Tony Harris's AFR column from a few weeks ago. (posted by Nicholas G on Tony's account.) The Australian National Audit Office last week reported on the government’s abandoned ceiling insulation stimulus program. It found that the environment department should have given earlie...
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From today's Fin: “He [Tony Abbott] has undermined and potentially destroyed a first-term Labor government.” This eulogy to Abbott from former prime minister, John Howard, captures all that is bad about the coalition’s approach to opposition. Oppositions do not have to be dest...
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From my recent Fin Column. Recent articles in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age - sister publications of the AFR - told us that Warwick McKibbin has concerns about the Labor government’s stimulus programs. As those newspapers say, McKibbin is a prominent economist: he is t...
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This is a survey of the treatment of selected themes in the famous textbook from the first edition in 1948 to the last in 1995. The sales figures: Edition, Year, Author(s,) Sales 1, 1948, Samuelson, 121,453 2, 1951, Samuelson, 137,256 3, 1955, Samuelson, 191,706 4, 1958, Samue...
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How will Paul Samuelson be remembered? This is the positive side of the story, the glowing record of the Nobel Laureate and author of the most widely read textbook in modern times. History may be kind to Samuelson. He had the good fortune to surf three waves that carried all b...
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Balmain is not just the city of basket weavers it is also a place to find thinking drinkers and binge thinkers. Put this in your list of favorites. Shaken and Stirred , the brainchild of Parnell McGuinness and Leonie Phillips, is a space for the free exchange of opinions witho...
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Steve Horwitz at The Austrian Economists is running a series of posts to show how the poor in the US have become better off over the last thirty years or so. This table shows how real wages have improved to shorten the time required to pay for some household goods. He notes th...
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Last week the Prime Minister made a plea to the House, for the members to vote in the national interest, not their party interest. Where are the members of the ALP who are voting in the national interest?
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I appreciate that this has been posted before and nobody has to read it again, it is just for the benefit of new people and those who like to be reminded of the achievements of this remarkable man. Barzun's work represents a major and pioneering contribution to cultural studie...
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The High Court has ruled that people serving alcohol are not at risk of of massive claims for damages if a drinker comes to grief on the way home. One would hope that commonsense will prevail and folk will conform with responsible serving guidelines. Some of the claims were a...
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Peter Coleman described the rise and fall of the Congress for Cultural Freedom which started at one of the darkest moments of the Cold War. In the Preface to The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe he wrote In J...
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As we celebrate the Fall of the Wall 20 years ago we should remember the effort that was put in by the friends of freedom in the West during the Cold War. I am thinking of the worldwide network of groups which resisted the propaganda efforts of the communists and their fellow...
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Interesting development! Last week a UK High Court gave the green light for a green activist to sue his employer, who had sacked him for refusing to do an errand because it conflicted with his green beliefs. For intellectual ballast, the judge quoted no less or, should I say,...
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George Soros picked up the idea of the open society from Karl Popper at the London School of Economics and he spent a great deal of money promoting the idea through Open Society Institutes in Eastern Europe. Lately he has moved on to target market fundamantalism as the great t...
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Toby Huff in Max Weber and the Methodology of the Social Scienes (Transaction Books, 1984) suggested that the philosophy of science that Weber was reading read at the turn of the century was in better shape than the positivism that took off later under the inspiration of Mach,...
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Jeffrey Friedman has produced a special edition of Critical Review devoted to various perspectives on the crisis. Among the contributors are Friedman himself, Joe Stiglitz, Vernon Smith and Lawrence White All the abstracts are here . Friedman wrote a long lead article. ABSTRAC...
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A paper called Blogometrics has created a ranking of economics bloggers and their blogs based on citations of their academic publications. Hat tip to The Economic Way of Thinking (Beaulier, Boettke and Prykitcho). My new, outstanding colleague in Econ, Frank Mixon, and his co-...
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A couple of interesting pieces, courtesy of Michael Warby, a tireless provider of hot links . This is an interview with a Somali pirate , feel free to take it with a pinch of pirate salt! How are the pirates organized? (Are there pirate leaders, financiers, and specialists?) T...
