Author: John Quiggin

Rabbitohs and memory

John Quiggin52 Comments

In the course of a recent minor tiff on Twitter, accused of bandwagon jumping, I asserted that I had not only supported the Rabbitohs since (just) before their last premiership, but that I was old enough to remember actual rabbitohs, that is, itinerant sellers of rabbit meat. Now I’m wondering whether I’m conflating rabbit as an occasional treat with bottle-ohs, early recyclers who, as the name implies, went door to door collecting bottles. I can definitely remember a bottle-oh with a horse-drawn cart (this would have been around 1960 in Adelaide).

Any other readers of a certain age want to weigh in?

Also, is there a word for Twittertiffs?

Black Swans, Financial Crises and more

John Quiggin19 Comments

I’ve spent the last couple of days in Sydney at a conference organized by the Paul Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality. It’s striking that this is the only research group of which I’m aware that takes dysfunctionality, rather than the Efficient Markets Hypothesis as a starting point.

Various people have asked me about the paper and slides, so I’m putting them up for download.

Black Swans and Financial Regulation (presentation

Unawareness and financial innovation presentation and paper)

Give to MS research, or asylum seekers

John Quiggin1 Comment

I have about a week to go before my MS Swimathon, and haven’t yet heard the voice of the public on whether I should go the full Tony in my post-event photo. I’m going to set the default to “No”, and require five Yes votes, accompanied by $20 (or more) donations to change that.

If you’d rather give to an activist cause, I’ve been asked to advertise Esther Gyorki’s half-marathon run supporting the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

Pyne on the American model

John Quiggin16 Comments

I appeared yesterday before the Senate Committee inquiring into the government’s proposed higher education reforms. I focused on criticism of the US model being advocated by the government and the Go8, and was ready with quotes from the Go8 submission. I was unprepared, however, for the line of questioning I got from LNP members of the Committee, who denied that the government, as distinct from the Go8, was pushing the US model. My iPhone wasn’t up to the job of producing a definitive statement on the spot, but I have now located the source I wanted, in which Pyne, speaking to the Policy Exchange group in the UK says (emphasis added)

We have much to learn about universities competing for students and focussing on our students. Not least, we have much to learn about this from our friends in the United States. They have developed a diverse array of institutions encouraging prospective students to pick and choose their futures and where they are going to study, immerse themselves in enriching extra-curricular activities, and make life-long friends. Students routinely chase a range of options as to where they study, whether that’s at home or in a place known as college. Going to college is a rite of passage for American high school graduates. And it is a gift that keeps on giving.

The competitive nature of American tertiary education breeds the sort of focus on competition for students that Glyn Davis referred to. It breeds loyalty and devotion to one’s alma mater – and we know that American colleges leave us for dead when it comes to attracting philanthropic support from their graduates.

Another Australian Vice Chancellor, Professor Warren Bebbington of the University of Adelaide, wrote last week in The Times Higher Education supplement, and I quote:

higher education in Australia could be transformed into the most dynamic system in the world. It (could) have the rich variety of the US university landscape but without the crippling debts that American students suffer.
This should be the focus of a fundamental community-wide debate.

He opined that:

the debate has been largely contained thus far, and has taken place in terms incomprehensible to the average person. Even worse, some of the most influential academic voices seem intent on preventing Australians ever benefitting from what is proposed.

In the US, nearly half of all students do not go from high school to a public university of the Australian type, but instead attend teaching-only undergraduate colleges offering only Bachelor degrees. Without research programmes, these colleges do a first-class job of teaching: through small classes and an intense extra-curricular programme. Students have an unforgettable, utterly life-changing educational experience.

He continued that:

this huge array of highly-individual undergraduate colleges is one of the glories of American higher education.

Such colleges do not exist in Australia. Ours has been a highly constrained system of universities with limited scope for universities to shape their own offerings to students.

As I’ve previously pointed out, Bebbington’s claim is ludicrously wrong. He’s describing liberals arts colleges that educate perhaps 2 per cent of the college-age cohort in the US, charge around $50 000 per year and have endowments of the order of $1 million per student. The second-tier state universities, community colleges and for-profits actually attended by half or more of the student population are nothing like this.

Clearly, Pyne (like the Go8) doesn’t have a clue about the model he is pushing. This whole package should be scrapped: If the government wants to make changes, it should do some research first.

