I got some interesting comments on mentioning my piece on Bush, notably from Tim Dunlop and, in email, from Jeff Hauser so I thought I’d post the whole thing:

One of the striking features of the aftermath of September 11 in the United States has been the absence of any significant upsurge in anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant sentiment. This contrasts sharply with the success of anti-immigrant parties elsewhere in the developed world.
American participants in the continuing ‘culture war’ between the US and Europe have been quick to seize on this point as proof of American cultural superiority. But even a cursory look at recent history shows that America is no more immune to racism than any other country. Contrary to the quasi-Marxist view that individuals make no significant difference to historical developments, the best explanation is one that gives a lot of personal credit to George W. Bush.
Not all aspects of Bush’s performance in office are creditable. Much of his campaign platform has turned out to be bogus. He ran as a self-made businessman, but owed his success to a combination of politically-motivated favours and dubious deals. His ‘compassionate conservativism’ has shown more compassion for the very rich than anyone else. But, despite campaign mis-steps like his appearance at the separatist Bob Jones university, Bush’s commitment to ethnic diversity and mutual tolerance appears to be quite genuine.
The Bush Cabinet includes two blacks, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, as well as Hispanic Commerce Secretary Mel Martinez. Bush himself speaks Spanish well enough to take questions on the campaign trail. (There is, inevitably, dispute over whether his Spanish is fluent, or merely adequate, but then, there is a similar dispute about his English).
All this might be regarded as tokenism, the product of political calculation. The tradition of assigning Cabinet and other positions to members of electorally powerful groups is as old as democracy itself. And with millions of Spanish-speaking voters to be won, a few phrases in a second language are not much of a price to pay.
But the fact is that the US Republican party has generally made the opposite calculation, preferring in the immortal words of Pat Buchanan (then an advisor to Richard Nixon) to “cut … the country in half” in the belief that they would be “left with the larger half”. The fruits of this policy of “positive polarisation” may be seen in the Republican delegation to Congress. Out of 250 or so members, only one is black (JC Watts of Oklahoma), and he has announced his retirement, largely because of disillusionment with his Republican colleagues.
Similarly, while Bush pitched for the votes of Spanish-speaking immigrants, fellow-Republicans like Pete Wilson, former governor of California, ran hard on border protection and preservation of the status of English as the dominant language. Wilson’s successful campaign in 1994 was based on ads showing grainy video footage of ‘illegals’ crossing the Mexican border, with the voiceover, “They keep coming.” Wilson hoped to ride anti-immigrant sentiment all the way to the White House in 2000, but, thankfully failed.
Leadership is a much-abused word. But the fact is that racism and prejudice are issues on which leadership, or the lack of it, can make a lot of difference. In most countries, hard-core racists make up a small part of the population, perhaps 10 per cent. At the opposite pole, perhaps 20 per cent of the population is consistently opposed to racism. Between these poles, most people basically agree with the idea of a multicultural and discrimination-free society, but are nonetheless prone to varying degrees of prejudice about other people who look different, speak differently and have different religious beliefs and cultural practices.
The current world situation is one in which appeals to such prejudice can yield significant political payoffs, at least in the short run. For a variety of reasons, this kind of appeal is easier for parties of the political right. The leaders of these parties are therefore faced with the temptation of making such appeals themselves, or of colluding with racist political forces. Sadly, the majority have succumbed. Apart from Bush, Jacques Chirac in France is the only significant right-wing leader to stand firmly against collaboration with racism. Many on the left have either failed to take a firm stand on these issues, or capitulated completely by adopting ‘me-too’ or ‘small target’ positions.
Some aspects of the Bush administration’s response to September 11, such as its unilateral approach to international action, and the cavalier treatment of civil liberties have been less than constructive. But in this crucial respect, Bush has set an example of leadership that others could well follow.

Tim Colebatch reminds us of Australia’s poor performance on this vital issue and says, Someone should explain why good people are jobless

Bankruptcy at WorldCom Is the Largest in U.S. History. Enough said.

