A failure in the realm of ideas: It’s crisis as usual for the left. Despite the global financial crisis, left of centre parties are struggling in the polls. Francis Fukuyama puts it down to a "a failure in the realm of ideas" arguing that: "The left has not been able to make a plausible case for an agenda other than a return to an unaffordable form of old-fashioned social democracy."

Forget about ideas, says Bob Carr: In the Financial Review, incoming foreign minister Bob Carr argues that parties of the left are exhausted because they’ve fulfilled their mission and achieved most of their major goals. But according to Carr the problem is not a lack of bold new ideas. To succeed, leaders should forget about theory and improvise. That is how Labor has succeeded in the past.

More ideology! In the UK, Pete Redford takes the opposite view. At the LSE’s Politics and Policy blog he writes:

New Labour provided us with years of policy rather than ideology; for us to be successful again the party needs faith in its ideology and to break free from the New Labour belief that abandoning principles is necessary for power. Ed Miliband’s belief that Labour is not intellectually confident is an unfortunate truth. Not since Hugh Gaitskell and Anthony Crosland has the party had a clear ideological view and it now falls upon us to give an ideology back to the party.

Along with University of Liverpool academic Kevin Hickson, Redford argues that Labour needs an alternative to the Blairite agenda being pushed by people like David Miliband.

Last month David Miliband attacked a recent article by Hickson and former deputy leader Roy Hattersley that argued Labour needed a coherent and consistent philosophy. According to Hickson and Hattersley, New Labour placed too much faith in markets and accepted the conservative idea that the state should be drastically reduced.

Reassurance Labour: David Miliband dismissed this call for ideological renewal as an exercise in feel-good politics. "It is what I shall call Reassurance Labour", he wrote. "Reassurance about our purpose, our relevance, our position, even our morals. Reassurance Labour feels good. But feeling good is not the same as doing good – and it gets in the way when it stops us rethinking our ideas to meet the challenges of the time."

Hattersley hit back in the Guardian arguing:

State action is vital to the achievement of a more equal society. It is the most efficient mechanism for the redistribution of power and wealth, and it enables a genuinely egalitarian government to destroy the institutions of inequality and replace them with systems which unite rather than divide the nation.

Meanwhile at Larvatus Prodeo … Guy Beres suggests that: "the Rudd and Gillard Labor Governments have dipped quite a bit into ‘Reassurance Labour’ economics, pursuing interventionist tax policies on climate change and mining, and betting the farm on the success of the National Broadband Network project."

Too much ‘light on the hill’ rhetoric, says Carr: While British social democrats like Redford invoke the work of theoretical thinkers like Tony Crosland, Carr argues that ideological debate is futile. Other responses to the crisis of social democracy are not much better. In the Financial Review he writes:

Nobody knows what “social inclusion” means and I am getting weary of attempts to invoke Prime Minister Ben Chifley’s “light on the hill”, more being made of it than Chifley ever intended. Education is elevated as the answer to every social problem, as if nobody has ever tried it.

Wayne Swan vs the malefactors of great wealth: In the Monthly, Treasurer Wayne Swan argues for a more equal Australia: "It’s not just about putting dollars in people’s pockets, but about building a better society; a society that creates wealth and spreads opportunity, a society that lifts up the worst-off and gives everyone a decent shot at a decent life." According to Swan, this vision is threatened by the increasing power of vested interests. He singled out mining magnates Andrew Forrest, Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart claiming that Rinhart had enlisted the help of media figures like Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones and Ray Hadley.

Right wing bloggers scoff: Andrew Bolt mocks Swan’s claims asking: "Which individuals ‘mobilised’ all the conservatives and ‘shock jocks’ and when did that order go out? Was there a secret conference? Are Jews, Freemasons or Opus Dei involved?" At Catallaxy, Judith Sloan dismisses Swan’s article as "unsubstantiated hyperbole and prejudiced mumbo-jumbo."

The continuing crisis of social democracy: "No, Labor and social democracy in Australia are not dead yet but both are struggling." Wayne Swan, 2002.

The view from America: "the plot has thickened like barbie sauce and Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott is the happiest man in Australia." Aaron Goldstein, The Spectacle Blog.

Gillard government a policy free zone: "Now that the Rudd agenda has mostly been passed or abandoned, Gillard has no policies whatsoever, a point I made some time ago." John Quiggin.

Policy isn’t Labor’s problem: "alone of Australian institutions the ALP conducts no systemic training for its personnel, no mentoring, no coaching, no management of high potential talent. And we pay the price with spokespeople thrust into jobs with no preparation and no support or guidance. Good cases are lost because nobody can articulate them, our debating prowess has leached from the organization." Bob Carr, Thoughtlines.

