You know, I haven't really read it yet - but I've read a lot about it, including this "thoughtful" piece from Jock Given.
But I do have my quibbles - at one point Jock writes;
What they show is how much of a particular kind of FTTP network you can build for everyone who already gets ADSL and still have enough change out of $43 billion to get the promised 12 Mbps to the rest. The new cost estimate is actually $42.8 billion, a sure sign that the quick-and-dirty $43 billion that started out on the back of an envelope a year ago became one of the policy bedrocks.
There are two errors in this. The first is that nowhere near all of the 90% originally quoted as the FTTH footprint already get ADSL - and most of those who do are struggling to get about 4 Mbps out of it. The second is that the methodology that the study seems to have used is to increase the fibre footprint to 93% because the cost envelope of $43B permitted it. The last 3% of houses cost more per house to connect to fibre than they would wireless. So $3B isn't a bedrock - but it might well be a cieling.
Jock also notes that the study claims that for wireless users 12 Mbps won't be an average but only a peak speed. Given the performance of vividwireless's 4G network I think the stud has got this wrong. By definition the base stations at the 93-97% level are incredibly lightly loaded and WiMAX or LTE in their current version will deliver 12 Mbps....average.
He also notes the debate about cost of capital. There is no doubt that using the Government bond rate does not make it a commercial investment. It does mean that it should not ever be a drain on the taxpayer. More importantly from a full investment case the return to Government in higher taxation levels from higher growth isn't included - which it would be i you were doing a more traditional "business case" for the Government investment.
He also makes a somewhat stupid analysis relating the size of reports to relative effects on industry and suggests that report size doesn't correlate to impact. He should reflect on my post comparing the Henry Tax Review and the Garnaut report. In the particular circumstance he should reflect that the Beazley statement in 1990 (and the Evans one in 1988) may have been short - but they ultimately drew on the longer Davidson report. And I would note that the Vernon report of 1974 was longer than Davidson and almost everything (except merging Telecom and OTC) was implemented within eighteen months.
It is also a pity that Jock doesn't mention that Optus sued Telstra for anti-competitive conduct in the HFC over-build matter. The case was settled but the terms were never disclosed (though Bill Scales did call it a pittance in a Senate committee). It has long been my belief that the matter was settled in conjunction with a renegotiation of interconnect rates - as Optus withdrew from the competition tribunal re-arbitration of the first PSTN interconnect dispute at the same time.
Monday, May 17, 2010
"Is common carrier a useful construction?" (For telco regulation nerds)
The US Federal Communications Commission has an interesting history. It came into being in the 1930s and picked up interstate aspects of telecommunications that had previously been regulated by a more generic interstate commerce regulator. The deregulatory thrust of the 1996 Telco Act created a distinction between telecommunications and information services, with the former included in the FCC remit and the latter not.
The FCC Chairman has recently announced a change in its approach to broadband which had been classified as an information service and hence not subject to the full regulatory powers of the FCC. The announcement is that the transmission component of the access service as a telecommunications service. I find this interesting because I thought the distinction between the two was legislative in definition not just in application, though I suspect the narrow conception will meet legal challenge.
The decision was covered in an excellent article in this week's The Economist. It points out that some of the underpinning theory of telco regulation in the US was based on the concept of "common carrier" which has a long history dating back to road freight by carts. We forget sometimes that the European market and formr British colonies have little history of regulating private sector telcos as the model was primarily about service delivery through legislatively mandated monopoly 'PTTs' (Post Telegraph and Telecommunications authority).
Th article also provides a reference to this article by James Speta. In this article Speta neatly summarises in one sentence the justification for "common carrier" rules;
Common carrier duties have been imposed based variously
upon theories of de facto and de jure monopoly, on the theory that the
enterprise had become “essential,” and upon theories that the enterprise
was publicly concerned in a particular manner.
The monopoly or market power argument is well known and is the only real basis in Australia's telco regime for economic regulation. It can be argued that the three limbs of the Long-Term Interest of End Users test (promote competition, efficient investment and any-to-any conectivity) can be derived from each other, and that promoting competition, where efficient (i.e. beyond the natural monopoly element) is the policy objective.