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A late call on the departure of the distinguished scholar Leszek Kolakowski. A short obituary . Starting off as an orthodox Marxist in postwar Poland, Kolakowski became progressively disenchanted and his calls for a more democratic version of socialism led him into conflicts w...
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This book sounds like a lot of fun. A history of science with a touch of humour and a good flavour of the characters involved. Reviewed here . In order to structure his big, sweeping book about such issues, Mr. Holmes uses two exploratory voyages as bookends. The first, a trip...
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Frank Devine passed away on Friday morning. He enriched the lives of many people, whether or not they agreed with his views on politics, religion or anything else. An early tribute can be found in The Australian, from Bernard Lane . The Weekend Australian tomorrow will carry s...
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"I must admit to having no compence in economics whatsoever" wrote Robert Manne in the Introduction to The New Conservatism in Australia (1982). He proceeded to demonstrate the truth of that admission by turning his face against economic reform and advocating the kind of polic...
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Mark Blaug (1937- ) was born in the Netherlands, raised in the US and became a naturalised Briton in 1982. He made far reaching contributions to a range of topics in economic thought. In addition to work on the economics of art and the economics of education, he is best known...
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Peter Klein at Organizations and Markets offers some calming thoughts on the AIG bonus debate . 1. The main lesson is that AIG should never, ever have been bailed out with taxpayer dollars. I said that at the beginning, and I stand by it even more today. AIG should have declar...
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It it not necessary to be a fan of the Rudd administration or the alcopops tax to deplore the horse-trading that is going on to hold the Government to ransom on legislation to ratify the tax. Abuse of the Senate is not a novely and the man from Tasmania was probably the worst...
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There is an interesting new boy on the block! Gerard Henderson's Media Watch Dog is sure to be stimulating read because he has a good memory and he knows where a lot of bodies are buried. He has a long and honourable history as a media watcher, starting in 1988 with a print ve...
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An amusing post by Greg Ransom on Taking Hayek Seriously. Based on the story of Hayek's visit to Australia in 1976 as told by Ron Kitching with some more background on Catallaxy . In brief, Ron Kitching and the late Roger Randerson organised financial backing for a month-long...
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Treasury always supports foreign investments. It believes resources should flow to wherever they earn the best return. It says overseas investment is especially important for Australia because we depend on foreigners to fund our capital expansion. And in these financially stra...
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From Tuesday's Financial Review: The Australian Institute of Company Directors acknowledged last week that there have been mistakes made by company boards in setting executive remuneration. As feeble as this admission is, it is the only one shareholders are likely to see from...
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So the economy has problems. Spare a thought for the citizens of New York where the bedbug plague is reaching crisis proportions with a 34% increase in official complaints last year. There are lots and lots of people who are having a devastating experience with bedbugs," said...
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The "Austrian" is Gerard Jackson who puts out weekly bulletins of opinion and commentary. This is his rejoinder to The Weekly article by the PM. He accuses Hayek of treating the market as a "game" "specifically a game of 'catallaxy'". Thereby dishonestly giving the impression...
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The most recent column in the Fin. We wont criticise Kevin Rudd for his Christmas break, but it was ironic that on the first day after his months leave he could only say, The government stands ready to take whatever action is necessary in the future. This must have been import...
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One of Nicholas Gruen's favorite people, William Easterly has joined the blogosphere to keep the Aid bastards honest. Today, I foist a new blog called Aid Watch on the blogosphere. The objective is to be brutally honest when aid is not helping the poor, but also praising it wh...
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A feed on US road accidents summer vs winter etc . A feed from Organizations and Markets. Does the inclement weather have you worried about sliding off the road to an icy death? If so, Ive got some good news for you. On a per-mile driven basis (or per-trip or per-minute travel...
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A rather amusing ranking of jobs in the US . The rationale is explained, if you really want to know, with a mix of remuneration and working conditions. To quantify the many facets of the 200 jobs included in our report, we determined and reviewed various critical aspects of al...
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Tim Blair reports on Yvonne Ridley the British journalist who converted to Islam after being kidnapped by the Taliban who has won a case for unfair dismissal against the Islam News Channel. Earlier in the year she won nearly £14,000 in damages after winning a four-year unfair...
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When this was written for ABC Unleashed in June] the ALP ruled in Canberra and in all the states and territories, not necessarily wisely and well, but in some cases by wide margins. The situation in mid 1965 was very different. Menzies had been the PM for as long as many peopl...
