Club Troppo

In case anyone’s interested, some time commenter on Troppo and IP analyst turned impresario of rupute Duncan Bucknell asked me to participate in a podcast on manufacturing for export – one of my causes du jour.  So feel free to have a listen if you like. Of course there are genuine conflicts of interest between patent holders and consumers.  But it’s pretty infuriating to watch patent holders acting so strongly against their own interest as Big Pharma are here, demonstrating the hollowness of their pitch that providing more IP protection will increase investment.

Sometimes videos detract from an original piece of music.  This vid is just too obvious and adds a little too much schmaltz to Mitch Benn’s funny and rather moving little number. I think it’s better with your eyes closed.

Yesterday’s “boat people” explosion near Ashmore Reef west of Darwin, in which 3 people were apparently killed outright and many more seriously injured, has eerie if obvious parallels with the “children overboard” saga of 2001 which helped John Howard to his third successive election victory.

The background to those events was that, like now, there had been an upsurge in “boat people” arrivals off northern Australia, though to a level 10 times greater than at present.  The Australian Navy was ordered to implement a blockade of north Australian waters, and began towing arriving asylum seeker vessels back out to sea and dumping them back just off Indonesia (from whence they’d come).

The people smugglers’ response in that instance was to begin pulling out the bungs and deliberately scuttling their vessels as soon as an Australian naval vessel came close enough to make rescue certain.  It was certainly an effective way to thwart the Australian “towaway zone” tactic and perfectly safe (note the life jackets being worn by all the asylum seekers in the water in the accompanying photo).

Of course that didn’t worry John Howard.  He suggested Australia didn’t want as immigrants the sort of people who would risk their children’s lives by throwing them in the water, playing on the ignorance of people who either didn’t realise or didn’t care that the risk involved was small, especially compared with all available alternatives for these people.  Don’t forget that 90% of the “children overboard” and “Tampa” asylum seekers were eventually determined to be refugees. That is, they had a genuine and well-founded fear of persecution or even death because of their race, religion, political beliefs or ethnic/social origin if returned to their homeland.  Their only prospect other than taking their chances with the Australian protection visa assessment system was to allow themselves to be towed back to Indonesia and spend years (possibly forever) in a state of miserable, deprived idleness and squalor in a poorly serviced refugee camp.  If you were a parent with young children in such a situation, which option would you choose?

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I don’t have time right now to read the essay which is abstracted below.  But I’d love to.  And I don’t really have time to defend the propositions that I’ll put before you here, nor to get them into a state that I would be confident I wouldn’t have to revise once I’d posted them. But with those caveats, here goes. 

Positivism has had a profound influence on the development of what I call the practical social sciences – namely law and economics.  In American jurisprudence anti-positivism held sway for most of twentieth century with legal realism being the dominant tradition – something that was an offshoot of American pragmatism – which is the most accessible, useful and democratic of the anti-positivist philosophical schools.

In economics meanwhile, pragmatism was represented by the Institutionalists in economics.  Institutionalism was a quite philosophically astute school, but wasn’t much use to anyone because, like a lot of anti-positivist economics today, it spent a lot of its time in ralatively barren spats with positivism rather than getting on with its work.  While it won the methodological battles in the sense that it laid bare some of the intellectual sleights of hand on which neoclassical econmics was built it lost the war on account of its own inability to build a useful body of doctrine, practice and technique (someone like Marshall * – or later on Hicks – didn’t really deny they were slights of hand, they just thought – reasonably enough – that the intellectual shortcuts they were taking were worth a try – which they were providing one kept that in mind. Alas our mind only holds so many caveats, and meanwhile there are mountains to climb). Anyway, unlike Marshall and Hicks, institutionalism in economics didn’t get very far in its first incarnation.

Meanwhile positivism kept plugging away reducing economics to the axioms of choice at the margin and gradually throwing away the crucial bridges that were present until around the 1950s between the mathematics and the passages that justified the use of the mathematics and argued that the methodological sacrifices made in making increasingly Herculean abstractions were worth making.     