Yesterday's enemies, today's allies … and tomorrow ?

John Quiggin39 Comments

When a militarily powerful country tries to govern the affairs of millions of people on the other side of the planet, we shouldn’t be surprised that chaos results …

That’s of the grab from my latest piece in Inside Story, commenting on the utter incoherence of US (and therefore Australian) policy in the Middle East. An extended version:

How could it be otherwise? A rich and militarily powerful country has taken it upon itself to govern the affairs of millions of people on the other side of the planet, of whom it knows nothing. Its emissaries routinely elevate particular individuals, ethnic groups, religious sects and political parties as favourites, then just as quickly dump them in favour of new friends. Its tools vary randomly from overwhelming force to plaintive exhortation, with no clear or consistent rationale.

The key observation is that, with the exception of slavish obedience to the whims of the Netanyahu government, the US has switched sides on almost every conflict in the Middle East in the space of a couple of years.

My policy recommendation to the US is

an announcement that, from now on, the people of the Middle East would be left to sort out their problems for themselves. In particular, it would be useful to state that the United States has no strategic concern with Middle Eastern oil, and that energy policy is a matter for individual countries to determine according to their own priorities.

Inside Story doesn’t appear to take comments so read there (lots of other interesting stuff) and comment here.

My dear Mr Quiggan …

John Quiggin42 Comments

… so begins this comment on a recent thread. I don’t have to read any further to know that the subsequent comment will be both hostile and silly.[^1]

My surname is mis-spelt fairly often, reasonably enough in the case of people who’ve only heard it and have to guess at the unstressed vowel. But it happens surprisingly often when all that is needed is to transcribe the text in front of them.

Likewise, I occasionally get people addressing me as “Mr” because they feel the need for a title and choose the default.

Neither, by themselves guarantees hostility and stupidity. But in ten years of blogging, I’ve never seen an exception to the rule that together, they imply exactly that.

Is this just me? Do other bloggers and commenters find that particular forms of address predict the content of comments? And, if so, which ones?

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Render unto Caesar (crosspost from Crooked Timber)

John Quiggin5 Comments

Of the three Jews described by George Steiner as, in Corey Robin’s summary, having formulated a great and demanding ethics/politics, Jesus is to me the most interesting.[^1] That thought struck me while reading Jerry Cohen’s Self-ownership, freedom and equality, a Marxist response to Nozick. As Cohen observes early on, Marxists seem to have a lot more difficulty responding to Nozick than do (US) liberals or social democrats. That’s because the notion of self-ownership central to Nozick’s argument is closely allied to the Marxian idea that capitalism inherently involves exploitation (that is, extraction of surplus value from labor). Nozick’s claim was that the same is true of taxation, or any kind of claim on private property imposed by the state.

I’ll come back to self-ownership in a little while. The more interesting point, to me, is that Nozick’s argument was refuted in advance by Jesus when he was asked by Pharisees (arbiters of the law laid down by Moses) whether it was lawful for Jews to pay taxes to the Romans. This was, of course, a trap, since he could be arrested for saying No and discredited for saying Yes. Jesus showed them a coin with the emperor’s head on the obverse and said “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s”. And “when they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way.”

Jesus’ point is just as valid if the coin is replaced by paper currency bearing the picture of a president, or rent from a land title issued by a state, or a dividend coupon from a corporation established under state law. All of these things were initially obtained from states under conditions that (in most cases, explicitly) involved the obligation to pay taxes as determined by the legal processes of those states. Someone who takes Caesar’s coin and then repudiates the associated obligation to pay taxes is, quite simply, a thief (of course, theft implies property, and vice versa).

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MS Swimathon Appeal

John Quiggin4 Comments

I’m doing another of my fundraisers, this time for Multiple Sclerosis. I’m in a team of six people who will do a 12 hour swim relay in a couple of weeks. So, I get to swim two hours, which I’ve never done before. I’m a bit worried about foot cramps, which tend to be the biggest constraint on my swimming (apart from my appalling technique). But, if that happens, I’ll do the two hours in separate stages. So, you can be fairly sure of getting your money’s worth.

As an added inducement, anyone who donates at least $20 gets to vote on the “Tony Abbott question”. Should I post a pic in budgie-smugglers after the event. Feel free to debate, but only those who donate get a say, just like in real life politics.

Form letter, with details, over the fold

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