Club Troppo

Parts I, II, III and IV. This post is continues directly from part IV.

From part 4 – If the necessary conditions I listed in part four are valid, there is a good case to be made that Japan came very close to having the conditions to create the modernity virus in the 17th century, but for some small vagaries of history. Lets look at each of the conditions.

1/ Unlike Europe, Japan did not need a philosophical base to shake the anti materialism of existing religion or ethics. Buddhism was only ever a thin facade and the fiercely anti commercial Confucianism was adopted by the Samurai class as a weapon against the merchant class after the crucial period I’m talking about. It was not a pre existing condition. Christianity, as far as it existed, was tightly associated with trade. This left the wide range of folk beliefs we now call Shinto, in which the traditional material quid pro quos between human and the supernatural were still in existence.

2/ Such organisations had already begun to come into existence in the 17^th century. Some of the Zaibatsu that later played important roles in Japanese industrialisation such as Mitsui and Sumitomo were founded in the early 17^th century and even through the Edo period became large organisations pursuing interests across a wide range of industries, enduring well after the deaths of their founders. They were not joint stock companies, but the clearly could (and later did) fulfil the same role of providing economies of scale, dispersed risk and longevity. This was also made possible by the role of clans in legal and social practice. The clan could assume a personage in the same way companies would in Europe. [fn1]

3/ Even under Tokugawa rule these same organisations were creating networks of money exchanges that significantly limited the risk of financial dealings, and these later became the great banks of modern Japan. It is also interesting to note that the world’s first futures market (vital for sharing risk) was in Osaka, so they were well ahead of the pack on some financial instruments. Trade would probably have allowed other innovations, including Arabic numeracy to be adopted.

4/ The 17^th century I think had this given level of technological development and contact with Europeans would have made it easily adopted.

5/ Whilst not as friendly as British reserves, Japan certainly had enough coal to fuel it’s early industrialisation, and there was enough hydroelectric potential that it was providing half the countries electricity in 1950s. One source of coal was Hashima Island in the commercial west, and I freely admit I added this condition in part to link to that extraordinary Wikipedia article.

There is a dynamic that may also be at play. British coal mining was developed through necessity in the later Tudor era due to deforestation that removed wood as an easier, but limited source of energy. The high forestation in contemporary Japan (lauded by Diamond here) is a result of significant growth in the Tokugawa era. Since fire suppression technology was not possible, this was due to reforestation of a denuded landscape. Had trends continued, coal would likely have become necessary in Japan as well.

6/ This is the kicker, where things got so close, but no cigar. (Continued)

As PollBludger notes, the latest numbers present conflicting stories of the state of play in federal politics. Essential Research shows Labor and the Coalition still neck and neck as they were at the election and have been ever since. Nielsen on the other hand shows the Coalition opening up a big lead. They can’t both be right even taking into account error margins. But both certainly show Labor still being dragged down by the same States that voted against it at the election itself, namely NSW, Queensland and WA. You’d expect that Labor’s figures in NSW will eventually improve once Keneally’s mob get chucked out and voters discover that O’Farrell’s crew has no magic recipe for tackling the perennial problems of state governments any more effectively than Labor (although we might at least hope that the Coalition manages to avoid the stench of corruption and moral decay that has pervaded NSW Labor’s last days).

Queensland and WA might be a bit trickier for Labor. Gillard’s office would probably be slightly disappointed that the undeniably impressively effective handling of flood/cyclone relief by both federal and state Labor governments hasn’t been reflected in polling. Most likely things won’t improve for the ALP, however, at least until the Ruddian debris of the mining “super profits” tax is cleared away by enactment and implementation of the promised mining resource rent tax. Residents of those two States may then belatedly discover that the mining magnates were telling self-interested porkies. The sky won’t fall, Clive Palmer won’t turn up at a Salvation Army soup kitchen gaunt and emaciated and begging for a feed, and Gina Rinehart won’t be forced to hock her Channel 10 shares to pay the gas bill at the McMansion.