We ended up with a very disturbed discipline in which it was seriously argued that the realism of assumptions could be dispensed with (Friedman argued this largely in defence of the assumption of perfect competition even where it wasn’t quite realistic – a position I’d support – but Friedman ended up unimpressed by more full blooded – and basically nutty – applications of the principle he’d advocated as for instance in the theory of real business cycles (which shows how the Great Depression was really a spontaneous decision by workers to take a holiday).  People like Krugman and Delong have been bemoaning the nuttyness and forgetfulness of modern economics of late, though their explanation of the source of the problem is ideology rather than methodology. (I’m not saying it’s all methodology by the way, but I’m dead sure it plays its part).

Anyway, the second wave of institutionalism borrows heavily from neoclassical method and is a kind of positivism, though it is much closer to the ‘soft’ empirically focussed positivism of Hicks and Marshall. Today the strongest cell of anti-positivist thinking is Austrian economics.

Anyway, the article to which I’ve linked above by Becchio Giandomenica (University of Turin) has the following title:

A historical reconstruction of the connections between the Viennese neopositivists and the American pragmatists: economic theory in the project for the International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science.

And here’s the abstract. (Continued)

My startup dot-com project continues to plod along in the gap between university labs, assignments, tests and other studious miscellanea.

Today I spent some time getting down to the nuts and holts of payment systems.

I’ve done some work on this before, of course. Westpac knocked me back for their ordinary merchant account. I began to look further into third-party payment services. I have concluded that Australia is a terrible country for entrepreneurs who aren’t doing something ordinary.
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President Iloilo

[Cross-posted from the blog I run for CDU public law students]

There doesn’t seem to be anything especially remarkable about the current (2009) Fiji coup whereby Fiji’s ageing and ailing President Josefa Iloilo sacked the Fiji Court of Appeal which only last week declared the 2006 coup of Commodore Frank Bainimarama illegal (although keep an eye on Google News for further developments). Watch the ABC video of the events here.

It looks like Iloilo is acting at the behest of PM Bainimarama, who seemed when he initially took over to be acting for the selfless if unconstitutional motive of ensuring that the plotters of a previous coup in 2000 (also led by another army officer George Speight) didn’t escape unpunished by the (democratically elected) Chaudry government.

However Bainimarama seems subsequently to have become addicted to power, a victim of Lord Acton’s famous dictum that “power corrupts and absolute power absolutely”. As Kathy Marks reports in The Independent:

The move, greeted with dismay by Fiji’s neighbours, came 24 hours after the country’s Court of Appeal pronounced the military government led by Frank Bainimarama invalid. Commodore Bainimarama, head of the armed forces, seized power in 2006 and has run the South Pacific island nation a former British colony and popular tourism destination as a virtual dictatorship since then.

Among the judges dismissed by President Josefa Iloilo were the three who on Thursday declared Commodore Bainimarama’s coup illegal. The ageing, ailing Mr Iloilo told Fijians in a national televised address, rather chillingly, that he was establishing a “new order”. He is expected to reappoint the maverick commodore, a close friend, as Prime Minister. [and has now done so - KP]

The dramatic worsening of the political situation in a country once viewed as a tropical paradise followed calls earlier this week by the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, for a date to be set for democratic elections by 1 May. The 16-nation Pacific Islands Forum has threatened to suspend Fiji unless it meets that deadline, and the Commonwealth says it will take similar action.

Rod Alley, a senior fellow at New Zealand’s Centre for Strategic Studies, said of the President’s televised address: “It looked like a prepared statement by Bainimarama, delivered by Iloilo. This is extraordinary and doesn’t look good for Fiji.” …

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Not so long ago Nicholas Gruen published a post lamenting the extraordinary cost and complexity of civil litigation in Australia and common law countries generally. He ascribed it partly to the adversarial system and canvassed the possible advantages of a more European-style inquisitorial approach as a way of achieving better and cheaper justice.

