One of the big problems in science is that non-results are rarely reported. I was interested to read this report of a study by the US General Accounting Office which found that claims of superior performance by for-profit schools could neither be supported nor rejected on the basis of existing studies.

While the companies publish year-to-year comparisons of standardized test scores to indicate that students in schools they manage are making academic gains, they do not present data on comparable students who are not in their programs,” the report said. It also faulted the studies for not testing students both before and after the private company’s takeover, and for not controlling for demographic variations among groups of students.

The one exception was a report on an Edison school in Florida, which met the standard for scientific rigor, but showed “no difference between students in the company’s program and other students,” the report said.

I picked up an ad for the Mitsubishi Verada in a magazine a while ago, and I couldn’t resist mentioning it. It suggests the car might be perfect for an afternoon drive past the houses of:

(a) Your old economics teacher who said you’d amount to nothing
(b) Your first boss (ditto)
(c) Your ex-wife who left you for someone with better prospects

In other words, if you’re an embittered loser who’s willing to pay more than you can afford in order to impress people you don’t like and who’ve probably forgotten you even exist, buy this car.

Remembrance Day* always raises lots of complex thoughts about history. As the anniversary of the Armistice that halted the Great War in 1918, it’s a time for reflection on many things. I was attending the meetings of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and we halted for a minute’s silence, a custom that has fallen into disuse, but which it would be valuable to revive.

It’s also the anniversary of the dismissal of the Whitlam government and the issue has been raised again by John Faulkner’s interview with Gough, of which I’ve only seen part so far. Ken Parish and
Don Arthur, among others have blogged on this. Ken shares my misty-eyed enthusiasm (though we both agree, contrary to Gough, that HECS was a good idea).

Don is less keen. He says, ‘Whitlam’s enduring popularity is testament to the fondness many Australians have for martyrdom and failure.’ But the part of the Whitlam story that gets me excited is the two-man government and the marvelous first term, when it seemed that we had the chance of a bright future. And although the government failed in the end, much of what was done in this first term has endured. In particular, Whitlam’s expansion of school education spending laid the groundwork for the huge expansion in school completion rates in the 1980s and in university participation in the 1990s. The abolition of university fees at a time when relatively few kids went on to university was premature, but the overall policy was right, and far more economically rational (a term that was probably coined by Whitlam) than those of his successors. Equal pay for women is another enduring legacy.

Of course, 1975 is an important part of the legend. Without it, Whitlam would have dragged his way to an election in 1976 and 1977 and been comprehensively crushed under the weight of economic failure and the scandals created by the absurd behavior of Cairns and Connor. The big problem with heroes is that they get old and tarnished like all of us. An early death is a major qualification for hero status. Whitlam’s political martyrdom is the next best thing, allowing his supporters to excuse the kinds of sins and failures that are inevitable in a politician but undesirable in a hero.

Finally, given recent discussion of my beard on my “Monday Message Board”, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Nov 11 is also the anniversary of the execution of Ned Kelly. If you haven’t read Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang, today would be a good day to start.

*For US readers, this is our name for Veterans Day

As I and others have observed, the comments on this blog are often more interesting than the posts. Taking this to its logical conclusion, I’ve decided to put up a content-free post on which people can make whatever comments they choose. The ground rules are:
(i) no coarse language
(ii) civilised discussion only
This blog is on a one-week cycle, so I’ll review the experiment at the end of the week.

A little while ago, I observed that

Opponents of political correctness are quick to claim oppression whenever they are subject to verbal criticism. ‘Racist’ is the absolute taboo term for these reverse-PC types

As if to illustrate this point, Tim Dunlop quotes academic Katharine Betts, saying:

I define racism as the belief that cultural characteristics are biologically determined, that they cannot be changed, and that groups sharing these characteristics can be ranked in a hierarchy of inferiority and superiority. This belief is wrong and it has been used to excuse terrible acts. The word ‘racism’ describes some of the greatest evils we have seen. When it is used loosely as a catchall term of abuse, we trivialize something which should be taken very seriously. For example are ethnic preferences in choice of marriage partners racism, or just personal preference? It’s fashionable now to call racism as I’ve defined it ‘old racism’ and to say that today we must struggle against ‘new racism’. But this ‘new racism’ seems to involve nothing more than preferring to mix with people like yourself. Such behaviour may sometimes be cliquey and unfriendly but it’s a long way from slavery and mass murder.

This quote appears to come from an interview with the Institute for Public Affairs, which is available as a PDF file, here.

Betts’ definition of racism fits Nazi Germany and the Confederate South in the United States, a point underlined by her emphasis on slavery and mass murder. But it excludes apartheid, the ‘Jim Crow’ era in the South and the White Australia policy, at least as far their official theory is concerned. Advocates of all three policies rejected claims of racism, drawing precisely the distinction made by Betts. These policies focused not on the superiority of one race over another, but on the desirability of keeping races separate. (It was, of course, merely coincidental that most of the desirable real estate ended up on the ‘white’ side of the lines of separation).

Most people would regard apartheid as a racist policy. Nevertheless, use of the term ‘racism’ generally ends up bogging arguments down in violent definitional disputes. Perhaps we should return to the more neutral term used to define the Jim Crow laws, ‘segregationism’. Clearly Betts is endorsing racial segregationism, at least as a legitimate personal preference and, by implication, as a public policy.