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A wry look at the arguments that are mounted to defend the bailout of the US car industry. Strictly speaking, a part of the US car industry that is failing, not the robust part that is doing OK. "Too big, too important to lose". The same could have been said of the US piano in...
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Some interesting pieces in The Australian Literary Review , 3 Dec, the insert that comes in the paper on the first Wednesday of the month. Richard Lansdowne wrote on the courage of Alexander Solzhenitsyn which he suggests made him the greatest writer of the 20th century. I am...
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Peter Boettke has written a piece to introduce the main elements of Austrian economics in ten points . The Science of Economics Proposition 1: Only individuals choose. Proposition 2: The study of the market order is fundamentally about exchange behavior and the institutions wi...
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Declaration of interest, the artist is my spouse, but don't let that prejudice you! Kilmeny Niland has produced a prequel to the best selling Aussie Night Before Christmas. The Aussie Day Before Christmas hot off the press, following two other books earlier in the year, Two To...
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Peter Klein at Organizations and Markets has pointed out that the US has a thriving auto industry that does not need to be bailed out. The US has one of the most vibrant, dynamic, and efficient automobile industries in the world. It produces several million cars, trucks, and S...
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The question arose on Organizations and Markets , which industries will be next to hold out their hands for bailout money? Will the massage and sexual favours industry be there in line? A column in Slate shed some light on this topic . It seems that the high end of the industr...
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Peter Boettke makes a point about the role of tariff protection in the US leading the transition from the Great Crash to the Great Depression. In the context of the Great Depression, one has to remember that after the stock market crash in 1929 market corrections were set in m...
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The Bishop of Harare, Rt Rev Dr Sebastian Bakare, will be in Australia from 20 November to 5 December with a circuit in NSW including Sydney, Nowra, Goulburn, Wagga Wagga, , Dubbo, Tamworth, Coffs Harbour, and Gosford. These matters are not on my normal beat but it seems that...
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These are difficult times for liberals. The mood around the world is turning against them. Politicians find it easier to blame crazy economists and greedy managers for financial turmoil than to understand and fix their own mistakes. Free-marketers still have the evidence of ec...
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From today's Fin: There was hope that todays NSW mini-budget might address the states real problems. But it seems the government will merely increases taxes and reduce spending while selling the odd asset. There will be no major reform. If this is right, the NSW government has...
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Interesting to see that the ACT party , led by Rodney Hyde, has a slice of the action in New Zealand. The party is described as the most free market party to have seats in Parliament anywhere in the world. When I ran into Rodney Hide at the Mont Pelerin conference in Christchu...
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Jacques Barzun is arguably the leading commentator on education and cultural studies in the 20th century but he has a low profile since his kind of deep but ideologically disinterested scholarship went out of fashion. Born in 1907, he turns 101 in November. His reputation achi...
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From today's Fin. Several causes of the financial troubles in the United States - including the non-recourse nature of housing loans - were known to be problems before the crisis erupted. Other factors - such as falls in American house prices - were foreseeable. These weakness...
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In light of the massive interventionism that is being practiced by governments to handle the financial crisis, a warning needs to be repeated regarding two very different kinds of government action. The warning can be found in Chapter 17 of The Open Society and its Enemies , s...
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There are important lessons to be learned from the Great Depression but I have the impression that the left emerged with the view that the New Deal was required to save the US from rampant capitalism. There is an alternative account . For an MP3 version of the story . The New...
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"Goodbye and f.... you!" A hemp-inspired comment maybe? This came out of the farewell letter from Andrew Lahde, manager of a small California hedge fund, Lahde Capital, which recentlyreturned 866 percent betting against the subprime collapse. He has retired to live the good li...
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The Australian Skeptics Prize for Critical Thinking has been won this year by Peter Ellerton, a Queensland teacher who established a network promoting critical thinking in schools. The prize is worth $10,000. For a decade up to 2006 it was awarded as a part of the Australian M...
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People will recall that political economy started out as moral philosophy (a la Adam Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy) then evolved into the study of national economies, then reverted to the narrower scope of economics, focussed on the idealised "economic actor". For those...