Nevertheless, Nicholas observed:

To quote one commentator reviewing the Woolf reforms, delivering true proportionality seems unlikely without a much more fundamental reform, such as moving away from the adversarial system.

In fact civil law systems have problems too so theyre no panacea on their own. We need to search for a felicitous hybrid that melds the best of both systems a subject for another column.

Some lawyer respondents (a notoriously conservative bunch) pointed out in the comment box that “market forces” suggested common law procedures were more highly regarded by corporations at least than the more State-directed and interventionist procedures of European civil law countries.  The common law is flexible and responds to the needs and wishes of parties more readily than a civil law system, and that’s why UK or US courts are the systems of choice when large corporations specify “choice of law” and “choice of forum” clauses in their contractual dealings with each other.  It’s merely enlightened classical liberalism at work.

A cynic would suggest that their preference for common law has more to do with the fact that it’s vastly more expensive and therefore gives big corporations with “deep pockets’” a huge advantage over smaller competitors and private litigants.  The playing field isn’t level, it slopes steeply in favour of the big guys.  Common law procedure just umpires a courtroom “tennis match” where civil law actively seeks the truth and intervenes in the trial in an endeavour to find where it lies.  Maybe our unexamined preference for common law adversarial procedures owes as much to a combination of inertia and ignorance on the part of ordinary citizens, allied with naked self-interest on the part of large corporations, as to a rational choice of a fair system of justice.

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(*This was posted elsewhere for my CDU Intro to Public Law students, so it might be a bit dry and technical for some.  Nevertheless others might find it worth reading)

The Rudd government’s proposed reforms to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth) (“FOI Act” ), sponsored by Special Minister of State John Faulkner have received a mixed reception from media and bloggers.

The Sydney Morning Herald was almost rapturous with praise while The Australian has been rather more equivocal, and positively scathing about related reform proposals on whistleblower legislation (which currently doesn’t exist at Commonwealth level) and “shield” laws for journalists who protect their sources (as journalistic ethics require).

Blogger and FOI legal expert Peter Timmins also damns Faulkner’s reforms with faint praise:

To the outsider, the bulk of available time to date on FOI reform appears to have been spent by Minister Faulkner, his office and the public service engaging in a 16 month, largely private internal seminar on drafting legislation to enable the Government to tick the box on another election commitment. It could have been different if there had been a serious attempt to reach out to engage the community on the subject of government transparency and accountability, not now after 16 months, but way back when minds first turned to the subject. That didn’t occur. Overall, however its way better than what was on offer-nothing- from the last lot.

I think Timmins is being a little unfair.

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East Point beach, pretty much where the channel and lock would go through for “Arafura Harbour” according to the concept plan. I suspect this aspect of the plan will change to force the channel to emerge on the north side of East Point, which would make a lot more sense.

I’ve experienced one of those pre-senile dementia rushes of blood to the brain and written another Letter to the Editor of the NT News: Ill leap in where angels fear to tread and declare strong support for the Vos/Lynne Arafura Harbour marina estate proposal. It really is a visionary and exciting project, and these developers have a strong record of making big developments happen so it isnt pie in the sky. The greenies and NIMBYs will oppose it, but they oppose everything.

There will certainly be legitimate environmental, traffic and residential amenity issues, but they can be resolved constructively to the satisfaction of all but the extreme minority. Some long term residents like senior Murdoch journalist Nicolas Rothwell lament that Darwin has lost some of the seedy, raffish charm they once knew and loved. To my taste Cullen Bay, Bayview and Tipperary Wharf have all enhanced Darwin and made it a much more beautiful, vibrant and comfortable place to live than 26 years ago when I first arrived here. But then I dont mind the Gold Coast and I love Noosa.

The Darwin Waterfront promises to be even better when its water recreation facilities open in the next few weeks. Ill be one of the first in line to try out the wave pool! Arafura Harbour would take Darwin to a new and even higher level of sophistication.