But much of this distorted public perception is driven by the media’s hackneyed model of journalism. As this excellent and optimistic critique by Phyllis Schaffer (hat-tip Margaret Simons) argues, the deficiencies of mainstream journalism are legion. We badly need:

• More explanatory journalism that really unpacks issues and not just parrots pro and con viewpoints.
• Stories that do a better job of asking the obvious questions that readers have – but somehow don’t always occur to journalists. I will tell you that as I’ve moved from being a story editor to just an everyday reader, I frequently fume when reading a story and wonder who edited it. Why is there so much missing information? Why didn’t the story even address the most basic of questions? I’m sure you do, too.
• Stories that revisit paradigms that define conflict as “news,” that engage in scorecard journalism, that pretend at balance by only parroting extreme points of view.

Applying this critique to current public perceptions of the Gillard government’s performance since the election, let’s succinctly “unpack” it and separate media “scorecard” journalism from reality. The dominant media narrative appears to be that Gillard isn’t up to the job and is just hanging on by her fingernails. The reality?

• Against many expectations, clinching a minority government deal with Greens and Independents that has to date proved durable and effective in delivering stable government;
• Something like 54 substantial pieces of legislation enacted between the commencement of the new Parliament and Christmas, despite the government lacking a majority in either House;
• The historic NBN/Telstra sale-enabling legislation enacted despite vitriolic opposition from the Coalition. This historic and major reform will not only deliver state-of-the-art fast broadband to almost the entire nation, but replace Telstra’s decrepit, neglected, failing copper terrestrial telephone network with a brand new, durable fibre optic one. One may reasonably argue about cost/benefit, and I certainly think an analysis should be done. But you can’t really take the Coalition seriously until it comes up with something resembling a coherent policy that delivers the outcomes I’ve just mentioned, not to mention abolishing the monopoly card the Howard government incompetently gave to Telstra that has allowed it to screw its retail competitors ever since;
• A highly effective flood/cyclone response in Queensland, with military being moved in to do the heavy lifting and Centrelink and other federal agencies delivering financial relief to devastated residents, farmers and businesses;
• Actually clinching the financial deal with Telstra and thereby securing the completion of the NBN;
• And now an equally historic national hospital care/funding agreement that most experts have given a big tick. Of course it involves compromises, as every major reform does. However, as Alan Kohler argues, Gillard’s hospital reform package should serve as a model for reform of federal/state relations in a host of other areas as well. Critics argue that they haven’t tackled mental health and that the model for primary health care with Medicare Locals has only been sketched out at this stage, but that’s merely making the self-evident point that more reform is still needed. That has always been true of every government in every age.

If Gillard manages to steer flood levy legislation through Parliament in the next couple of weeks, as I suspect she will, a reasonable objective evaluation would score her substantive performance since the election at 9 out of 10. Salesmanship? 5.5 out of 10 if she’s lucky, but that’s partly the result of mindless “scorecard” journalism substituting for meaningful news and policy analysis. It might also be due to the fact that Gillard has understandably been preoccupied with actually achieving these impressive substantive outcomes rather than poncing around boasting about them. Maybe the Real Julia will eventually come to be seen as Julia the Quiet Achiever.

Also see Mr Denmore on essentially the same theme.

Parts I, II and III.

We are often in the habit of calling the modernity virus “Westernisation”, for the simple fact that it occurred first in North West Europe. From this unique spontaneous beginning it spread elsewhere, in fact nearly everywhere. Many human developments like paper, the wheel, gunpowder, the stirrup, writing and the number 0 likewise began in a single spot and spread, but the uniqueness of origin is only because the independent discovery is less probable than seeing someone else use it once it has been discovered elsewhere.

Subsequently, industrialisation may not be particularly Anglo-Dutch in itself. It is just that a wide range of conditions necessary for the spontaneous beginning of industrialisation happened there first, and then spread. If time was run again, randomness may result in those condition arising elsewhere, even while history remains relatively similar up to that point. But the modern world would look very different, and there might be no concept of “Westernisation”.