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On this analysis two major factors in the train wreck were the regulations that pushed lenders to water down prudent criteria for lending and the flight of speculators from the housing market when prices ceased to rise. A nuance in this analysis is to point out that it was not...
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A companion site to the 200 years of Australian technology, " Bright Sparcs ", hosted by the University of Melbourne. A register of people involved in the development of science, technology, engineering and medicine in Australia, including references to their archival material...
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The Henson episode has raised some questions about the role of art and artists that Jacques Barzun addressed in his book The Use and Abuse of A rt. Barzun (1907 - ) turned 100 last year and deserves to be better known as arguably the premier scholar in cultural studies in the...
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From last Tuesday's Financial Review: The Oppositions proposal for a $30 a week boost to the single age pension has not died, let alone been cremated. To avoid more political embarrassment, the government will grant an expensive pension increase before the next election. The a...
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Getting back to the basic things that really matter. If the Manly Seaeagles are to fulfull their promise as the favorites for this event, and defeat the reigning champions, the Melbourne Storm, the Manly pivot Jamie Lyon holds the key due to his responsibilities in both defenc...
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For people who have the time or the need to get into the details of the proposed bailout package, this link provides a section by section summary of the bill. Given the size of the bill, something like this is the only way that most people will ever get a glimpse of the mechan...
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The recent post on architectural delights reminded me that during the Beaconsfield mining disaster I googled Beaconsfield and turned up some pictures of the Batman Bridge nearby. That led to some more pictures of Tasmanian bridges and one of them led to some other bridges in V...
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The way the proposed bailout is being talked up, you get the impression that the whole world depends on the Bush administration and the Fed coming to the party with the best part of a trillion dollars. The US economy depends on it, our economy depends on it, the capacity of th...
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In view of the current financial crisis it may be interesting to revisit the work of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) . His first major work in 1912 was on money and credit. A sleeping giant of the 20th century, for many decades he was the spine of the Austrian school of economics...
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After the Menzies administration was voted out during World War 2 and the Curtin-led ALP took over there was a suggestion to have a Government of National Unity so the best talent on both sides of the house could be applied directly to the desperate issues at hand. Curtin reje...
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The travails of the financial markets have triggered a degree of jubilation among the usual left-leaning suspects, as though this episode reflects badly on "neoliberalism", deregulation and the free market order. This view is not sustainable because the problems can be traced...
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From the Fin Column of 19th August. There were so many issues in the last election that you might not have noticed Labors promise to introduce a resale royalty scheme - to provide artists with a share of profits when their art is resold. This is a promise that will soon haunt...
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Hugh Stretton has been a persuasive advocate for the competition-enhancing role of government agencies in the private sector. His example was the South Australian Housing Trust which apparently operated on a commercial basis to provide alternative accommodation in the marketpl...
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Tyler Cowen challenges the idea that the finance markets have failed due to lack of regulation. Not a lack of government intervention , too much, done badly. THERE is a misconception that President Bushs years in office have been characterized by a hands-off approach to regula...
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This is one for Don Arthur, maybe you can help to work out where John Gray is coming from these days and what happened since the time he was a fan of Thatcherism and the New Right. Somewhere along the road he decided that he could no longer support liberalism because it provid...
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This is the latest feed from Eddie Cross , a white MP in the MDC party that is now sharing power with Mugabe. Eddie explains how the power-sharing arrangement has a strong resemblance to the traditional governance of the Shona tribe.
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Today's column from the Fin. The High Court once declared that governments had only limited powers to withhold information from voters. But a recent judgement effectively means that ministers face no constitutional impediment to keeping government documents from the public eye...
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The whole of Sept 08 Quadrant . And you have to be a subscriber to look at a limited number of back numbers. Not long ago only selected items were on line in the current edition and there was open access to back numbers extended as far as 2002 or further. WTF? Check out John S...
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Shopping for Christmas? New books from artist and author Kilmeny Niland. Other artworks from the same source - portraits, miniatures, haiga , wildlife, cards. A prolific source of links on every topic under the sun. Australiana , war , the US , queer issues , etc. Peter Klein...
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Congratulations to Andrew Leigh who has scraped onto the list of the top 50 economics blogs. This came as a feed from The Austrian Economists where one of the five bloggers was excited to come in at 38. Marginal Revolution was on the top, followed by Econbrowser and then Paul...
