The fundraising appeal for tsunami relief was a big success, and it seems to me that the exercise is worth trying again. As a community, we seemed to be happier when we were focusing at least some of our thoughts on helping others than in our usual isolated consumer mode, and I can’t see why we shouldn’t consistently maintain something like the effort level devoted to the tsunami appeal. Giving away 2 per cent of our income (say, an hour’s pay each work for a full-time worker) to international relief efforts would make a huge difference. Australia alone could finance a pretty large slab of the various ambitious projects for global health that have been put forward. If all the whole developed countries contributed at this level, much of the misery that afflicts the world could be prevented.

So, I’m going to be giving away $1 per comment, once again, up to a limit of $1000 (last time there were about 500 comments). I’m also hoping for cosponsors, who could agree to put in 5,10, 20 or 50 cents up to whatever limit seems appropriate. I plan to donate the proceeds to Medecins Sans Frontieres, and express a preference for projects related to the The Global Fund to fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria . These diseases kill over 6 million people each year, and the numbers are growing. Of course, cosponsors are welcome to nominate their own preferred charity.

I’m going to give a bit more notice this time, especially in the hope of attracting some new cosponsors. I’ll put up the post calling for comments sometime on Friday, and keep it open until Sunday evening.

Matthew Yglesias had a well-argued piece a couple of days ago on Social Security and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH), in which he quoted me on the (generally left-wing) implications of rejecting the EMH. This spurred me to start on a post (or maybe a series) on the EMH, the equity premium and the implications for US Social Security reform. Most of what I have to say is consistent with what Matt and others have said previously, but perhaps there will be a bit of a new perspective.
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Well, I just bought my first pack of hot cross buns. Until now, I’ve vaguely tried to adhere to some notion of what’s appropriate to the season, but I guess I have to accept that Easter begins as soon as the last marked-down mince pies and Christmas puddings have been cleared from the shelves. Then I suppose there’s a month or two each for Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day before Christmas starts again in October (plus the various smaller occasions like Valentine’s Day).

My capitulation to the Zeitgeist on this matter doesn’t worry me too much. After all, I like hot cross buns. But I’m getting increasingly frequent comments on my furrowed brow. It’s no longer seen as the product of deep thought, but rather an indication that I’m too cheap to spring for Botox.

I’ve been the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society meetings which were in Coffs Harbour this year, as the New England branch put them on. A nice change from the usual capital city locations, though this is the rainy season in Coffs just as it is in Brisbane.

One Coffs Harbour icon did not live up to my memories of the distant past[1]. The Big Banana isn’t very big. For me, it’s always been the exemplar of Australian bigness, but at 40 years old, it belongs to the Triassic era of Big Things (along with the Big Trout at Adaminaby, which I like a lot). The Big Prawn and so on are on a more Jurassic scale, and the Big Merino at Goulburn is positively Cretaceous: the ultrasaurus of such things.

fn1. I’ve driven through Coffs quite a few times, and not realised this, but that’s because I didn’t notice the Banana even when I was vaguely looking for it, expecting, as I did, something much bigger.

This Sun-Herald front page “exclusive” by Matthew Benns is one of the most despicable pieces of journalism I’ve seen in a while. Taking the eminently forgettable occasion of Prince Charles’ visit to Australia, Benns decides to chase down the disturbed young man who shot blanks at the Prince with a starters pistol during his last visit 11 years ago. The man has turned his life around and recently qualified as a barrister. As the story makes clear, all he wants to to is forget about the whole business.

Certainly 11 years ago was a traumatic experience and is something I don’t want to bring back those memories again … To think about it even now unsettles me a little bit … what happened back then was extremely traumatic and the effect it had on my family was deeply upsetting.”

The other people quoted in the story, including then premier John Fahey and his wife seem equally unhappy about revisiting it.

Faced with this kind of response to a story idea, a responsible journalist and editor would have quietly killed it. But not Benns or the Sun-Herald edito. Their idea of letting the guy move on is to splash his picture all over the front page. I am seriously considering cancelling my subscription as a result of this.

It’s not often I get to an international sporting event on Australia Day, but tonight’s NBL match between Brisbane Bullets and NZ Breakers qualifies at a stretch. Brisbane won by the satisfyingly crushing margin of 40 points. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi, Oi, Oi!

Although I don’t shy away from it, I’m not a fan of conflict for its own sake. So when I’ve been critical of work written by someone, it’s nice to find something by the same person with which I can agree wholeheartedly. In the course of some work on the FTA, I found a nice piece on copyright by Jonathan Boymal and Sinclair Davidson[1] in Agenda (vol 10, no 2, 2003). Agenda itself protects its copyright, so I’ll give a summary and extract rather than a link

Boymal and Davidson do a good critique of arguments for longer copyright, focusing on the fact that any benefits more than 50 years beyond the death of today’s authors will be discounted to (virtually) zero using private risk-adjusted discount rates. By contrast, the costs of copyright extension start immediately, and are subject to lower social discount rates.

Another issue relates to ways in which copyrighted characters may be appropriated by other writers, and some very interesting points are raised. (mildly non-PG content over page).

fn1. Davidson and I have crossed swords on tax quite a few times.
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Once again, I’d like to thank everyone who participated in the tsunami appeal, especially cosponsors. Most of the pledges have already been redeemed, and the remainder are flowing in as people get some free time (I got notification of one more just as I was typing these words). In this post, I want to answer a few questions that were raised in the course of the appeal. In fact, part of the idea was to get people thinking about such questions.
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I mentioned, but didn’t spell out, Nicholas Gruen’s tsunami offer, which you can access at Peach Home Loans

Welcome all from John Quiggin’s great blog! If you’ve made a comment on his blog, the tsunami victims have already got $1 from us – we’re matching John’s contributions dollar for dollar. Here’s our additional offer to you. If you have a loan of over $200,000 contact us, and if we can’t save you at least $10,000 in repayments over the life of your loan (assuming a 30 year term starting from now) we’ll pay $50 to you or to a tsunami charity at your choice. If you refinance through us, we’ll pay $2 to the tsunami charity for every $1 of rebate you forsake – up to a charity payment of $200.

