I spend a lot of time these days thinking about what I, and Australia as a nation, should do if the US ceases to be a democracy. But, it doesn’t seem as if lots of other people are thinking this way. One possibility is that people just don’t want to think about it. Another, though, is that I’ve overestimated the probability of this outcome.

To check on this, I set up a flowchart using a free online program called drawio. Here;s what I came up with

I hope it’s self-explanatory. The bold numbers next to the boxes are the probability of reaching that box. The numbers next to arrows coming out of decision nodes (diamonds) are the probability of that decision.

I also apologize in advance if there are any arithmetic errors – my degree in pure mathematics doesn’t insulate me

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

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Via Peter Hartcher in the Nine papers, I learned the other day that Albanese snubbed President Prabowo of Indonesia to meet King Charles.

The immediate decision before the Albanese government was how to deal with two important heads of state asking for attention at almost exactly the same time. The prime minister had a long-standing invitation to the inauguration of the new president of Indonesia in Jakarta on Sunday, and a request for a visit by the British monarch to begin on the same weekend.

This ought to be have been a no-brainer. As PM of Australia, Albanese should have been able to set the dates for a visit from Charles in his capacity as King of Australia. And, as Hartcher points out, he could have fitted in both engagements with a flying visit to Jakarta. Instead,

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

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We’re in another round of concern about the “death of the book”, and, in particular, the claimed inability or unwillingness of young people to read full-length books. I’m not going to push too far on the argument that this complaint is ancient, but I can’t resist mentioning the response of my younger brother, who, when asked if he wanted a book for Christmas, answered “thanks, but I already have one”). That was around 50 years ago, and he went on to a very successful legal career.

Fifty years ago, the main competitors for books were TV and radio. Critics at the time decried the passive mode of consuming these broadcast media, compared to the active engagement required by reading. Now, in many respects, the complaint is the opposite. The various services available on the Internet

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

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Over the eight decades following the end of World War II, the US has taken part in dozens of land wars, large and small. The outcomes have ranged from comprehensive victory to humiliating defeat, but all have received extensive coverage. By contrast, the US Navy’s admission of defeat in its longest and most significant campaign in many decades, has received almost no attention. Yet the failure of attempts to reopen the Suez Canal to shipping has fundamental implications for the entire rationale of maintaining a navy.

Operation Prosperity Guardian was launched in December 2023, following a series of attacks on shipping undertaken by Houthi rebels. The US dispatched a carrier strike group, led by USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, and supported by ships from the Royal Navy and other

I’ve been consistently critical of the Labor party since Anthony Albanese became leader after Labor’s narrow but unexpected loss in 2019. It’s always easy to fall prey to confirmation bias in this kind of thing, making much of the bad and ignoring the good. To check my beliefs, I’m taking a widely circulated list of Labor’s claimed achievements, and giving my own responses. This is by no means a complete list of the governments achievements, and of course it doesn’t mention failures, but I’m confining myself to the list for now. Readers can judge whether I’m being fair.

Claims are in bold, my responses in italic

*Establishing National anti-corruption Commission

No significant prosecutions yet, decision not to pursue robodebt

*Cheaper child care

Genuine, but partially

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My latest in The Guardian

Announcements from major employers, including Amazon and Tabcorp, that workers will be required to return to the office five days a week have a familiar ring. There has been a steady flow of such directives. The Commonwealth Bank CEO, Matt Comyn, attracted a lot of attention with an announcement that workers would be required to attend the office for a minimum of 50% of the time, while the NSW public service was recently asked to return to the office at least three days a week.

But, like new year resolutions, these announcements are honoured more in the breach than the observance. The rate of remote work has barely changed since lockdowns ended three years ago. And many loudly trumpeted announcements have been quietly withdrawn. The CBA website has

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

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Like most academics these days, I spend a lot of time filling in online forms. Mostly, this is just an annoyance but occasionally I get something out of it. A recent survey in which the higher-ups tried to get an idea of how the workforce was feeling, asked the question “Do you think of the University as We or They?”.

Unsurprisingly given my reference to “higher-ups”, my answer was “They”. But giving the answer reminded me that, not so long ago, it would have been “We”. In its idealized form, a university was a self-governing community, with a well-understood teaching and research mission (which did not require a Mission Statement). All but the most senior management jobs were done by academics taking turns before returning to their real jobs. Administrative staff did

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

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Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.

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In today’s AFR. It’s paywalled and I don’t have access (I’ve been promised a PDF) so here’s what I submitted, which may not be final.

Six months ago, Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers was planning legislation to remove his own power (never used, but always available until now) to over-ride decisions of the Reserve Bank. Now, he has not only decided to retain this power, but has openly criticised the Bank’s interest rate decisions as “smashing the economy”.