What does it mean for women in politics? "my greater concern is that Gillard’s particularly choppy time in leadership will be remembered by the Australian people and taken as representative of what things are like when a woman is in charge – and that as a result, our second woman Prime Minister will be a long time coming." Chloe Angyal , Feministing.

For the good of the party? Comments on the Kevin Connects blog:

"Stick it to the caucus … POWER TO THE PEOPLE"

"Just a thought, why dont you form your own party?, you at least have 30 serving politicians by your side and no faceless men!!"

"abandon the challenge and go independant! You will be savaged by your colleagues but you are now anyway."

"MMM the speach is full of ‘I’. I have my doubts about K Rudd. He seems to have narcissistic tendencies, despite sound policies and an intellectual mind."

Huh? Alison Caddick’s editorial in Arena.

What leadership challenge? "The US Presidential election is the most important we will have this year anywhere on the planet, and may in the long run affect us in Australia even more than any election we might contrive to have ourselves." Steve Kates, Catallaxy.

Updates …

That’s not a leadership battle: "compared with the bone crushing, rugby style of Australia’s governing Labor Party; the GOP proceedings seem like a game of touch football by comparison." Aaron Goldstein, The American Spectator.

Zombie-Rudd: "This is like Julius Caesar, reinterpreted as a Zombie flick." J Murph, Twitter.

Robot vs Zombie: "Robot overlord goads zombie army to attack. Most faeries wonder what fuss is about. Wish they’d all just get on with improving the kingdom." Argumentalist, Twitter.

Lucky us! "Rudd-Gillard debacle sign of Australia’s privilege: countries don’t allow themselves such diversions unless things are going v well." Alain de Botton‏, Twitter.

We save for the future by building things: "As a society, we save for the future by channeling resources—steel, electricity, human labor power—into the production of things that last a long time rather than things that are more perishable." Matthew Yglesias, Moneybox.

Investing in people: "I watched the great Ford River Rouge plant in Detroit, which once employed 44,000 workers, be reduced to rubble. I drove along ten mile of the Mongahela River near Youngstown and saw the skeletons of steel mills, surrounded by tires and rotting lumber …" Mark Naison, With a Brooklyn Accent.

Monsanto’s plastic House of the Future: "Legend has it that the planned one-day demolition of the House of Future ended up taking two weeks as the wrecking ball just bounced off the exterior. Workers painstakingly cut the house into pieces with hacksaws." Yesterland.

Data is the new plastics: There’s a shortage of people with data and analytical skills, says Steve at the Small Business Labs blog. Young people should get into data.

Erik Brynjolfsson on Big Data: "There is a fundamental change underway in the way that companies make decisions. Instead of relying on a leader’s gut instincts, an increasing number of companies are embracing a new method that involves data-based analytics." MIT Sloan Experts.

What does technology look like in an age of abundance? "Has truly radical innovation been forever replaced by incremental innovation that makes our lives easier, but not fundamentally different, from the way it was twenty years ago?" Dominic Basulto, Big Think.

What’s all the fuss – it’s a toasted cheese sandwich: Everyone‘s talking about Jonathan Kaplan‘s new grilled cheese sandwich chain, The Melt. It’s the chain’s use of QR codes that’s generating the most excitement. According to Ben Parr at Mashable:

The Melt allows diners to order their meals via their mobile phones. Placing an order on your phone creates a QR code that you can then swipe in the store. Once swiped, your order appears on the “Order Board” and your grilled cheese is placed in a propriety grill with a built-in microwave. Kaplan’s goal is to go from swipe to grilled cheese in two minutes or less.

So what about the sandwiches? Apparently they’re ok but not great.

Who is Noah Smith’s favourite conservative? "I am a liberal, but I believe we desperately need a relevant, functioning conservative movement. We need a conservative movement that is focused on making the government more effective, not smaller." Noah Smith, Noahpinion.

Somebody should tell John Singleton: "The Workers’ Party is systematically ruining this country. They are making it impossible for industry to compete, deliberately raising production costs and diminishing our ability to pay our way in the world." Steve Kates, Catallaxy.

The trouble with saving teenage poems: "My biggest fear is that someone will find them after I have died and wrongly assume that I kept my poetry because I was so proud of it. They may even then decide that a fitting tribute would be to read these poems at my funeral." Blue Milk.

Conservatism "thrives on low intelligence and poor information", writes George Monbiot who reports the results of, a recent study showing that "prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence, but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn."

Earlier the Daily Mail enraged readers by reporting the study’s findings. The Guardian’s Charlie Brooker called it a deliberate act of trolling. In the US, Live Science ran the story provoking scorn and ridicule in conservative forums like Free Republic.

It started with a paper by Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri in Psychological Science: ‘Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact’ (pdf). The researchers conclude:

Our synthesis demonstrates that cognitive ability plays a substantial role not only in predicting prejudice, but also in predicting its potential precursors: right-wing ideologies and authoritarian value systems, which can perpetuate social inequality by emphasizing the maintenance of the status quo, and a lack of contact and experience with out-groups.