The concept of the service being "essential" in the common carrier case is not essential facilities doctrine as we are familiar with it in anti-trust - it is not about star-posts being essential for fencing, or PSTN access and egress being essential for long distance telephony. It is that communications services are essential to all other trade and commerce and social engagement. As a consequence it is right and proper that Government regulate to make sure the services are available to all.
The final element is that the enterprise usually obtaind public concessions. In the telco case it is the Low Impact Facilities exemption from planning, and the ability to use public land to string wires and glass. In the road transport case it is publicly maintained roads.
There would appear to be good reasons to embrace common carrier doctrine for communications services generally. Perhaps a greater focus on the wider context than just monopoly might have helped develop a market structure within which a return to Government ownership of key elements (the NBN) was uneccessary.
The FCC Chairman has recently announced a change in its approach to broadband which had been classified as an information service and hence not subject to the full regulatory powers of the FCC. The announcement is that the transmission component of the access service as a telecommunications service. I find this interesting because I thought the distinction between the two was legislative in definition not just in application, though I suspect the narrow conception will meet legal challenge.
The decision was covered in an excellent article in this week's The Economist. It points out that some of the underpinning theory of telco regulation in the US was based on the concept of "common carrier" which has a long history dating back to road freight by carts. We forget sometimes that the European market and formr British colonies have little history of regulating private sector telcos as the model was primarily about service delivery through legislatively mandated monopoly 'PTTs' (Post Telegraph and Telecommunications authority).
Th article also provides a reference to this article by James Speta. In this article Speta neatly summarises in one sentence the justification for "common carrier" rules;
Common carrier duties have been imposed based variously
upon theories of de facto and de jure monopoly, on the theory that the
enterprise had become “essential,” and upon theories that the enterprise
was publicly concerned in a particular manner.
The monopoly or market power argument is well known and is the only real basis in Australia's telco regime for economic regulation. It can be argued that the three limbs of the Long-Term Interest of End Users test (promote competition, efficient investment and any-to-any conectivity) can be derived from each other, and that promoting competition, where efficient (i.e. beyond the natural monopoly element) is the policy objective.
The concept of the service being "essential" in the common carrier case is not essential facilities doctrine as we are familiar with it in anti-trust - it is not about star-posts being essential for fencing, or PSTN access and egress being essential for long distance telephony. It is that communications services are essential to all other trade and commerce and social engagement. As a consequence it is right and proper that Government regulate to make sure the services are available to all.
The final element is that the enterprise usually obtaind public concessions. In the telco case it is the Low Impact Facilities exemption from planning, and the ability to use public land to string wires and glass. In the road transport case it is publicly maintained roads.
There would appear to be good reasons to embrace common carrier doctrine for communications services generally. Perhaps a greater focus on the wider context than just monopoly might have helped develop a market structure within which a return to Government ownership of key elements (the NBN) was uneccessary.
Mobile phone defence to go into overdrive
The long awaited Interphone study into the health effects of mobile phones is to be released next week.
Initial press coverage has focussed on the result that indicates a potentially increased incidence of one kind of brain tumour amongst the top 10% of phone users. This sort of ignores the rest of the study, that such a widfe ranging enquiry has found very little else.
The correlation itself is not necessarily causal, and the underlying data is incredibly unreliable. High phones usage people are also likely to be high computer users, and may share other behavioura characteristics. The suggestion by one doctor that the phone companies hand over details of usage to enable a better correlation is naive in the extreme. Firstly, customers move between servicer providers and we don't have a unique identifier (heck they haven't even got one for health records yet). Secondly the owner of the phone is not necessarily the user. Thirdly the usage data gives no information about whether a handsfree kit is being used.
