Episode 2: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

This episode should be of interest to ecological economists:It starts off with a discussion of the history of ecology including the Odum brothers as well as Jay Forrester and cybernetics. It goes on to the Club of Rome and The Limits to Growth and then to more recent developments in ecology. One of the themes is the rise in people's understanding of the world as an interconnected system. Today,

Director of LSE Resigns over Libya Connections

As an alumnus of LSE I got an e-mail this morning announcing that the Director had stepped down. Here is the full announcement. Here is more background of what must have forced him out.It's strange that it was fashionable in the last few years to be involved with Libya in Western circles and now again it isn't.

Greg Combet

Today Greg Combet, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, spoke at the Crawford School on "Australia in a climate changed world – Moving forward to Cancún and beyond". Frank Jotzo and Carolyn Hendricks gave follow-up presentations on international and domestic aspects of the current climate change policy debate.The Australian is emphasizing his reiteration of the 5% unconditional

Another Push Towards a Directly Elected Executive President?

Back in June when Rudd was ousted I suggested that in the long-term that move could help push Australia towards adopting an executive presidency once the Republic was back on the agenda. Yesterday's emergence of a Gillard-Labor government with a one seat majority backed by the two relatively conservative independent MPs is another nudge in that direction I think. People commenting in the media

Turnbull on the NBN

Turnbull argues that the NBN essentially is the re-nationalization of Telstra (link requires registration but is free) just like the original RSPT was the partial nationalization of the mining industry.

Internet Connectivity

Joshua Gans has been discussing internet speeds between different parts of the world and running some tests. So I ran my own tests from home and speeds are pretty low just between my home and a server in Canberra:Our ISP sucks apparently, but most of the time I find our internet service to be adequate. Except when it isn't. Here's the test to San Jose, CA:Only a bit slower... What I should do

Australian Federal Election Called

Joshua Gans is endorsing Labor. Not much of a surprise. Australian economists mostly seem to be left wing though he seems a bit less so than many. John Quiggin is endorsing the Greens. I just posted this on Quiggin's blog:"Well I expect Andrew Leigh will be my new member of parliament. I do favor voting Green as first preference * as a signal to the major parties. That’s what I usually do. The

Long-Term Outcomes?

My initial thoughts on tonight's developments * in terms of long-term effects is that this could lead for a push for a republic with an executive president and/or longer government terms which give the prime minister more time to implement the government's policies and show that they are working before an election needs to be called. Both ideas have been floated before, of course, and the first

McKibbin on Henry

Following on from yesterday, Peter Martin has a post today where he interviews Warwick McKibbin. I mentioned McKibbin in my comments yesterday. I mostly agree with what McKibbin says in Peter Martin's post. What he doesn't mention and what shocked me the most, though, was that Henry's comments were an attack on academic freedom/freedom of speech from a government official. That is anti-democratic

It's the Economy Stupid

There is all this discussion in the UK about why the Labour Party looks set to lose the election and no-one makes the obvious point: there is (or was) a bad recession and the government has been in power for 13 years. Still it is going to be interesting what happens coalition-wise post-election. I'm a British citizen, so I have some interest I guess...

Will Today's Tax and Superannuation Proposals Actually be Implemented?

Based on the Rudd government's record to date I don't expect these "reforms" to be implemented as announced. The Liberal-National Coalition will oppose them. I expect that the Greens will like them. So, based on the current composition of the Senate, it will depend on Xenophon and Fielding and I have no idea what they'll think. Of course, the legislation would likely wait till after the election.

But Swedish Social Scientists are Right Wing

According to this new study Swedish social scientists are more likely to vote for the right wing parties than left wing parties. This is of course, in marked contrast to the situation in the US and anecdotally in Australia. The authors note though that:"Here we have to keep in mind that an american academic to the left may, in actual views, be close to a swedish academic to the right."However,

Too Big to Fail

The Obama administration is acting to do something about the too big too fail phenomenon, which I flagged as a possible policy direction. I'm not enthusiastic though about the anti hedge fund/proprietary trading moves that are accompanying this. Luckily none of the crazier ideas in Jackson's book are included. I'd favor limits on risk budgets rather than just banning institutions from certain

Conservatism of Non-Academic Scientists

There's been discussion lately about how "liberal" professors are (at least in North America). For example, this blogpost and the paper by Ethan Fosse and Neil Gross. The latter argue that people with liberal political views are more likely to want to become professors. Demographic differences explain 43% of the difference in liberalism between professors and others.The interesting thing to me is

Scott Brown

This doesn't seem to be getting much attention in Australia but it's bad news for getting anything done in the US in the next few years...

Analysis of Copenhagen Accord

Interesting analysis of the Copenhagen Accord from Carlo Carraro and a coauthor. He argues that if the funding for developing countries is primarily used for mitigation actions then the Accord could achieve the goal of getting the world on the path towards the 2C limit on warming. I'm skeptical though that the money will:1. Be spent at all - often aid pledges turn out not to be realised...2. Not

Filibuster

Paul Krugman agrees with me that the US Senate is "dysfunctional". One reason that the Australian parliament is relatively effective is that there are strict limits on how long each member can speak. Therefore, filibusters are almost impossible.

Is One State, One Vote the Problem?

In my opinion (subject to being changed by evidence and argument), the two main obstacles to a more meaningful outcome at COP15 were the intransigence of the US Senate and the gridlock in the UN structure in Copenhagen. In the end, the final accord was not put to a vote of the plenary but simply "noted". The objections of many of the small countries to being dictated to by the large countries who

One Reason I Don't Belong to a Union

It's one thing to be forced to pay taxes to a government that does things you disagree with, but why pay fees to a union who waste some of them on political campaigns that you disagree with and are irrelevant to their members' direct interests? Of course, there are other reasons too... BTW I once did join a union as it was the best route to health insurance in the country I then lived in and I