In a scathing discussion of the State Liberal parties, Chris Textor writes:
“They [the Labor state Premiers and Chief Ministers] tend to be level-headed, well-spoken leaders rather than the wretched socialist handbags of Federal Labor, who’s every word and policy speech sounds like they were cobbled together from the How to be an ideologically correct leftie manual.”
Is this Kim Beazley and Simon Crean we’re talking about? I agree that Federal Labor is an awful mess, but “socialist?”

A PS on the great telecoms debate. Vodafone, which gave Scott Wickstein a ‘wicked good deal’ a while back, just *raised* its price for SMS messages by13 percent, mtching Telstra and Optus.

As an aside, SMS must be about the worst value in telecommunications history, in terms of cost per unit of info. As I understand it, the typical message contains less than 25 characters, and costs 25 cents, i.e. 1 cent per byte. A typical ISP will offer a $30/month service with a limit of 300MB. I make the price ratio 100 000 to 1.

Or you could compare voice telephony at, say 20Khz, which is 2.5Kb/sec. At SMS prices, a 1 minute telephone call would cost $1500.

Despite what Scott says, I’m not quite old enough to remember the days of Morse code. But I’d be willing to bet that, at least in nominal terms, even telegrams were cheaper than SMS.

Mickey Kaus tries to bluster his way past the fact that, after six years of apparently successful welfare ‘reform’,Welfare Rolls are On the Rise Again . Of course the real problem is that the rise in recipient numbers hasn’t kept pace with the rise in unemployment, suggesting a lot of families with no (legal) income at all.

Holy Joe Lieberman, point man in Congress for the Big Five (make that Four) accounting firms, still claims that stock options are The Best Way to Spread the Wealth. And Congress apparently agrees, thanks to some massive corporate donations. The US is looking more and more like Japan in the early 90s. The bubble has burst, but the corrupt practices that went with it are alive and well.

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters by Ursula Le Guin. I really like this kind of SF, but it’s drowned in sea of sword, sorcery and space opera these days. If anyone knows of anyone recent who’s comparable to Le Guin, please let me know.

Scott Wickstein comes back for another round on natural monopoly in telecommunications, saying :

“So why was it that phone prices fell with the introduction of competition? I know I’m not an economist, however, I do know something about phone bills. ”

Something, but not enough. For example, Scott is apparently unaware that:
(i) on average, the real cost of phone calls has fallen by about 5 per cent per year, for the last fifty years at least, under both monopoly and ‘competition’
(ii) Telstra’s prices are determined not by market forces but by a regulatory price cap requiring the same average rate of price reduction that prevailed under the Telecom Australia monopoly
(iii) In most years, Telstra has met the price cap exactly. That is, it has reduced average real prices by the minimum amount required by law.

Jason Soon also has some comments. He says, correctly, that economists have disagreed about whether telecommunications is a natural monopoly. However, this is an issue on which market outcomes speak louder than econometric studies. For example, Business Week, scarcely a leftwing source, observesIt’s “Merge, Buy, or Die” in Telecomand predicts a US industry dominated by two or three regional monopolies.

Jason also makes some hasty assumptions about my position (and Ken Davidson’s) on these issues.

I analysed the issues and policy options at length in an Agenda article entitled The premature burial of natural monopoly: Telecommunications reform in Australia My conclusion was that
“Much of the potential benefit to be derived from reform of the telecommunications industry has been dissipated in wasteful and technically unnecessary investment in duplicate networks. This is the natural result of policies based on a naive enthusiasm for competition and wishful thinking about the death of natural monopoly.”
I expanded on this point in a rejoinder to comments by Rod Maddock
But this does not, as I observe, rule out options like an access pricing regime or even a breakup of Telstra, something which I have advocated as a route to renationalisation of the core network..

Scott Wickstein is unhappy with me for saying that telecommunications is a natural monopoly industry. Scott disliked the old Telecom and prefers competition. The problem is that ‘natural monopoly’ is a technological fact, not a statement about preferences. An industry is a natural monopoly if its services can be delivered most cheaply by a single firm.
To be fair to Scott, who regularly reminds us that he is not an economist, the same mistake has been made by people who ought to know better. The idea that competition can be wished into existence has been the source of most of the silly policies that we have seen in the last decade, policies that are now sending telecoms broke on a daily basis.