More worrying is the assertion that we still mightn't see much results because we've only had mobile phones for a decade. Well actually we've had them for nearly thirty years (AMPS launch in 1981), we've had GSM for nearly twenty years (launched in Oz in 1992, in Europe in 1991). Finally, it is interesting that it is only the mobile phone that is studied and not the simple household cordless phone. Given that it is extended use that seems to be the issue the cordless phone is likely to be a higher source of EME. Additionally mobiles operate over quite a wide frequency range. Unless the issue is simple heating a biological effect is likely to be frequency dependent.
Anyhow, the seriously good news seems to be that the EME issues are only at the user end and not due to base stations. That's not surprising given that 80% of ambient EME is AM radio, signals that have been there for eighty years.
PS Rather than a phone study trying to find an effect, maybe a brain cancer study trying to find a cause may be better? There is an increasing incidence of brain cancer. However, there is also an increase in obesity, in consumption of trans-fats, of hours spent in pressurised airlplane cabins, each of which could have plausible biological connections to an increased incidence. (As could the generational effect of keping people alive longer - hypothesis, the gene for brain cancer development is the same gene as some other cancer that hit particularly young, treatment of the other cancer has improved increasing the ability of the gene to propogate hence increasing its proportion in the population hence increasing the incidence of brain cancers. I don't thik the medical profession would like that hypothesis but it is as reasonable to inestigate as any other).
PPS I work in the industry, and have a distinct aversion to holding anything to my head for more than about ten minutes - thre is a heating effect even if you just hold a book there.
Initial press coverage has focussed on the result that indicates a potentially increased incidence of one kind of brain tumour amongst the top 10% of phone users. This sort of ignores the rest of the study, that such a widfe ranging enquiry has found very little else.
The correlation itself is not necessarily causal, and the underlying data is incredibly unreliable. High phones usage people are also likely to be high computer users, and may share other behavioura characteristics. The suggestion by one doctor that the phone companies hand over details of usage to enable a better correlation is naive in the extreme. Firstly, customers move between servicer providers and we don't have a unique identifier (heck they haven't even got one for health records yet). Secondly the owner of the phone is not necessarily the user. Thirdly the usage data gives no information about whether a handsfree kit is being used.
More worrying is the assertion that we still mightn't see much results because we've only had mobile phones for a decade. Well actually we've had them for nearly thirty years (AMPS launch in 1981), we've had GSM for nearly twenty years (launched in Oz in 1992, in Europe in 1991). Finally, it is interesting that it is only the mobile phone that is studied and not the simple household cordless phone. Given that it is extended use that seems to be the issue the cordless phone is likely to be a higher source of EME. Additionally mobiles operate over quite a wide frequency range. Unless the issue is simple heating a biological effect is likely to be frequency dependent.
Anyhow, the seriously good news seems to be that the EME issues are only at the user end and not due to base stations. That's not surprising given that 80% of ambient EME is AM radio, signals that have been there for eighty years.
PS Rather than a phone study trying to find an effect, maybe a brain cancer study trying to find a cause may be better? There is an increasing incidence of brain cancer. However, there is also an increase in obesity, in consumption of trans-fats, of hours spent in pressurised airlplane cabins, each of which could have plausible biological connections to an increased incidence. (As could the generational effect of keping people alive longer - hypothesis, the gene for brain cancer development is the same gene as some other cancer that hit particularly young, treatment of the other cancer has improved increasing the ability of the gene to propogate hence increasing its proportion in the population hence increasing the incidence of brain cancers. I don't thik the medical profession would like that hypothesis but it is as reasonable to inestigate as any other).
PPS I work in the industry, and have a distinct aversion to holding anything to my head for more than about ten minutes - thre is a heating effect even if you just hold a book there.
The Federal Parliament is not the protector of State democracy
Steve Fielding has had a dumy spit in today's The Punch over the issue of the ALP handing out HTVs in the SA election to direct Family First second preferences to the ALP.
Okay can we just get one thing clear. We live in a Federal system. Technically both the South Australian Government and the Australian Government are Sovereign States - neither is answerable to the other (their sovereignty is only limited by their constitutions which ultimately are all Acts under the Crown).
To argue that Kevin Rudd should comment on the electoral laws in South Australia is like suggesting Australian politicians should have had an opinion on "hanging chads" in the 2000 US election.