Tim Dunlop makes the argument that there is a continuum running from the kind of views defended by Betts to the extreme versions she defines as ‘racism’. I think it’s easier to see a continuum of segregationist views running from ‘preferring to mix with people like yourself’ to apartheid and White Australia. The inclusion of explicit pseudo-scientific theories about racial superiority is an additional element, which as Betts says, can justify the worst outrages associated with the term ‘racism’. But even where it does not amount to racism in the sense defined by Betts, segregationism is based on, and justifies, distrust, dislike and ultimately hatred of anyone outside the self-defined group that practises it.

One more point Since I have previously noted the failure of Australia’s free-market thinktanks to give any voice to classical liberal views on the issue of refugee policy, I’m happy to point out that the Centre for Independent Studies has run an article by William Maley in its journal Policy, attacking current government policy. Link via Jason Soon.

Ursula Le Guin has recently come out with some more Tales from Earthsea. Although I think fantasy as a genre has collapsed into endless boring repetition, and my interest in SF has flagged as well, I’ll always make an exception for anything by Le Guin.

I also went to see Shout!, the musical of the life of Johnny O’Keefe. Jason’s proposal for an all-economist band rang some bells with me after this.

In sporting news, my younger son and I went bowling, as we do fairly regularly, and came close to our PBs with 128 and 177 respectively. This wouldn’t justify a blog report, except for the observation that we are part of the phenomenon of ‘bowling alone’, claimed by Robert Putnam to epitomise the erosion of social capital (‘alone’ isn’t to be taken literally, it means ‘not in a league’). So, if you notice society collapsing around you, blame us.

The critics, all four of them, panned last week’s song. But in the blogworld it doesn’t matter what the critics say – no one can boo me off my own stage. In any case, I got quite a few links and the sincerest form of endorsement, with Jason Soon digging into his own bottom drawer to retrieve an entertaining piece of erotica. So here’s this week’s song. It’s based on the Irish anti-war classic Johnny, I hardly knew you, perhaps better known in the American pro-war version When Johnny comes marching home. The details in the song are a bit out-of-date, but the theme of a radical labor leader who becomes markedly less radical in office will persist as long as we have radical labor leaders (not that there are many around right now).

As I was walking past the lodge, haroo, haroo
I saw a most peculiar dodge, haroo, haroo
Bob Hawke came by and I swear its true
He went in red and he came out blue
And the Liberals didn’t know what to do
Oh, Bobby, I hardly knew you !

Where are the eyes that flashed with fire, haroo, haroo
Where’s the fear you once inspired, haroo, haroo
The bosses love you like a son,
You’ve got the greenies on the run
Flogging yellowcake by the ton
Oh, Bobby, I hardly knew you !

Where’s the workers leader now, haroo, haroo
Consensus is the sacred cow, haroo, haroo
Out wages cut and hours froze
Except for the doctors and such as those
I think that something’s on the nose
Oh, Bobby, I hardly knew you !

Where’s the voice that roared so loud, haroo, haroo
Wheres the left-wing stand so proud, haroo, haroo
You smile so sweet and you talk so glib
You duck and dodge and you fudge and fib
And you sound just like a bloody Lib
Oh, Bobby, I hardly knew you !

I’ve been arguing for years that the usual arguments for privatisation are flawed, and that, in fiscal terms, privatisation will normally make governments worse off. In an excellent piece, Ross Gittins develops and amplifies the same argument with respect to Telstra. As he says, the government’s case rests on ‘schoolboy howlers’ like
(i) supposing that the sale or otherwise of Telstra is relevant in assessing what to do about drought and the Murray-Darling
(ii) counting on the interest savings from selling Telstra without noticing the earnings foregone
And, a point which I’ve particularly stressed,

Will the interest payments saved exceed the dividend income lost?

That depends on how much the shares are sold for. But, probably yes, according to the budget’s imperfect accounting – and probably no if you worked it out properly.

Why no? Because, as we’ve seen, the Government can borrow at such a low rate, whereas a company such as Telstra should be yielding a return well above what you can get on a risk-free government bond.

The moral of the story is that, by now, the Howard Government has so much ego riding on its twin obsessions of completing Telstra’s privatisation and eliminating public debt that it’s prepared to use any argument it thinks the punters might fall for, no matter how silly or dishonest.

. Apart from the minor quibble that, in the short run, it’s necessary to look at retained earnings as well as dividends, this is spot-on.

In the recent discussion about Asia, some critics of the Howard government have overstated the extent to which this government has ‘turned its back’ on Asia. In turn, critics of the critics have caricatured this point to the extent where the fact that we have maintained diplomatic relations with our neighbours, attended the odd meeting, and issued the odd meaningless statement can be seen as proving that there’s nothing wrong with our policy stance. Cavan Hogue gives a fairly balanced assessment, saying

Although exaggerated criticism for political or personal reasons should be put in its proper context, so should the Australian Government’s cumulative actions and statements over a period of years be put in perspective.

That balance sheet shows a government whose public statements have sent the message that Australia is not part of Asia, that relations with Asia must be balanced against important relations with our great and powerful friends, and that previous Australian governments gave too much emphasis to Asia.

If you constantly tell people they are not as important to you as they used to be, then you can’t blame them for believing you.