CB Radio

John Quiggin18 Comments

One of my very first posts back in 2002 looked at whether blogging was a fad like CB radio and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t[1]. Four years and tens of millions of blogs later, Guy Rundle at Crikey asks the same question and reaches the opposite answer (reprinted at Mark Bahnisch). The main evidence he offers is the proliferation of dead and still-born blogs. Rundle draws an analogy with 17th century pamphlets, which he presents as a transitional technology, paving the way for newspapers.

A much better analogy, and one that’s obviously in Rundle’s mind as an editor of Arena is the “little magazine”. If you go through the stacks of any good library, you’ll find huge numbers of dead magazines, with lifespans running from decades to a single optimistic issue. There are almost certainly far more dead magazines than live ones. But the little magazine form has persisted up to the present, and is now migrating to the Internet.

Reading between the lines, it seems clear that Rundle hopes and expects that the future of online publishing will belong to magazine-style publications “well-edited moderate circulation outlets [that] can charge and get subscriptions” rather than to blogs. There are a few examples, including Crikey itself, New Matilda and Gawker and Salon in the US (also Opinion Online, but that’s free). Still, there’s very little evidence that such publications are displacing blogs, and serious doubts about whether the model as a whole is viable. The biggest attempt to organise a bunch of blogs into a media empire has been, as far as anyone can see, an expensive disaster.

It would be a pity for the little magazine format to disappear, but it seems likely that some fairly radical changes are needed if it is to survive the shift to the Internet, which renders many of the traditional gatekeeping functions of editors obsolete. Rather than bagging blogs, Guy Rundle would be better off thinking about questions like this.

Update While I was thinking about this, I looked about for a bit of evidence and found this survey on people’s familiarity with Internet terms. Unfortunately blogs weren’t included, but 9 per cent of respondents claimed to have a good idea what an RSS feed is (compared to 13 per cent for podcasting, which is new, but also much more directly accessible to anyone with an iPod). Blog reading isn’t the only use for an RSS feed, but it was the first big one, and still probably the most important, and using an RSS feed is still a sign of a hardcore reader. Of course, some people may have answered incorrectly, but I was still favorably surprised by this.

fn1. Mind you, I thought, and still think SMS is like CB radio, so all opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.

Back above ground!

John Quiggin14 Comments

Finally, after fourteen days, Todd Russell and Brant Webb are free from the mine in which they’ve trapped. It’s a great achievement for the rescuers, and an amazing story of unlikely survival. Watching the TV coverage, it looked like they were both careful enough to clock off on leaving the mine – think of the overtime!

Meanwhile, the funeral of Larry Knight, killed in the cave-in, will be held today. Our thoughts will be with his family and friends.

The elephant in the corner

John Quiggin61 Comments

I got the conference volume from the Reserve Bank of Australia 2005 Conference quite a while ago, but I’ve only just read them. The main focus is on the decline in the volatility of the business cycle observed in the English-speaking countries since the mid-80s (or in Australia’s case since the end of the last recession).

There’s a lot of discussion of monetary policy, micro reform and so on, but no mention of what I would see as the single most important factor – the abandonment of the external balance objective. For most of the postwar period, economic policy makers juggled the desire to keep the domestic economy stable with the constraint imposed by the balance of payments. Not surprisingly, this was a difficult job and promising economic expansions were regularly choked off because of emerging current account deficits.

Now we have a deficit of 7 per cent of GDP (as do most other English-speaking countries) and no one worries. The assumption is that borrowers and lenders are consenting adults who can make their own decisions. Right or wrong, this assumption makes macroeconomic management an awful lot easier.

We may well be about to find out whether policymakers have been right to view trade deficits with benign neglect. The US dollar seems to be beginning its long-awaited depreciation against the euro and other trading partners (even against the $A) and long-term interest rates are rising. Some combination of the two should sooner or later bring the US back into trade balance. The question is whether this adjustment will be smooth or painful.

Wikipedia economics category project

John Quiggin19 Comments

I’m getting involved in Wikipedia and my big project is to set up a categorisation system for economics based on the JEL Classification system.

I think this scheme is robust enough to allow for an expansion of Wikipedia to compete with specialist works like the Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, though this is obviously a long way off. As mentioned in previous posts, I’m very optimistic about Wikipedia’s potential, but the economics section is a long way short of being a comprehensive reference source at present. One side effect of the project is to reveal that there are whole categories in the JEL system for which Wikipedia doesn’t have an article – Computable General Equilibrium models for example.

Anyway, I could do with a bit of help on this from readers with at least some knowledge of economics. Basic Wikipedia editing skills (or willingness to acquire them) are desirable, but if you just want to write articles on gap topics, I could wikify them for you. Contact me by email or in the comments thread, if you want to help.

UpdateThanks for the positive response. I’ve got a starting list of articles that don’t seem to exist:

Exchange economy
Factor income distribution
Atlruism in economics (section in existing altruism article)
Expectations (with link to existing articles for rational and adaptive expectations)
Economics of contract law
Stochastic games
CGE models

and also some stubs (existing article is just a starting point)

Incomplete markets
Social choice theory
Economic methodology

THere’s a larger list of stubs here (though many seem not to need much more than a stub) and requested articles here. In terms of my particular project, if people could try to work out the appropriate JEL category and use that (if it exists already) or advise me (if it doesn’t) that would be great.

Weekend reflections

John Quiggin42 Comments

Weekend Reflections is on again. Please comment on any topic of interest (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please). Feel free to put in contributions more lengthy than for the Monday Message Board or standard comments.

Souffle rising a third time ?

John Quiggin38 Comments

The resignation of Victorian Opposition leader Robert Doyle has produced widespread suggestions that Jeff Kennett should return to politics. While Kennett could scarcely do worse than Doyle, there’s not much reason to suppose he would do a great deal better.

The core of Kennett’s political appeal in the 1990s was the claim that, thanks to Labor’s mismanagement, Victoria was in a state of crisis that could only be remedied by the radical free-market reforms he advocated. Voters bought this story in two successive elections, but had tired of it by 1999, when he was narrowly defeated. Although some claimed at the time that voters had merely intended to “send the government a message”, a string of Labor victories in by-elections suggested the opposite message – once the possibility of getting rid of Kennett became a reality, voters embraced it with enthusiasm.

Kennett’s biggest problem though, is that everything the Bracks government has done can be seen as preparation against a possible Kennett comeback. On the one hand, they’ve been obsessed with avoiding anything that would smack of fiscal irresponsibility. Official debt levels have been held down through expedients like Public-Private Partnerships (the apparent benefits are bogus, but Kennett can scarcely argue this, having been a pioneer of the PPP mania). On the other hand, they’ve restored a lot of the cuts to schools, hospitals and so on made under Kennett. As a result, Bracks can easily run a scare campaign against Kennett, but not vice versa

It’s hard to see Kennett winning in the election due in about six months, though presumably there will be some clawback from the 2002 disaster. In the longer run, anything can happen. But if he comes back, I’d say this implies a commitment to stick out a full parliamentary term as leader, and it’s not obvious that he’d be willing to do this.

As for Doyle, he will only be remembered, if at all, for his irresponsible campaigns in favour of speeding (more precisely, against any effective measures to curb speeding). His departure from politics is long overdue.

More on the souffle question from Rank and Vile

UpdateSo much for that idea