Here’s a few of the online responses to the paper and the debate that followed.

Continue reading →

A Twitter randomised trial: "I have a confession to make", writes Andrew Leigh, "I’m a twitter-sceptic." But in keeping with his evidence-based approach to decision making, Andrew Leigh MP is embarking on a one month randomised trial. @aleighmp

Why libertarians need to talk with the left and how to do it: "Between Left and Right, the reality remains that the Left is still closer to our ideals. They are more likely to agree with our social liberalism and foreign policy even though they are economic interventionists." James Peron, Moorfield Storey Blog.

Men who argue with goats: They love a good argument at Menzies House.

… or with Cory Bernardi: "Throughout history it has been demonstrated that any government that becomes too big eventually is forced to accrue a level of debt that cannot be sustained." Cory Bernardi.

The biggest government in the world? "The Congressional Budget Office report … says that annual deficits will remain in the $1 trillion range for the next several years if Bush-era tax cuts slated to expire in December are extended, as commonly assumed." NBC Politics.

So what about the Nordics? "If heavy taxation has harmful economic effects, why have Denmark and Sweden performed similarly to the United States during a period of several decades in which their taxes were much higher than America’s?" Lane Kenworthy.

In praise of private equity: "The difficult truth that virtually no politician is prepared to acknowledge is that the road to job creation runs through job destruction." Reihan Salam.

The introvert’s lament: Social butterflies are annoying. Overdressed Anarchist.

Op shopping: Justin Campbell finds a copy of Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose in an op shop. "I quickly grabbed hold of the book and guarded it in case someone else wanted to buy it", he writes. "The bewildered shopkeeper seemed surprised at my excitement."

The fate of Mrs Petrov’s lost shoe: Apparently Sir Les Paterson has it.

Katie’s Australia Day – Brazilian style! Food blogger Katie Quinn Davies’ Australia Day recipes.

Australia Day from afar: "One of the most surprising things for me to experience out of Australia was people saying–even in the American South!–Australia’s really racist, isn’t it?" Queen Emily, Hoyden About Town.

Drunks draped in flags: "the path that took us here is a complex one. Music festivals, drinking binges, the crystallisation of fears and resentments, the navel gazing over Identity, all that is part of the road, as well as politicians." Kim, Larvatus Prodeo.

The view from Menzies House: Tim Andrews celebrates Australia Day with a whinge about lefties and "self-appointed intellectual elites".

Be as Australian as you want to be: "Let us be frank: anti-racist prejudice is the worst kind of prejudice at all. It denies freedom of expression; it denies freedom of conscience; and most heinous of all, it denies courage." Ben Pobjie.

John Passant reports on the tent embassy protest: "Soon about 200 of the demonstrators moved from the Tent Embassy commemoration to the café to tell Abbott what they thought of him …" En Passant.

Steve Kates on the protests: "I must tell you my disgust is unbounded. We tend not to jail such people, but that is in the way of more fool us than anything." Catallaxy.

Missing the story: The press gallery "shine the light almost exclusively on the confected battle between tweedle dee and tweedle dum – the figureheads at the top of decaying political parties that everyone outside the inbred Canberra vortex can see are just shells of organisations pretending to believe in something beyond power itself." Mr Denmore, The Failed Estate.

Michael loves Heather: "She’s a saint. A princess. A fairy queen. A beautiful, kind, intelligent. imaginative, brave young woman with a wicked sense of humour and a shipload of empathy." Michael Stuchbery gets married.

One year on: "How do you grieve for someone who hurt you profoundly, repeatedly, and tore your family apart? Who was also deeply intelligent, cursed with mental illness, incredibly funny, and when he could be, loving?" Imogen, raw/roar.

What’s So Special about America’s 1%? "If we’re all embedded in a fundamentally unjust, exploitative global economic structure, it’s hard to see why the American 1% should be especially salient." Will Wilkinson, The Moral Sciences Club.

Social justice … Tea Party style: "A common trope for conservative policy intellectuals is that they want to ‘means test’ the welfare state – reduce its availability for those with high wealth and income and focus it on those with the least wealth and income. But the Tea Party base wants the opposite – they are opposed to a welfare state for the poor, young people, undocumented workers and other groups they think are undeserving." Mike Konczal, Rortybomb.

Dogs against Romney: Why is everyone talking about Mitt Romney’s dog?

Blog readers survey: Peter Chen is conducting a survey of blog readers. You can find the survey here: Australian Blog Readers Study (via Andrew Norton).

The Jericho amendments: At Grog’s Gamut Greg Jericho checks out the Australian Public Service Commission’s new guidelines for public servants engaging in public comment. Some of the principles are "so obvious or dumb as could only be written by a public servant", says Jericho, while another is "utterly stupid."