Lets have a shot at creating a list of these conditions in a society that individually may be necessary but insufficient to allow the modernity virus to begin spontaneously, but taken together may be sufficient to see the independent spawning of industrialisation. After this, industrialisation/modernity becomes self propelling. These are conditions that have existed in many countries over the years, but may have only all come together in the West Germanic countries at the beginning of the modern or growth era.

I stress that it is difficult to try and differentiate what was necessary and what was merely a feature. Just because something was a feature of Anglo Dutch derived modernity does not necessitate it. When I say “modernity” I mean a sustained rise in living standards. Things like textile mills and steam engines may (or may not) only be local colour from our corner of the multiverse. (Continued)

I should concede that the analogy drawn in this post between Dave Tollner and Tony Abbott is an imperfect one (image from NT News)

Northern Territory politics is nearly always very silly but equally unfailingly highly entertaining.  It was the inspiration for the “Troppo” in this blog’s name and is best explained or at least described by the combination of heat, humidity, rotting mangoes and associated insouciant mañana lifestyle that makes Territorians behave very strangely at times especially in the buildup and wet season. What with a very long wet buildup and an even wetter wet season, the opposition Country Liberal Party’s latest bout of infighting is a vintage example of the phenomenon.

Just 18 months ago most observers would have put the CLP at short odds-on to win government in a canter at the next election due in 2012.  Labor appeared to be dead men walking to almost as great an extent as their NSW counterparts.  Chief Minister Paul Henderson had opportunistically deposed the extraordinarily successful and popular Clare Martin by riding on the coat-tails of John Howard’s equally opportunistic attempt to create an electoral wedge by announcing the Indigenous Intervention on the patently spurious excuse that Martin had failed to move promptly to implement the Little Children Are Sacred recommendations which Howard and Mal Brough then proceeded to completely ignore anyway.

Hendo then narrowly survived the 2008 NT election that he had been expected to win easily, ending up governing with the narrowest possible majority of 13/12. Mild-mannered CLP Opposition Leader Terry Mills had almost led his party to a totally unexpected victory, a bit like Tony Abbott at federal level but without the bombast or budgie smugglers.

Then, after a bewildering series of soap opera Ministerial and Party resignations and temper tantrums, Hendo’s attenuated Labor team was reduced to just 12 rather puzzled and shell-shocked pollies in minority government with Independent and former chook farmer Gerry Wood.

Most people saw it as only a matter of time until Mills and the CLP took over.  But they were wrong.  Gerry Wood, despite an image as a conservative-leaning eccentric, proved to be a much more reliable ally for the ALP than most had expected. Probably more importantly, Hendo fluked on a master-stroke by appointing wise old apparatchik and senior public servant Dennis Bree as Secretary to Cabinet then seconding him as Chief of Staff.  Bree imposed a sense of discipline and purpose that the Cabinet and Caucus hadn’t previously possessed even in Clare Martin’s halcyon days, although he has no doubt been helped by the party’s near death experience and the certain knowledge that one major slip means instant electoral annihilation.

However, this discipline born of desperation seems to have done the trick.  Although the NT hasn’t been without ongoing public fiascos since then, most have been unresolved hangovers from the pre-Bree era.  Since Bree was appointed Ministers have mostly stayed disciplined and on-message and previous cock-ups like the SIHIP program (a massive federally funded indigenous housing scheme under the post-Intervention Closing the Gap concept) have been progressively put back on track; a chaotic power system seems to have become more reliable; and the economy has largely recovered from the GFC, although tourism remains fairly subdued under the impact of a strong Australian dollar.

All in all, if the massive INPEX LNG project gets the final go-ahead later this year, you’d cautiously favour Labor to actually win the 2012 election fairly comfortably, an unimaginable outcome only a few short months ago.  If a week is a long time in politics then 18 months is an eternity.