It’s easy enough to understand Chalmer’s criticism in terms of the political interests of a government seeking to survive and retain power. The government is focused, to the point of obsession, on the “cost of living”, a nebulous term that can best be interpreted as “the reduced purchasing power of household disposable

This study showing that US academic faculty members are 25 times more likely than Americans in general to have a parent with a PhD or Masters degree has attracted a lot of attention, and comments suggesting that this is unusual and unsatisfactory. But is it? For various reasons, I’ve interacted quite a bit with farmers, and most of them come from farm families. And historically it was very much the norm for men to follow their fathers’ trade and for women to follow their mothers in working at home.

So, I decided to look for some statistical evidence. I used Kagi’s AI Search, which, unlike lots of AI products is very useful, producing a report with links to (usually reliable) sources. That took me to a report by the Richmond Federal Reserve which had a table from a paper about

The latest massive $1.1bn profit reported by Coles will doubtless produce a new round of hand-wringing about the “cost of living”. Governments will produce initiatives aimed at capping or reducing prices. Pundits will use a variety of measures to argue as to whether such measures are inflationary. Then there will be debates about whether splitting up Coles and Woolworths into smaller chains would enhance competition. And the Reserve Bank will be encouraged to push even harder to return inflation to its target range.

But these responses, focused on the cost of goods, miss the point. Coles and Woolworths have increased their margins, yes – but prices for groceries have increased broadly in line with other goods. The real driver of supermarket profits is their ability to drive down

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

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The mining magnate does away with the constraints of arithmetic, simultaneously demanding lower taxes more public spending and lower deficits

From The Guardian

A striking feature of the age of billionaires in which we now live is that billionaires are more and more inclined to give us the benefit of their opinions. In the past year alone, we’ve had Marc Andreessen’s retro-futurist “Techno-optimist manifesto”, Mark Zuckerberg’s pronouncements on the future of media, and, most recently, a cosy chat between Elon Musk and Donald Trump (whose billionaire status is often touted but remains questionable). In most cases, the main effect has been to demonstrate that, however good they are at making money, billionaires are no smarter than the rest of us when it comes to politics or the

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.

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Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.

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Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.

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I have a letter in The Chronicle of Higher Education responding to Steven Teles’ call for more conservative college professors. It’s a shortened version of a longer piece I wrote, which I’m posting here.

The fact that conservatives are thin in the humanities and social sciences departments of US college campuses is well known. A natural question, raised by Steven Teles, is whether the rarity of conservative professors in these fields reflects some form of direct or structural discrimination.

But the disparities are even greater in the natural sciences. In 2009, a Pew survey of members of the AAAS found that only 6 per cent identified as Republicans and there is no reason to think this has changed in the subsequent 15 years. One obvious reason for this is that Republicans are

An edited version of this ran in The Guardian under the headline “Why aren’t the likes of Rex and Bonza flying high in Australian skies? Ask the politicians”. Here’s my original, a bit more sharply worded.

Politicians fly a lot, and mostly enjoy it. So do many of the people they interact with on a daily basis: senior public servants, business leaders, lobbyists and so on. That’s a crucial fact in understanding the mess that is the Australian airline industry. 

Politicians in Australia routinely fly business class, and enjoy membership of Qantas’ invitation-only Chairman’s Lounge. Air travel is not only an occupational necessity but a relatively pleasant and relaxing part of a generally stressful job.

For most Australians, air travel is an occasional experience. We fly

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

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From The Guardian

Among many other challenges in dealing with the failure of urban policy in Australia, the Minns (NSW state) government is faced with the task of renegotiating, or repudiating, the disastrous set of contracts for toll roads in New South Wales made by its predecessors (Labor and Liberal) with the Transurban group. As a review by Allan Fels and David Cousins has found, the government is at risk of being held hostage by toll operators. According to Fels and Cousins, immediate legislation is needed “as a backup to negotiations and to give the government power if necessary to determine final outcomes”.

This is by no means an isolated case. The failure of the National Electricity Market, premised on the idea of competition between private companies, has led state

Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the US presidential election has prompted me to write down a few thoughts about getting old and being old.

First up, I’m going to rant a bit (in classic old-person mode) about how much I loathe the various prissy euphemisms for “old” that appear just about everywhere: “older”, “aging”, “senior” and, worst of all, “elderly”. I am, of course, aging, as is everyone alive. Similarly, like everyone, I’m older than I was yesterday and older than people who are younger than me. What no one seems willing to say out loud is that, at age 68, I am old. As Black and queer people have already done, I want to reappropriate “old”.

It’s not hard to see why people are so timid when talking about getting, and being, old. It is, after all, a journey that has only one

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

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I’ve written another piece on the uneconomics of nuclear power in Australia

The big unanswered question about nuclear power in Australia is how much it would cost. The handful of plants completed recently in the US and Europe have run way over time and over budget, but perhaps such failures can be avoided. On the other hand, the relatively successful Barakah project in the United Arab Emirates was undertaken in conditions that aren’t comparable to a democratic high-wage country like Australia. Moreover, the cost of the project, wrapped up in a long-term contract for both construction and maintenance, remains opaque.  Most other projects are being constructed by Chinese or Russian firms, not an option for Australia

In these circumstances, CSIRO’s Gencost project relied mainly

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.

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