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Bob Gould on the evolution of revolutionary thought since 1905. Proving that old lefties don't die, they just write a lot. Bob Gould is the sixty-something proprietor of a series of alternative bookshops, starting in Goulburn St (Sydney) and now located in King St, Newtown. He...
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Good news everyone! Refreshed by a spell on the bench I have decided to line up with the Troppo team, or at least alongside the team. The major mission is to keep people up to date with developments in classical liberalism, critical rationalism and Austrian social studies. Jus...
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A column first published in the Fin on the 5th August. In the first days of the new parliament, the Opposition called for three Senate select committees. Its new found passion for accountability was deeply hypocritical: when the Howard government ruled the Senate it made sure...
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From a Fin Review column on 22nd July. The February meeting of the Shellharbour council, on the NSW south coast, was to start at 7.15pm. But the majority of councillors, Labor Party members, refused to assemble until an undesirable left the public gallery. He seemed harmless,...
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From yesterday's Fin Many Australians are mesmerised by an inquiry into Wollongong City Council and some of its councillors and staff and developers. NSWs Independent Commission Against Corruption is unveiling a plot which links sex, bribes, blackmail, greed, abuse of office a...
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Today's AFR column. These Thai workers made their views about electricity privatisation very clearly known. Mind you, that isn't of itself a great argument against it, just an apt photo - KP (from The Age ) Paul Keatings strength in government was his ability to make the case...
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If John Howard were to summarise his legacy, he would emphasise economics. As he claimed in the election, Australia has a strong economy with low inflation and low rates of unemployment. With the benefit of asset sales and budget surpluses, the commonwealth has the financial c...
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From today's AFR Bob Hawkes election victory in 1983 was so sure that he and his treasurer-designate, Paul Keating, were able to meet treasury and finance officers within 72 hours of election day. The 1983-84 budget, was the agenda item because the Fraser government - with Joh...
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From last week's Fin Review. The Australian Bureau of Statistics publications on government finance measure the financial activities of governments and reflect the impact of those activities on other sectors of the economy. But statistics sometimes fail, mostly because politic...
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For more than three decades, from the late 1940s to the 1980s, Heinz Arndt was the most prolific and energetic economist in Australia. His prodigious output of articles, books, lectures, conference papers, reviews and reports is testimony to his productivity. For twenty years...
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This column was published by the Fin in early April and appears here as a matter of record - and invitation for comment. Peter Costello told us that he would relentlessly attack the oppositionâs $2.7 billion raid on the future fund for broadband investment. And he did, doggedl...
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A column from the Fin Review: During the next few weeks, the expenditure review committee (ERC) of federal cabinet will finalise the 2007-08 budget. One of the committeeâs tasks is to hunt down waste, but recent budgets show that the principal custodians for the taxpayer, the...
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A cute account of one of our favorite tribes . The Econ tribe occupies a vast territory in the far North. Their land appears bleak and dismal to the outsider, and travelling through it makes for rough sledding; but the Econ, through a long period of adaptation, have learned to...
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From yesterday's AFR. It is the week before Christmas. Political programs such as the ABC's Insiders have ended and John Clarke and Brian Dawe have retired for the year to join an audience distracted by the summer. But this inattentive season is also the time for ministers to...
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The collected papers from the 2002 Popper conference in Vienna are now available at the cost of an arm and part of a leg. See if anyone here can manage some more intelligent comment than the parade of puns at Catallaxy .
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Not the football team you galahs, this man .
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Greg Ransom at PrestoPundit has set up a running file of notices , obituaries and tributes to Milton Friedman, including some of his last interviews.
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Suggested reason for a trip to the Old Country. The Bank of England announced the making of a new £20 banknote which will feature Adam Smith (see here , and here is what The Times says). It will come out in the Spring 2007. It is ironic in some way that the Bank of England fea...
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From the pre-game commentary Slater was well held by the Dragons. He is probably due for a blinder. King could be ready to explode as well, his best work was done in defence the other night when he practically closed down Gasnier. The biggest danger for the Storm will be the p...
