As at 4 pm today, donations for the Pakistan earthquake appeal totalled $695, which I will match for a total of $1390. I’m hoping we can raise this to $1000 + a matching $1000 from me, so I’m going to keep running the appeal until Sunday. Thanks to everyone who’s donated, and specially to those for even a small subtraction from the weekly budget is a big effort. Please add your promises to the earthquake appeal comment thread, not this one.
Some thoughts on the AWB monopoly
Although I’ve worked on agricultural economics for nearly thirty years, I’ve never given much thought to “single desk selling”, the policy under which Australia nominates a single source (formerly a government agency and now a quasi-private business) to supply exports of commodities such as wheat and sugar. The scandal engulfing AWB (the former Australian Wheat Board, now privatised) has naturally raised the issue of whether this export monopoly should continue. On reflection, I think it should not.
There are a couple of reasons why we might favour an export monopoly. The first is the classic idea of exploiting Australian monopoly power to generate higher returns. There are a few problems with this. First, our monopoly power in the world wheat market is very limited, even allowing for the fact that wheat is not a homogeneous commodity. Second, in the absence of restrictions on the aggregate supply of wheat, this implies diverting additional wheat to the domestic market, depressing prices there. While that’s a benefit to consumers, it means that the net gain to wheatgrowers from the operation of the AWB will be pretty modest. Finally, it doesn’t appear to me that AWB acts in the way required. Far from that of a tightfisted monopolist, the AWB culture comes across as that of hotshot sales types, eager to do whatever is necessary to bring home a deal.
The second case for an export monopoly is that of countervailing power. Here the idea is that the buying side of the market is dominated by big players who will, if left unchecked, divide and conquer Australian wheatgrowers. In a situation where Australian growers were bargaining individually with monopsony buyers, the establishment of a publicly-supported export supplier might be a good idea. But, given that such a supplier exists, it’s hard to see why it needs to retain monopoly rights. If, as claimed, it gets better prices for wheatgrowers than they can get for themselves, or through other exporters, why would they switch?
As far as wheat is concerned, the question is, I think, academic. AWB’s reputation has been so badly shredded that any deal they make from now on will be open to attack by foreign competitors, unless it is at such a discount as to make it clear that it could not possibly incorporate a bribe. This is already happening in Iraq, (though the Americans had grabbed the market for themselves in any case). So if want to keep the single-desk policy, we’ll have to establish a completely new enterprise to work it.
All's Right With the World ?
I happened (via Charles Dodgson at Through the Looking Glass) to discover that George Bush rarely goes to church (behind paywall, but the intro gives you the basics).
NTTAWWT – I’m sure he goes more often than I do. But it struck me as a blogworthy factoid.
All’s Right With the World ?
I happened (via Charles Dodgson at Through the Looking Glass) to discover that George Bush rarely goes to church (behind paywall, but the intro gives you the basics).
NTTAWWT – I’m sure he goes more often than I do. But it struck me as a blogworthy factoid.
Earthquake appeal update
As at 8:00 am today, donations totalled $595, and in addition, reader “Spog” advises that s/he had donated $200 the day before the appeal started. Please keep posting donations as comments to the original post, so I can keep track of them.
Over four appeals, we’ve now managed to raise more than $6000, the majority contributed by generous regular readers. The money has gone to relief appeals for the Asian tsunami, Darfur, the Niger famine and the Pakistan earthquake, and also to the Global Fund which supports the continuing work of Medecins Sans Frontiers.
While I sometimes get jaded with blogging, this kind of effort never fails to hearten me. Thanks, everyone!
ID Cards
A correspondent reminds me I haven’t posted on the latest proposal for an ID card. The only difference to previous occasions is that the proposal is being pushed by Philip Ruddock (reversing his previuos stand). Unlike the usual case with proposals of this kind, we don’t have to ask the question “what would happen if this power fell into the wrong hands” – the power would go straight to the wrong hands.
As far as physical cards are concerned, there are two possibilities. One is that the card would be required only on the kinds of occasions, photo ID is required at present (boarding a plane, for example) in which case there are no great costs in terms of civil liberties, but also no great benefits. The other is that police would be able to demand production of the card at will, which would reduce us to the level of the quasi-dictatorial regimes where people went in fear of losing their “papers”.
It’s also worth noting that non-residents are presumably the group of greatest concern wrt terrorism and they could scarcely be issued with cards, so they would continue to use passports as ID – it does not appear to be hard to get a fake passport from many countries.
The real issue in most debates of this kind is not so much the cards themselves as the associated system of data matching. Most of the time, the assumption of proponents is that the card should be tied to a comprehensive database, accessible by all sorts of government officials. An inevitable consequence is that corrupt officials will, on occasion, make the data available to private parties. Some data-matching is inevitable and desirable, but this should be against a general presumption that information supplied to a government agency or department is confidential to that department, unless a specific case for sharing classes of information can be made.
Pakistan earthquake appeal
It’s more than three months since Pakistan suffered a devastating earthquake, with huge loss of life, and still many people are in desperate need of help. Much of the aid promised in the immediate aftermath has not materialised (sadly, this often happens). You can read more here.
So with most people back from the Christmas break, I thought this would be a good time for another fundraising appeal. Given some of the mammoth comments threads we’ve seen lately, I thought about reviving the “cash for comment” idea, but I decided to stick with the simpler plan of matching funds.
Please give as much as you can afford to a Pakistan earthquake appeal of your choice (I’m giving to Oxfam), and send a comment or email advising me of the amount. I’ll match the total amount given, up to $1000.
Remember that all this is tax-deductible, so the final cost to a taxpayer on the top marginal rate is only $50 cents for a final donation (counting my matching money) of $200. Or someone on the 30 per cent rate could give $50 and get $15 back, a net cost of $35 for an effective donation of $100.
Update Tuesday 0830 Already a total of $600 has been raised, with generous $100 contributions from Harry Clarke, James Farrell and (by email) Steve Edwards.
Monday message board
It’s time, once again for the Monday Message Board. As usual, civilised discussion and absolutely no coarse language, please[1].
fn1. Given recent problems with trolls and generally heated debate, I’m going to come down harder on this. Please don’t use any abusive language, swear words including *ster*sked versions and so on.
The race is not to the swift …
nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.
Marcos Baghdatis put up an impressive fight, but ran out of legs in the end against the calm professionalism of Roger Federer in the Australian Open. Still, there’s always next year.
Update While we were all looking to Melbourne for an upset that never came, this was happening in Sydney.
What I've been reading
Orwell, Collected Essays. I bought a set of these years ago, but lost Volume 3, which I’ve just replaced. It still stands up very well after all these years, and has lots of fascinating stuff to dip into, such as a defence of English cooking.
Orwell is one of those writers, like Shakespeare, who lots of people have tried to claim, particularly during the Cold War. I was particularly interested therefore, to read his very level-headed assessment of the British Communist Party and his observation that its fluctuating membership was inversely proportional to the extent to which it embraced revolutionary politics and to which Russian and British foreign policy was in conflict. However sharp his phraseology at times, Orwell always stood against heresy-hunters, and he would certainly have recognised the kinship between McCarthyism and Stalinism.
John Quiggin 