Left-wing Paulbots are go! Left-wingers, greens and progressives should be supporting Ron Paul‘s bid for the Republican nomination, writes Leichhardt Greens Councillor, Daniel Kogoy.

Ron Paul on the "whole global warming terrorism" thing: In 2009 Paul said that the Copenhagen treaty on climate change "can’t help the economy. It has to hurt the economy and it can’t possibly help the environment because they’re totally off track on that. It might turn out to be one of the biggest hoaxes of all history, this whole global warming terrorism that they’ve been using, but we’ll have to just wait and see, but it cannot be helpful. It’s going to hurt everybody.” He made similar comments in an interview with Fox Business (at 7:00).

Industry subsidies and political tribalism: At current levels, subsidies to the car industry are third-order, writes John Quiggin. So why all the fuss? "It’s taken for granted on the cultural right that some technologies and industries (nuclear power, oil, finance) are good and others (wind energy, electric cars, Hollywood) are evil – essentially a mirror image of what they think we on the left think. For people who are supposed to believe in the free market, this is a big problem."

There’s a margin in error: "Like advertising, journalism now is mostly about constructing a version of the truth that suits a chosen market. It’s about making an impact and attracting eyeballs and building a brand. And the greatest shame of it all is that a gullible public buys it." Mr Denmore, The Failed Estate.

Voting is about values not interests: "It isn’t rational to vote for your economic interests. It isn’t rational in the economist’s sense to vote at all. Why not, because your individual vote doesn’t count." The Philosopher’s Beard.

The Great Gatsby Curve: Alan Krueger calls it the ‘Great Gatsby curve’ — the finding that countries that have more inequality across households also have more persistence in income from one generation to the next. As Matthew Yglesias points out, that’s bad news for Republican claims that America doesn’t need to redistribute income because it’s the land of equal opportunity and upward mobility.

Hands up if you want downward mobility: "Someone in society is going to end up doing crappy jobs," writes Megan McArdle, "because trash needs to be hauled and Alzheimer’s patients need to have their diapers changed. The primary job of a middle class parent is to ensure that their children are not those people."

Technological change and economic growth : Steve Kates picks a fight with a ‘socialist’ blogger who claims that free markets drive technological change and generate wealth. “Gimme a break" he says, "It is free markets that drive tech change and generate wealth. But it is not ‘tech change’ as such, but entrepreneurs, those people, like Mitt Romney, who do the driving and if they succeed, end up very wealthy. To present it as ‘tech change’ means that rubbish like the NBN or batts in the belfry might get counted."

Mobile phones and the price of fish: Mobile phones are transforming the way people in countries like India do business. In a 2007 paper economist Robert Jensen explained how access to mobile telecommunications allowed fishermen in Kerala to get the best prices for their catch.

"My mother died in 1976. Is she all right?" Kerryn Goldsworthy visits the supermarket.

The missing liberals: Why is there no liberal party? Because there are so few people who support both economic and social liberal causes, says Andrew Norton. Andrew cites data from the 2010 Australian Election Survey.

Dr Watson vs Dr Ludd: With access to huge databases, expert systems will soon be able to diagnose illness better than doctors, says Alex Tabarrok. Not everyone is convinced.

Penalty rate claims hard to swallow: "To believe that Mr Calombaris would open his restaurants on Sundays only to have them run at a loss is to believe that he’s running some sort of altruistic quasi-charity, an impression he attempts to give by suggesting that he opens on Sundays for reasons of ‘tourism’." Matt Cowgill.

Game of thrones: Greg Jericho is tired of reading about leadership challenges.

Adult content? "I can never understand how it’s ok to see images of a woman with breasts larger than her head, but a tasteful picture of something so natural as breastfeeding is ‘offensive’ to those same people." The Happy Sorceress on the Dave Dorman controversy (via Blue Milk).

Why Boardwalk Empire is more like cinema than tv: "In recent years, television shows have increasingly adopted cinematic tropes. Some of these can be found in current television series, nevertheless Boardwalk Empire is the pinnacle of this trend." I Heart the Talkies.

Equality means never having to drink warm beer: LG’s new ‘blast chiller’ compartment can cool a can of beer in five minutes. But to get this feature you have to buy a fridge that costs more that $2,500. Even super-rich people don’t buy refrigerators by the dozen so according to Matthew Yglesias that means "the incentive to invest money in developing even better appliances is relatively muted." He suggests that rising middle class incomes would encourage appliance makers to introduce more of these kinds of features.

Fairness on a budget: Britain’s Attlee government of 1945-51 built the modern welfare state and delivered greater income equality even though it inherited a debt to GDP ratio three times today’s level, writes Chris Dillow. So why is it so hard to implement egalitarian policies today?