Messrs Vos and Lynne might well have some problems raising finance to begin work during the current Global Financial Crisis, but this isnt a project for next week. It will be built over a decade or more. Extreme greenies are very good at convincing some politicians that they enjoy broad support. In fact theyre a tiny, noisy, reactionary minority. Mind you, Im not sure Id fancy paddling up that 2000 metre course in a fragile rowing shell, not with all the crocs around anyway. But thats another story.

Yours faithfully …

*The concept plan is over the fold.

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Richard Ackland has an enjoyable rant this week about an upcoming UN talkfest in Geneva known as Durban II.  It’s organised by the UN Human Rights Council, which in a  delightful (but typical of the UN) irony is chaired by Libya.  As Ackland points out:

The Human Rights Council is just playing along with another outfit, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, an association of 57 states, which has a “built-in” majority on the UN’s human rights body.

Apparently the Islamic majority is assiduously pursuing a resolution condemning “defamation of religions” and exhorting  member States, albeit in vague terms, to move to stamp it out. 

“Defamation of religions” apparently would include any suggestions that international terrorism might as a matter of pragmatic observation currently bear more of an association with persons of the Muslim persuasion than any other clearly identifiable group.  ¹1. KP: I had personal experience of the perils of this sort of cultural cringe-based political correctness not so long ago.  While passing through the x-ray check at Darwin airport I was singled out for a “random explosives check”.   As an officious-looking uniformed woman passed a magic wand over my person and possessions, I remarked to Jen that this was the fifth time in a row I’d been singled out “at random” and wondered out loud whether I might look like I was of the Islamic persuasion.  “That’s racist!” the officious searching woman exclaimed.  “I’ll have you know one of our inspectors is an Indian.”  “But most Indians are Hindu not Muslim,” I patiently replied.  “And Islam is a religion not a race. Don’t you think you’re being a little silly?”  “I’ll get the Federal Police onto you if you’re not careful,” she threatened darkly as I walked away having mercifully been deemed Semtex-free if a racist turd. [↩]

Of course, contempt for fundamental liberal values of free speech isn’t confined to Islam. George Pell would reinstate the Spanish Inquisition tomorrow if he thought he could get away with it, as witnessed by his strongarming the NSW government into passing extraordinarily illiberal laws to “protect” the freedoms of World Youth Day celebrants by sacrificing the freedoms of everyone else.  Fortunately the Court of Appeal put the kibosh on that particular piece of nonsense.

Then there’s the fact that the Rudd government has just ratified the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which the Howard government opposed.  I suspect it’s just a totally meaningless gesture designed solely to bolster Rudd’s ambition to win a UN Security Council seat by appeasing the world’s most illiberal regimes by empty exercises in symbolism.  The Hawke government used to behave similarly, signing and ratifying treaties on an almost daily basis with no apparent intention ever to legislate to bring them into domestic law and no obvious motive other than to allow Gareth Evans to big-note himself. 

Nevertheless, and like the proposed Durban II resolution, the UN Declaration is a piece of pernicious, politically correct Animal Farm-ish doublespeak that deems some people to be more equal than others.

I recently stumbled across an apposite journal article by UQ constitutional law academic Suri Ratnapala titled “Cultural Diversity And Liberal Society – A Case For Reprivatising Culture” which encapsulates my own views on this sort of confused thinking. Incidentally, I understand that Ratnapala was one of Helen “skepticlawyer” Dale’s early legal mentors who nudged her along the path to the libertarian legal themes she’s currently pursuing at Oxford.  Ratnapala’s article contains some of the usual libertarian nonsense about abolishing national borders and achieving freedom by forcing the poor and disabled off state welfare and into the tender embrace of private charity.  But at least on the question of the proper classical liberal response towards issues of social/cultural values Ratnapala’s nailed it in my view.  An extensive extract appears over the fold:

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