Ross Anderson is campaigning against Expropriation of faculty IPR by Cambridge University. It makes an interesting contrast with MIT where Faculty members keep their own IP rights the Open Courseware initiative is making course materials freely available.

I haven’t had anything to say about the asylum-seeker issue so far in my blogging career, mainly because I don’t think either facts or arguments are going to change many people’s minds. But I agree with most of what today’s Oz Editorial has to say. For my thoughts as of last year, you can read this.

Let me welcome our latest ‘conservative’ blogger, Alan Anderson,in the traditional fashion, by slamming one of his posts. Alan writes:

“At last! A Higher Education Minister who is prepared to point out the stupidity of a small country having a dozen universities doing the same thing. A bit of specialisation would drive our education dollars a lot further. ”

My take:
(1) In a country the size of Australia, it makes sense to do most things in at least a dozen places (the capital city and one regional centre in each state). Does Alan (or Brendan) think it’s a good idea that all future pharmacists should go to Perth for their studies?
(2) Diversity and specialisation makes sense within a given city. But there was much more diversity 15 years ago, before competition and rationalisation forced everyone to converge on a common market-driven model. In the name of specialisation, nearly every university has introduced a ‘flagship’ MBA, while crippling Arts and Science faculties. At the same time they have converged on a top-heavy managerialist model with one administrator (or even more) for every academic.
(3) What is ‘conservative’ about a higher education system run on the basis of ministerial whim? Social democrats have learned from experience that central planning isn’t as easy as it sounds. This isn’t a reason for not planning, but it certainly suggests a bit of caution. By contrast, once politicians with a ‘free-market’ ideology take up interventionism, good sense goes out the window. Examples include: Jeff Kennett, Kate Carnell and the Howard government in election mode.
For my detailed views on this subject, you can go here.
Having got the bagging out of the way, it’s time for the welcome. It looks like Alan has plenty to say, and will be a welcome addition to our ever-expanding circle.

As Mickey Kaus would say, a new report making big downward revisions in estimates of US economic growth for the last three years “requires further study”. But the likelihood of a renewed recession, starting this quarter or next must now be at least 50-50.
My initial take on the US data is that it shows a declining trend in growth from 1999 onwards, overlaid by an ‘inventory cycle’. That is, when it became clear that the dotcoms were undergoing a meltdown rather than a correction (late 2000), businesses all along the supply chain found themselves stuck with unsalable equipment and stopped ordering, generating the mini-recession of 2001. The end of this process produced the current ‘recovery’. On this interpretation, the real recession, bringing savings back into line with investment etc, is yet to come.

(2/8/02): The Economist has more on this

I’ve just encountered the (apparently) infamous disappearing Archives problem with Blogger. This, and some other difficulties that are apparently chronic but not fixed, raises in my mind the question of whether I’ve done the equivalent of a computer newbie buying a Windows machine because “that’s what everyone else does.”
PS: The instructions for making archives reappear seem to have worked, though this took some time. But I’d still be interested to hear from users of Movable Type and other systems, or to be given pointers to sites where the merits of different approaches are discussed/debated.

An interesting post from Wafin.com; Serving Moroccans in the U.S. which discusses the prospects for Morocco’s “democratic European future”. Given that Morocco is in North Africa, this might seem something of a contradiction in terms. But the concept of ‘Europe’ is expanding all the time. I predict that the success or failure of the European idea will be the big historical issue of the first half of the 21st century, outweighing or subsuming such questions as American hyperpower and the conflict between Islam and the West.

A Labour-dominated committee of MPs has demanded an urgent review of Britain’s air traffic control network, warning that partial privatisation has created a debt-laden, “penny pinching” structure which could terminally damage national interests.
The MPs are proposing another application of the ‘British model’ for renationalisation, namely conversion to a non-profit trust with government backing.
To read my take on nationalisation and renationalisation, look at today’s AFR (registration required). I’ll post this on the website soon.

A lot of confusion in policy debate today surrounds the use of the terms ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’. Although there are a lot of different abstract definitions of these terms, a reasonably neutral pair is (Definition 1)
‘Capitalism is a system where economic decisions are made in response to individual preferences as expressed through markets.’
‘Socialism is a system where economic decisions are made in response to judgements about social need expressed through democratic politicial processes.’
The problem with definitions like these is that they aren’t really operational. That is, it’s hard to look at some particular economic system and say whether it’s capitalist or socialist. So it’s useful to look at some simplifications that lend themselves to easy tests. The most straightforward (Definition 2)
Capitalism is a system where goods and services are produced and distributed through markets
Socialism is a system where goods and services are produced and distributed by governments.
Finally, there is a pair of very simple and widely used definitions based on official ideology (Definition 3)
Capitalism is the economic system prevailing in developed Western countries
Socialism is the economic system that prevailed in the former Soviet Union

Now let’s look at a couple of statements that are commonly made about capitalism and socialism. Statement 1
‘ The battle between capitalism and socialism is over. Capitalism won’
This is obviously true in relation to Definition 3, but clearly false in relation to Definition 2. The ratio of government expenditure to GDP is at or near its all-time high in most countries and is reasonably close to 50 per cent. That is, the actual economic system in Western countries is a ‘mixed economy’. So, on Definition 2, we could reasonably say
‘So far, the battle between capitalism and socialism looks like a draw’
It’s a bit harder to assess specific statements in relation to Definition 1. Even though government didn’t shrink much in the 1980s and 1990s, the role of markets relative to governments was clearly enhanced. So, on Definition 1 we might say
‘Capitalism has won most rounds in the past twenty years, but is a long way from scoring a knockout.
Now lets look at a second statement (2)
‘In a capitalist system, governments don’t make investment decisions. That’s the job of markets’.
This claim is clearly true on Definitions 1 and 2, but clearly false on Definition 3. In all OECD countries, governments have a big say in a wide range of investment decisions.
Unfortunately, a lot of people on the right try to argue from statements like 1 to statements like 2. The typical argument (with internal contradictions exposed) runs like this. ‘The relative success of Western economies proves that capitalism (Definition 3) is the best economic system. Therefore we should replace the economic system in Western countries with capitalism (Definition 1 or 2).’
Similar contradictions can be found on the left, and were particularly prevalent when the Soviet Union was still around. A typical version runs something like this.
‘ Socialism (Definition 1) is more morally attractive than capitalism. Therefore, we should support socialism (Definition 3) as represented by the government of the Soviet Union.’

Admittedly, it’s The Guardian But I don’t think the trickiest polling techniques could have elicited strong public support for strikes 20 or even 10 years ago.

“The survey shows that 59% of voters, including 61% of Labour supporters, believe the strikes earlier this month and those scheduled for next month are justified, with opposition from only 29% of voters. ”
“Some 37% of voters say they believe Tony Blair pays too much attention to business while only 14% say he pays too much attention to the trade unions and not enough to business.”

Just as unions abused their power in the 1970s, employers have been abusing theirs for the past decade, and the public mood reflects this.

Another excellent piece from Ross Gittins notes The end of the world as we knew it for 20 years, and attacks ‘rationalism’s bastard child, the Cult of Shareholder Value’. It’s interesting to speculate what kind of response a headline like this would receive from right-wing blogdom if it appeared over, say, Margo Kingston’s byline.