I haven’t looked into the service Nicholas is offering, but he is a very able economist, reliable person and generally a good bloke, so I think it’s worth a look.

I haven’t managed to come up with a creative new idea for helping the tsunami aid appeals, so I’m going to copy Michele Agnew. From now until midnight Sunday, I’ll give one $A to the Australian Red Cross tsunami appeal for each comment[1] I receive on this post, up to a maximum of 1000.

To add a tiny element of novelty, I’m inviting others to join the effort by sponsoring this offer at whatever rate they can afford. You can work out your maximum exposure from the limit, for example, if you offer 5 cents a comment, you’re promising to give up to $50.

If you’re interested, please send me an email at j dot quiggin at uq dot edu dot au. I’ll record it in the updates with your name, pseudonym or anonymously as you prefer. When the appeal is over, I’ll write and tell you how much you’ve promised. Feel free to nominate a charity of your choice.

Update The Eudora mail server is running hot, with the first contributor to join the effort already coming through:
“William Burroughs’ Baboon” says pls put me down for 10c per comment
Update 10:12 pm An anonymous regular reader offers 50 cents per comment, nominating World Vision
rdb offers 50 cents per comment
Nicholas Gruen offers to match me dollar for dollar, in return for an ad. Accepted!
That’s $4.10 $3.10 per comment! (sorry for late-night arithmetic errors)

Update 6am
An anonymous regular reader offers 15c per comment
“Saint Straightjacket” offers 20c per comment, up to $300

So we’re up to $3.45 per comment, and the total amount raised is nearly $500, with most of the day still left to come.

It’s particularly good to see lots of visitors from Tim Blair’s blog – a reminder that, whatever our disagreements, we can all work together at a time like this.

In the comments, Tim has offered $100 if I shave my beard off. That’s nowhere near enough, but I’m eager to secure Tim’s money for the cause so I’m making a counteroffer in the spirit of national unity and cash for comment. If Tim will give $100, I’ll write a 200 word post saying exclusively good things about John Howard. I’m willing to increase the amount proportionally for further pledges from Tim’s (or my) readers, until I run out of good things to say.

Update 10:30am We’re well over 200 comments now, and thanks to the generosity of cosponsors, within sight of the original target of $1000, with the capacity to raise a lot more

wmmbb has offered 20c a comment, up to a total of 500
Mark Bahnisch has offered 10c a comment

I’m really impressed by all of this. Quite a few cosponsors have offered more, in relation to their means, than my starting offer. This is one area where I’m unreservedly in favour of competition, and I’m already thinking about my next move.

I’d also like to thank everyone who’s linked to the post. In particular, I now have a full set of Tims, at least among the blogs I read regularly: Tim Blair, Tim Dunlop, Tim Lambert and Tim T have all sent visitors this way. For any other Tims or non-Tims who want to link, there’s still more than 12 hours to go.

Update 1:34pm
Crossing the ideological divide, Andrew Norton offers 10c a comment
Paul2 also offers 10c
wmmbb offers 10c more
Harry Clarke offers 20c up to 500 comments

That puts us over $4 a comment, and with well over 300 comments, we’ve easily passed the original goal of $1000. But there’s still plenty of money on the table, so keep the comments coming in.

I forgot to mention it when I put this post up, and I’m not going to worry too much about it today, but this is a PG blog, so no more coarse language, please. Double entendres and dirty jokes are fine, as long as they’re funny.

I’ve had the first taker on the Howard challenge. “2dogs” has sent in his $50 to the Red Cross, and emailed me the receipt, earning 100 words of sincere praise from me for John Howard, to be published as soon as I’ve tallied up the donations and tied myself to the keyboard. Come on Howard-lovers, and set me a real challenge. I could write that much defending Don Rumsfeld, and have done so. 1000 words in praise of Howard might give me some trouble.

And here’s the ad I promised Nicholas Gruen, who’s agreed to match my donations. If you click here you can see a further generous offer from him.

<img src="wordpress/wp-content/images/Peachanimatedgifbanner.gif" href="http://www.peachhomeloans.com.au/quiggin.htm&quot;

Update 6pm We’ve passed 400 comments and raised more than $1500. Looking at the current pace, there should be more than 500 comments by the time the appeal ends, but probably not many more than 600. A number of cosponsors have limited their contributions to an upper bound of 500 comments, thereby giving themselves a fair bit of certainty. Now I’m appealing for some risk-tolerant types to cosponsor the remaining comments, starting at number 501. Why don’t you put in, say, 50 cents a comment. There’s a small risk that you might be hit for $250, but in the absence of a last-minute surge, it’s more likely to be around $50.

Update 10:30pm

Jack Strocchi and Claire Rodda have promised 10c per comment up to 500

Down and Out in Sài Gòn has promised 50c for each comment over 500. At this stage, it looks as if he(?) will get off cheaply, so let’s have a flood of last-minute comments.

Final Midnight has come to Queensland, and we ended up with 470 comments. I’m off to bed now, but in the morning I’ll send my own contribution, rounded up to $500, and advise commenters how much they’ve promised to pay.

fn1. At my absolute discretion, I’ll delete bots, spammers, repetitive commenters etc. If you don’t trust me to act fairly in this respect, don’t participate.