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It is generally accepted that Popper did not give a thorough account of the way that science actually works, and that is supposed to indicate that by the 1960s he was a bit out of things. Perhaps he did some interesting work back in the 1930s that challenged the logical positi...
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More on Collingwood . Review of a collection of Collingwood's essays on political philosophy. Chapter 1 BENT OF A TWIG UNTIL I was thirteen years old I lived at home and was taught by my father. Lessons occupied only two or three hours each morning; otherwise he left me to my...
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Cedric Emanuel (1906-1995) was one of the most productive and versatile of Australian artists. He has major importance as a visual historian. For almost seventy years he sketched and painted the rapidly changing scenes of Australia from the outback to the inner suburbs of Sydn...
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This piece started out as a rejoinder to James Farrell's terse comments on a Catallaxy post about Peter Bauer's work on "development economics" and the role of aid in helping (more usually not helping) poor nations. Rafe Champion asks, apropos of nothing in particular, whethe...
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But occasionally we should look at their legislative work, if only to worry about it. Last week's debate on the proposed law to build a refugee-proof, legal wall around Australia highlighted their concerning contributions. One example is the Liberal Senator for the Australian...
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About three decades ago statistics a la USA arrived in rugby league. This had some interesting effects. One year (1976?) there was an epic battle between Ray Higgs (Parra) and Terry Randall (Manly) for a big prize for the leading tackler in the comp. Then someone realised that...
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One for Nicholas! As soon as I could safely toddle My parents handed me a Model; My brisk and energetic pater Provided the accelerator. My mother, with her kindly gumption, The function guiding my consumption; And every week I had from her A lovely new parameter, With lots of...
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D.H.LAWRENCE :GENIUS OR JOKE? A paper delivered at the annual general meeting of the D H Lawrence Society at the Julian Ashton Art School annexe at Georges Heights, Mosman on Sunday 20 July 2006. My theme is from Joseph Conrad and his tale, The Shadow Line: Only the young, he...
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This is Tony Harris's latest column. But I wanted to add by way of introduction that Tony removed a great joke from it - which I've resurrected for Troppodillians. Namely "The one good thing about Phillip Ruddock's recent setbacks is that the egg on his face improves his pallo...
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Published last week in Crikey Speakers of parliament are well remunerated. In the commonwealth they receive nearly $200,000, more than most ministers and 75 per cent above the salary paid to parliamentarians. And they are well cosseted. They enjoy extensive office suites with...
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From a few weeks back. The High Court decided in 1997 - the case was Lange v the ABC - that Australia's constitution necessarily implies "a limitation on legislative and executive power to deny the electors and their representatives information concerning the conduct of the ex...
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Yes, the federal government listened to the people and scuttled the sale of its 13 per cent share in the Snowy Hydro Corporation, and NSW reluctantly followed. But if you consider the statements by relevant ministers, you will find a farrago of deception. Most people will not...
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Expressions of interest are invited from people who are prepared to comment for The Real Game on the prospects and performance of the following teams: Geelong, Swans, Hawks, Lions, Eagles, Crows, Port, the waterside workers, Saints, Western Bulldogs, Carlton. No experience req...
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Don't be misled by large government spending and tax cut announcements in tonight's budget. The Howard government is still mercantilist: it believes government finances are better off for having large under-used savings called surpluses. Mercantilism is the practice of buildin...
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He reminds me of someone, but who? Anyway, here is Parsons' Wikipedia entry Thinking alound about the way that economics and the human sciences could have evolved under the influence of Carl Menger and others, especially Ludwig Mises, Talcott Parsons and Karl Popper. Continuin...
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Today's column from the Financial Review. About twenty years ago, a boatload of Indonesians arrived on Australia's coastline and claimed refuge. That request threatened relations with Indonesia and alarmed federal ministers. Cabinet secretly decided - without any interviews -...
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From the Financial Review, 28th Feb, 2006 Every few months the head of the Prime Minister's department, Peter Shergold, denies that the Commonwealth public service is politicised. It is Shergold's duty to counter the assertion, frequently made by former public servants, that t...
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"There are none so blind as those who will not see." So said Goldie Hawn in the 1972 film, "Butterflies are Free." That sentiment can describe those federal ministers claiming they had no reason to investigate corruption by the Australian Wheat Board. John Howard defended th...