(Continued)

At Menzies House, Tim Andrews argues that "we should have public debate free from fear of attack, and free from fear of retaliation." According to Andrews, it’s not acceptable for activists to try to influence a media outlet’s editorial policy by targeting its advertisers. And it’s cowardly for blogs like Larvatus Prodeo to withdraw support for On Line Opinion’s publisher Graham Young when he’s under attack — or at least, that’s Andrews’ opinion.

Recently Graham Young’s On Line Opinion and its partner blogs lost a large chunk their advertising revenue after a gay reader complained to OLO’s advertisers. Gregory Storer complained about disrespectful and hateful comments published in response to an article by Bill Muehlenberg. Not satisfied with Young’s response, Storer contacted OLO’s advertisers and sponsors.

Two of Young’s partner blogs — Larvatus Prodeo and Club Troppo — withdrew after Christopher Pearson wrote about the incident in a column for the Australian. According to Andrews, "LP had the choice to stand up for freedom of speech" but "chose not to."

What’s interesting about Andrews’ argument is what it implies about freedom of speech. Some libertarians say that protecting freedom of speech is about limiting the power of government. As long as government doesn’t pass laws that prevent people from publishing information and expressing opinion, speech is free. But Andrews goes further. By insisting that public debate must be "free from fear of attack, and free from fear of retaliation" he acknowledges that freedom of speech relies on social norms as well as the absence of coercive legislation. Tim believes that we all have an obligation to promote freedom of speech.

Obviously free speech doesn’t exist in a society where people who express unpopular opinions are murdered or physically attacked. Governments can protect free speech by preventing such crimes but civil society also has a role. Religious and community leaders can make it clear they do not condone violence and citizens can encourage each other to seek non-violent ways of dealing with disputes. And because even the fear of attack is enough to stifle free speech, it’s important to moderate the language we use when we speak out against opponents.

Andrews’ complaints against LP show that he wants to go beyond this. When he insists that participants in debate must be "free from fear of attack, and free from fear of retaliation" he’s referring to the kind of attack OLO suffered in response to complaints about the way it managed the Muehlenberg comments thread. The injury OLO suffered was financial.

(Continued)

Yes, folks.  It’s that time again. Crikey are reminding me that it’s time for your group subscriptions. If you’ve already got one through me, I’ll be shooting you an email to find out if you want to repeat the dose. We got sixty subscriptions last year so got to the maximum discount (these discounts seem to be slipping away a tad these days, perhaps as Crikey executives slurping their pina coladas on their lilos in their heated lap pools on the top floor of the Eureka Tower observe the success of this now ritual offering and wonder how much ‘leakage’ they’re allowing from people who might otherwise pay the full subscription. Channel conflict, the scourge of the modern business.)

Anyway, if you want to be part of the action and you’ve not received a reminder email from me,  please email me on ngruen AT xxxgmail DOT com – and forget those ‘xxx’s. They’re just there for our silicon friends.

Group Subscriptions

3-5 Members – $115

6-9 Members – $105

10-19 Members – $95

20-49 Members – $85

50+ Members – $75

Update: You’ve missed out! The subscription is now closed. We got over 110 subscriptions and I think most, though not all of them were from people who wouldn’t otherwise have subscribed. A win-win as Adam Smith would have said (not!)

Part I and II

I’m anticipating some misapprehension for this post, mainly for reasons of semantics and my choice of meaning to attribute to poorly defined words. This will probably require an entire clarification post based on what misapprehensions arise in comments.

In the last post I speculated that there might be a basket of necessary conditions that allowed the genesis of the modernity virus, all of which had been observed before, but that only came together at one time in the NW Europe where we first saw industrialisation.

There are many that have been offered by scholars (though they can be in the habit of fingering one as the factor), but before I speculate on these later, there’s another that is always assumed, but which I have doubts about.

That is “reason”. In the narrative of human progress we tell (at least in the Western world) this is thought and more importantly, social practice, that arose in Ancient Greece, continued in Rome, diminished in the Dark Ages (though the charitable will mention the Arab world), bloomed afresh in the Renaissance and then through the Enlightenment(s) brought forth the modern world. This is very vague I know, but I am referring to a collection of social practices.