If people want the electoral laws changed in South Australia campaign in South Australia. If you want nationally uniform electoral laws campaign to change the Federal Constitution. When it comes to national electoral laws don't just choose one issue - have you noticed how Labor and Liberal both fiddle with the electoral laws everytime they are in power?
The Senate in its "wisdom" has decided to hold an inquiry into these events. Part of the reference is valid - whether Commonwealth law would prohibit the relevant action - to which should be added whether the action is indeed deceptive. After all, the individuals still put Family First first, and really it is the voter who chooses their preference flow, not the party to whom they give their first preference.
To the alegation of Senator Fielding that the ALP has shown no interest in trying to limit similar conduct, the Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig said in debate on the Committee Reference;
Shortly after the first four paragraphs of the reference were reported to the media I asked the AEC for a briefing on these allegations and whether similar alleged conduct would be in breach of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. The AEC advised that these alleged activities would more likely than not be in breach of the act. However, in order to remove all doubt and to ensure that electors are made aware of on whose behalf how-to-vote cards are distributed, I requested the AEC to prepare possible amendments to the act. These amendments, which I table now, improve the authorisation requirements under the act so that it is made clear at the top of how-to-vote cards whether or not the card is being distributed on behalf of a political party or candidate. I will be seeking support for the amendments when further electoral legislation is debated in June and, of course, I look forward to the support of the movers of this reference for those amendments which make this inquiry unnecessary.
He also made the points I make above about the jurisdiction of a Senate committee inquiring into State Elections. It will be interesting to see if anyone proposes to the Committee the simplest solution to the issue - follow the New Zealand model and have "clean booths". That would have serious repercussions though, as getting the troops out on polling day is the only real reason for mass membership parties.
Mind you, if the supporters of my party were so stupid that they could be misled in this fashion I wouldn't be publicising it.
Okay can we just get one thing clear. We live in a Federal system. Technically both the South Australian Government and the Australian Government are Sovereign States - neither is answerable to the other (their sovereignty is only limited by their constitutions which ultimately are all Acts under the Crown).
To argue that Kevin Rudd should comment on the electoral laws in South Australia is like suggesting Australian politicians should have had an opinion on "hanging chads" in the 2000 US election.
If people want the electoral laws changed in South Australia campaign in South Australia. If you want nationally uniform electoral laws campaign to change the Federal Constitution. When it comes to national electoral laws don't just choose one issue - have you noticed how Labor and Liberal both fiddle with the electoral laws everytime they are in power?
The Senate in its "wisdom" has decided to hold an inquiry into these events. Part of the reference is valid - whether Commonwealth law would prohibit the relevant action - to which should be added whether the action is indeed deceptive. After all, the individuals still put Family First first, and really it is the voter who chooses their preference flow, not the party to whom they give their first preference.
To the alegation of Senator Fielding that the ALP has shown no interest in trying to limit similar conduct, the Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig said in debate on the Committee Reference;
Shortly after the first four paragraphs of the reference were reported to the media I asked the AEC for a briefing on these allegations and whether similar alleged conduct would be in breach of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. The AEC advised that these alleged activities would more likely than not be in breach of the act. However, in order to remove all doubt and to ensure that electors are made aware of on whose behalf how-to-vote cards are distributed, I requested the AEC to prepare possible amendments to the act. These amendments, which I table now, improve the authorisation requirements under the act so that it is made clear at the top of how-to-vote cards whether or not the card is being distributed on behalf of a political party or candidate. I will be seeking support for the amendments when further electoral legislation is debated in June and, of course, I look forward to the support of the movers of this reference for those amendments which make this inquiry unnecessary.
He also made the points I make above about the jurisdiction of a Senate committee inquiring into State Elections. It will be interesting to see if anyone proposes to the Committee the simplest solution to the issue - follow the New Zealand model and have "clean booths". That would have serious repercussions though, as getting the troops out on polling day is the only real reason for mass membership parties.
Mind you, if the supporters of my party were so stupid that they could be misled in this fashion I wouldn't be publicising it.