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Like a good humanist and liberal I have always been opposed to censorship, however in the 1980s I stirred up a debate in the Humanist literature, pointing out that there was a newer wave of pornography about and it was very different from the kind of harmless stuff that prompt...
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Good news everybody! Israel Kirzner, the leading current exponent of the Austrian school of social and economic thought has won a gong in Sweden . Sweden has an interesting mix of policies, combing free trade and a dynamic, export-oriented private sector with cradle to grave w...
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Joshua Smith (1905-1995) achieved fame as the subject of the painting by William Dobell that won the Archibald Prize in 1943. Smith and another party jointly challenged the award in court on the ground that the painting was a caricature. Correction , 7 Oct 06, Smith was not a...
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Robert Carter is the President of the Australian Society of Marine Artists. He has some paintings on show at the Mosman Art Gallery, alongside a truly spectacular selection of important works collected by Howard Hinton and donated to the Armidale Teachers College. Anyone who t...
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One of my relatives, just retired, has a serious and longstanding weight problem, complicated by a bad leg as a result of a car accident many years ago. One leg is shorter than the other (which could have been corrected by a built-up shoe) and that has upset her gait and damag...
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Albert Jacka was possibly the outstanding footsoldier and front-line leader of men in the Great War. It is possible to imagine equally impressive achievements but hard to imagine better. That is a big claim, but check out the record . It is worth reading to the end because Jac...
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Brian Penton's book The Landtakers is now on line as a part of the Australian Gutenberg ebook project. It came up when I did a google on Jacques Kahane who worked with Penton to translate Mises "Against Socialism". Penton's novel is dedicated to Kahane. Similarly, Olga Penton'...
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Brian Penton (1904-1951) would surely have achieved the status of the most memorable journalist and commentator in postwar Australia but he died in his prime and left too many enemies to achieve the reputation that he deserved. This article by his biographher Patrick Buckridge...
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Taking up the theme of limited government that I dropped in a comment the other day, Gerard Radnitzky wrote a fascinating paper on the "European miracle" of scientific progress, freedom and prosperity that marched together over the last few centuries. The bottom line of this l...
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A great steer from Matt McIntosh (in a comment) to a long interview with Jeremy Shearmur . He is now living in the vicinity of Canberra. Britain's loss.... This is some stuff about Adam Smith that should appeal to Nicholas Gruen. Interviewer You've spoken about Adam Smith. How...
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Thanks to Ian for providing the link to this 1994 piece by Noel Pearson , deploring the Labor failure to allocate more money to health care or any other stragegies to address the devastation wrought by alcohol in the outback communities. I just wish that the honorable members...
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Noel Pearson gave a talk this evening, actually yesterday, sponsored by the dreaded rightwing think tank The Centre for Independent Studies. The venue was a rather unlikely location, a bunker under the Sydney Stock Exchange, an interesting place to talk about relieving the con...
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Our institutions are constantly evolving and so we are faced with a challenge, a promise and a responsibility. The challenge is to join the eternal task of critical appraisal and piecemeal reform, the promise is the hope of unending progress and the responsibility is to mainta...
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I think David McKnight has to move a lot further to locate himself in a viable position vis a vis left, right and neoliberalism. In addition to the links provided by the indefatigable and mercurial Nicholas Gruen in the post below, there is an appraisal of the concluding chapt...
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From the Social Change project , at the Mercatus Centre, George Mason University, a link to a report on the recent three-day World Islamic Economic Forum held under the auspices of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The forum hosted more than 500 delegates from...
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Nicholas Gruen is coming to town next weekend, Sunday Oct 9. It is a long way from home so he might appreciate some convivial company. What if we make this an opportunity for a bloggers night out? How about the Clock Hotel in Crown Street, Surry Hills? Any takers, any other su...
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David McKnight has set up a blog to promote discussion of his book. It is a very interesting exercise and I am making an effort to help him in his endeavours, especially to improve the revised edition of his opus. Commentary on some of the chapters can be found on Catallaxy. C...
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Check out this post on Catallaxy for a good interview with a friend and colleague of the late Paul F, philosopher of science, dadaist, man about town, opera buff and prodigious correspondent.
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Belay there, me hearties, today Monday Sept 19 be International Talk Like a Pirate Day . Among a wide range of attractions and distractions on the site is the pirate personality test .