I think we need to be careful in how much we accept this on face value, and how necessary a condition “reason” and its later emerging subset “science” are to the genesis of the modernity virus, and what role they play in technology.

It’s very hard for us not to assume this. We are people that value the same things as “reason” and we extend approbation and stature based on this. As people that like to write about things “reasonably” and receive respect for it, we are entirely inclined to respect previous societies that did the same. As people that leave written documents ruminating on things, we like the Enlightenment for doing the same, and the Renaissance, and the Ancient world[fn1]. They were People Like Us. The people of the dark ages, or barbarians, were not like us.

The problem is, in the ways that most effect normal people, the civilised and the barbaric were far more like each other than either was like us. In one society you had a minority who were respected for their habits of leaving eloquent thoughts and in others there was a minority respected for their martial might. In both who would have had a majority that did neither, and whom shared the same, subsistence level of material comfort. (Continued)

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt shares this story written by a young gay woman in 1985:

Until about a year ago, I was very quiet about my sexual orientation… I often didn’t understand the sexual jokes made by my colleagues… the people making the jokes thought that we all felt the same way, and I certainly wasn’t going to reveal that I disagreed. That would have been much too awkward.

JB was really the first person I talked to about my sexual identity. He made me feel more comfortable and seemed to want to hear other perspectives…. Since then, taking PT’s class opened up a dialog and others have shared more as well. Before I thought that I was completely alone and was afraid to say much because of it. Now I feel both somewhat obligated to speak up (don’t want others to feel as alone as I did) and also know that I have more support than I originally realized.

But Haidt is playing a trick here. This is actually a story by a social psychology student who felt out of place because she didn’t share her teachers’ liberal political views. Haidt changed just five words to transform a story about political beliefs into a story about sexuality

Almost all social psychologists are liberals says Jonathan Haidt. And he believes it’s a problem because it creates blind spots. As he writes in a post on the YourMorals blog: "when conservatives are entirely absent (as opposed to simply underrepresented), then there is NOBODY to speak up, nobody to challenge predominant ideas, and our science suffers." He goes on to suggest that the Society for Personality and Social Psychology should have affirmative targets for conservatives.

(Continued)

For some time now I, your friendly Ozblogistan Tyrant, have been considering expanding the Ozblogistan family. For my thesis research I require a larger pool of blogs under management.

To that end, I have opened up a second server for Ozblogistan. Shortly, one server will handle the database while the original server handles the web side of things.

This will (theoretically) speed up performance and make it easier for me to grow Ozblogistan.

This decision is unrelated to the recent stoushing (though the stoushing may lead to other changes in future).

What this means:

1. All Ozblogistan sites will be offline tonight while I make the transfer. I will begin at 5pm Central Standard Time. The upgrade is complete.
2. I am looking for more tenants. I wish to continue hosting high-quality Australian blogs. While I don’t mind more blogs like the wonkish ones I have, I would also like to diversify as well. If you have a good blog you want to live alongside Club Troppo, Larvatus Prodeo, Catallaxy Files, Andrew Norton and Skepticlawyer, send me an email. If you have a favourite blog who you think should join the network, tell me (and them). The more the merrier, I’m building a big bus.

To keep discussion of this matter centralised, I have disabled comments everywhere except on the main Ozblogistan entry.

Thank you for your attention.

Updates

Taking the plunge:

• Peril Magazine
• Blogging Townsville
• Cafe Grendel
• Spray of the Day
• Iain Hall

Observant Media watchers might have noticed a story on the ABC The Drum site this morning to the effect that Club Troppo and Larvatus Prodeo had quit the Domain blog group headed by Graham Young’s Online Opinion.  LP’s letter to Graham was apparently leaked by person/s unknown.  So that you can say you read it here first, I’m republishing Troppo’s letter to Graham over the fold.

(Continued)