Friday, May 07, 2010
What can you do in 140 characters?
The short answer appears to be "enough to lose your job, but not enough to be informative."
The ever entertaining Gerard Henderson has brought the evidence together in this week's Media Watch Dog when he covered two Twitter events. He gives s the low-down on the incredibly un-sad demise of Catherine Denvey at The Age for her tweets on ANZAC Day and on the Logies.
He follows this with a piece that demonstrates the complete "inanity" (is that a word? If not it should be.) of the tweets received by the ABC's Q&A.
My recent experience has been attending a really good two day policy conference (RadComms 2010) conducted b the ACMA. The ACMA has engaged Tom Burton as their Gov 2.0 adviser. Full credit for web-casting the conference. But they then decided to have a twitter conversation on it as well, including the ability to ask questions.
I know I'm verbose and also use the opportunity of questions to make statements, but I'm not sure I could ever construct a meaningful question in 140 characters on anything to do with spectrum policy and broadband.
By all means support a webcast with a text conversation. But what was wrong with old fashioned chat room structures rather than twitter?
Recently a judge allowed the decision of a court case to be covered on twitter - i the iiNet v AFACT case on copyright. It allowed me a "small moment of fame" when a journalist tweeted "David Havyatt arrives"
Anyway we now know what to do if - horror of horrors - they ever invite Catherine Denvey back to Q&A. Get your twitter fingers ready! What can we say about Catherine in 140 characters. "Get her off - she is boring"?
The ever entertaining Gerard Henderson has brought the evidence together in this week's Media Watch Dog when he covered two Twitter events. He gives s the low-down on the incredibly un-sad demise of Catherine Denvey at The Age for her tweets on ANZAC Day and on the Logies.
He follows this with a piece that demonstrates the complete "inanity" (is that a word? If not it should be.) of the tweets received by the ABC's Q&A.
My recent experience has been attending a really good two day policy conference (RadComms 2010) conducted b the ACMA. The ACMA has engaged Tom Burton as their Gov 2.0 adviser. Full credit for web-casting the conference. But they then decided to have a twitter conversation on it as well, including the ability to ask questions.
I know I'm verbose and also use the opportunity of questions to make statements, but I'm not sure I could ever construct a meaningful question in 140 characters on anything to do with spectrum policy and broadband.
By all means support a webcast with a text conversation. But what was wrong with old fashioned chat room structures rather than twitter?
Recently a judge allowed the decision of a court case to be covered on twitter - i the iiNet v AFACT case on copyright. It allowed me a "small moment of fame" when a journalist tweeted "David Havyatt arrives"
Anyway we now know what to do if - horror of horrors - they ever invite Catherine Denvey back to Q&A. Get your twitter fingers ready! What can we say about Catherine in 140 characters. "Get her off - she is boring"?
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
On policy and politics
The Democrats once campaigned on the slogan "policy not politics", a slogan I rather liked. But it is easy to get overly carried away by exactly what it means.
In that context, I've been intrigued by commentary like this on the Henry Tax Review that labels the response to it "politics". Worse has been the accusation that Rudd's response has been with "an eye to the election".
Last time I looked this is a democracy. In other words we have a system whereby government is expected to do what we want them to do. Ergo we actually want our politticians to have an eye on the election.
There are two ways to do this. The first is to avoid all facts and simply make "populist" responses to current issues. The second is to undertake thorough research on the underlying issues, and then build a process of implementation that involves taking the people as a whole on a journey.
This is actually how the last great cycle of reform was conducted. Could banking de-regulation have occurred without the Campbell and Martin committees? Would we really have ever got a GST without the tax summit?
The Henry Tax Review should be considered in that framework, not the mindset that Government is really just some model whereby you commission a group of experts then slavishly follow their recommendations. That is called a corporation!
There is an interesting side view on this issue of informed policy making. We've also seen the recent decision by the Government to defer the ETS. It is worth remembering that the template for that came from a review conducted for the Government by Ross Garnaut.