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Pressing on with the Les Darcy research and the things that you find out whether you wanted to know or not. I should have mentioned that the Park/Champion book is available in paperback from quality booksellers etc. The foundation for the book was was laid by Darcy Niland (nam...
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(Note: for reasons unknown to me, Wordpress has filed this as a contribution of Tony Harris. It is in fact by Rafe Champion. NG) One of my most interesting writing projects was to work with Ruth Park on a historical biography of the boxer and sporting icon Les Darcy. This invo...
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Critical comments from a Kenyan economist James Shikwati on the perverse results of western aid to African states. SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them. Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who...
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As a follow-up to the epic post on the graveyard of ideologies, here is a story about the graveyards of ideologists .
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Limpopo farmers sell fresh produce by cellphone . Off the Blogafrica site . Off Jonathan Calder's Liberal England site.
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Taking up a passing comment by Gummo Trotsky on the apparent failure of liberal education, it is tempting to compose a small essay or meditation to explore some points of entry to this rather large issue. Talk of failure (or of deferred success) raises the question, when do we...
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Jacques Barzun is one of the great pioneering figures in cultural studies and he is also a most illuminating commentator on the problems of education at all levels. In 1973 he delivered some lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D. C. and they were published in...
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Toby Fattore, of the New South Wales Commission for Children and Young People has written an insightful and nuanced review of a book of international readings on child labour . Some of the more strident commentators on this topic are unfortunately still in the grip of the mora...
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Following a debunking post on Che Guevara , John Quiggin made an interesting comment. "The orthodox history I was taught at school consisted largely of glorification of people who were pretty much identical to Che in all essentials (Alexander the Great, Richard the Lionheart,...
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On the eve of the first test in the Ashes series, with Brett Lee selected to play and some green in the wicket, Catallaxy appropriately has a thread "In defence of bouncers" . Not to be outdone, here is a piece from the Rathouse on the role of gambling and other commercial inc...
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Jon Hawkes was one of my class mates at Launceston Grammar. He was the brightest kid in the class and also the youngest by a fair margin. Mr Hawkes was an anglican cleric with an interesting series of posts - Jamaica, King Island, the Huon Valley in Southern Tasmania, Monash U...
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This is reminiscent of the time a Melbourne company offered stoves in VFL club colours. The marketing ploy did not suceed, presumably due to the regretable prevalence of mixed marriages and other forms of social mixing between the tribes. "Fans of soccer club Reading can now t...
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Interesting problem halts games in the Nigerian football league. "Away teams rarely win games in the Nigerian league while many teams usually rely on securing points through protests to the league's disciplinary committee."
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A disturbing report from the Old Dart. The Anglican Consultative Council has recommended that its member churches divest their investments with firms that support the Israeli occupation of Arab territories. A strangely misplaced example of moral equivalence.
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This article indicates that the US provides nearly 0.7% of GDP to third world nations, compared with the usually quoted figure of 0.15%. It also notes the importance of other forms of aid such as private capital to establish so-called sweatshops that provide a ladder of opport...
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In case anyone finds this observation reassuring, less people have died in the London bombing than the US authorities incinerated at Waco . I support joint activities with our ally when it is proper or expedient to do so (and especially when it is both proper and expedient). S...
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Today I found the message that Ken posted when Mark Bahnisch joined the team, with a profile and all that stuff, and I realised that Ken has been too busy to post the my cv. This is no big deal, but in case anyone is interested... There is also a photo that is only few years o...
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This looks like a recreational event that could take off in the Territory, perhaps with the requirement that in addition to having fun the participants should consume a slab of beer or so before taking the field.
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Armadillo afficionados might be interested to know that Cambodia has issued a postage stamp to celebrate a prehistoric armadillo .
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In view of the topical nature of Third World issues, this online journal from Africa may be of interest. A summary has been turning up in my mail for some time, courtesy of one of the many email groups that flood my in-box with more stuff than I can read. Clearly it has free m...
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Following the example of Nicholas Gruen who posted on some people who helped to save the world, I will put up some little-known people who were less involved in affairs of state but instead made their contribution in the world of ideas. Let me introduce Ian D Suttie, Bill Hutt...
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