ word. To the detriment of the triple bottom line.
“Often betrayal is the act of supporting a rival group, or it is a complete break from previously decided upon or presumed norms by one party from the others. ” wikip… we presume. Alot.
Add grief, frustration, trauma to the R & B music too…
“Australians are yelling in grief and frustration – but will Scott Morrison act?
“The deficiencies in the mental health and aged cars systems are distressing realities that need to be confronted.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/02/australians-are-yelling-in-grief-and-frustration-but-will-scott-morrison-act