It is an amusing fact then that the biggest policy response to the Henry Review was to introduce the Resource Super Profits Tax. This is an instance of what is more formally called a "resource rent tax" wherein a "rent" refers to super-profit following the analysis of David Ricardo. Policy wonks can tell you that the idea of such taxes was first raised in 1975 in a paper by the self-same Ross Garnaut and Anthony Clunies Ross.
That perhaps should give the commentariat some chance to reflect on exactly what the process of reform can look like.
In that context, I've been intrigued by commentary like this on the Henry Tax Review that labels the response to it "politics". Worse has been the accusation that Rudd's response has been with "an eye to the election".
Last time I looked this is a democracy. In other words we have a system whereby government is expected to do what we want them to do. Ergo we actually want our politticians to have an eye on the election.
There are two ways to do this. The first is to avoid all facts and simply make "populist" responses to current issues. The second is to undertake thorough research on the underlying issues, and then build a process of implementation that involves taking the people as a whole on a journey.
This is actually how the last great cycle of reform was conducted. Could banking de-regulation have occurred without the Campbell and Martin committees? Would we really have ever got a GST without the tax summit?
The Henry Tax Review should be considered in that framework, not the mindset that Government is really just some model whereby you commission a group of experts then slavishly follow their recommendations. That is called a corporation!
There is an interesting side view on this issue of informed policy making. We've also seen the recent decision by the Government to defer the ETS. It is worth remembering that the template for that came from a review conducted for the Government by Ross Garnaut.
It is an amusing fact then that the biggest policy response to the Henry Review was to introduce the Resource Super Profits Tax. This is an instance of what is more formally called a "resource rent tax" wherein a "rent" refers to super-profit following the analysis of David Ricardo. Policy wonks can tell you that the idea of such taxes was first raised in 1975 in a paper by the self-same Ross Garnaut and Anthony Clunies Ross.
That perhaps should give the commentariat some chance to reflect on exactly what the process of reform can look like.
Monday, May 03, 2010
The Convention on Cybercrime
The Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Attorney-General announced last week that Australia is to acede to the Convention on Cybercrime.
This step is a very interesting potential "two-edged" sword. The convention should provide the ability to continue to provide greaer confidence in the online world. The conventions actions to seek aligned action and mutual assistance on issues of child pornography and fraud are hard to object to.
One would think that a similar view would apply to the protections of copyright, except that copyright as a legal concept itself is already heavily strained. This is for two principle reasons. The first is the ongoing tendency to extend the period of copyright - the so-called Mickey Mouse clauses. The second is the blurred boundary between copyright infringement and "reasonable use", this becomes increasingly difficult due to the underlying electronic/digital nature of so much copyright material.
The first of these is related to a far more worrying trend - the invention and perpetuation of "rights" for incorporated entities. The extension of copyright is no longer to protect the rights of the creative individual but instead of the corporation. The idea corporations have "rights" started with the application of the concept that they were a natural person and hence able to offer "limited liability" with respect to claims on shareholders. The US Supreme Court has extended this concept to include free speech rights and hece to strike down legislation that baned corporate political donations.
The requirement to create criminalised offences of copyright infringement is not the primary concern - there are already such provisions in Australia. It is the extent that the convention requires legislation that criminalises "aiding and abetting" which could be the basis for some draconian laws on service providers.
More interesting are provisions in the convention that require additional laws that can require data retention. While the latter is already a live issue for telecommunications companies following the European Data Retention Directive. However, the legislative provision foreshadowed in the convention could apply to ALL computers, not just telcos. The Australian Parliament is limited to acting on telco data retention only under the telecommunications powers. The convention would give the Australian Parliament a head of power under the foreign affairs power that they do not otherwise have.
One would think that the process of stating that Australia would accede to the treaty should be accompanied with the same kind of statement as accompanies major reports - an actual statement of the provisions necessary to be introduced to give effect to the convention.
If Green and Coalition Senators want to use Parliamentary resources effectively they might actually use Estimates and other committee processes to expose the plans for legislation attached to this treaty.
This step is a very interesting potential "two-edged" sword. The convention should provide the ability to continue to provide greaer confidence in the online world. The conventions actions to seek aligned action and mutual assistance on issues of child pornography and fraud are hard to object to.
One would think that a similar view would apply to the protections of copyright, except that copyright as a legal concept itself is already heavily strained. This is for two principle reasons. The first is the ongoing tendency to extend the period of copyright - the so-called Mickey Mouse clauses. The second is the blurred boundary between copyright infringement and "reasonable use", this becomes increasingly difficult due to the underlying electronic/digital nature of so much copyright material.
The first of these is related to a far more worrying trend - the invention and perpetuation of "rights" for incorporated entities. The extension of copyright is no longer to protect the rights of the creative individual but instead of the corporation. The idea corporations have "rights" started with the application of the concept that they were a natural person and hence able to offer "limited liability" with respect to claims on shareholders. The US Supreme Court has extended this concept to include free speech rights and hece to strike down legislation that baned corporate political donations.
The requirement to create criminalised offences of copyright infringement is not the primary concern - there are already such provisions in Australia. It is the extent that the convention requires legislation that criminalises "aiding and abetting" which could be the basis for some draconian laws on service providers.
More interesting are provisions in the convention that require additional laws that can require data retention. While the latter is already a live issue for telecommunications companies following the European Data Retention Directive. However, the legislative provision foreshadowed in the convention could apply to ALL computers, not just telcos. The Australian Parliament is limited to acting on telco data retention only under the telecommunications powers. The convention would give the Australian Parliament a head of power under the foreign affairs power that they do not otherwise have.
One would think that the process of stating that Australia would accede to the treaty should be accompanied with the same kind of statement as accompanies major reports - an actual statement of the provisions necessary to be introduced to give effect to the convention.
If Green and Coalition Senators want to use Parliamentary resources effectively they might actually use Estimates and other committee processes to expose the plans for legislation attached to this treaty.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Let's talk about Telstra and the NBN ... again
Today Stephen Bartholomeusz has followed up the item by his colleague Alan Kohler that I wrote about yesterday.
Stephen repeats the ground on the valuation gap but notes that any direct compensation by the Government to Telstra would need to be on budget and real.
That is very different to the NBN itself. Tony Abbott today was reported as suggesting that he'll save the budget by thre things, the magic public service cuts, cancelling the BER program and cancelling the NBN. We all know that public service cuts never reveal much and that Tanner is being pretty brutal on that anyway. The BER money will all be spent before Tony would have any post election chance to stop it. And the NBN is not a $43B on budget item, it is on budget only for $4.7B of which $2B was the communications fund. The marginal cost of the NBN is less than one year of the cost of Mr Abbott's parental leave scheme which he proposes to fund with a GREAT BIG NEW TAX. (All in caps because that's how Tony alway says it).
The point is that while there is no savng to be made by cancelling the NBN, the Government has no political rationale for paying Telstra compensation.
It looks that this Telstra strategy about the Government funding the difference is driven by the same Telstra strategy that thought that access prices should not just be based on cost but should effectively reimburse Telstra for foregone monopoly profits. They dressed this up in multiple ways over time, but it always amounted to the same thing.
There is some merit in the idea that the shareholders of Telstra bought the asset expecting to retain these rents - in the economics biz it is called capitalising the rent. But the prospectus for each float repeated the Government's policy in relation to telecommunications - which has always been about competition and has always therefore been about extracting rents. To buy the shares expecting the continuation of those rents was irrational (hands up all those shareholders who want to admit to making an irrational investment decision).
Ultimately the question is, as Stephen notes, how much pain does NBN Co need to endure if it has to go head-to-head with Telstra? The first thing to note is that Telstra's "threats" of competing with an alternative access strategy are this time all nonsense. They can't get enough wireless out there, they have major building access issues with HFC and they should be cricified by sharehlders if they try to over-invest in their PSTN. There might be an unhealthy period, but if the Government says "if it takes an extra $XB to make this happen we will do that by subsidising NBN Cos losses not Telstra's shareholders" then it is all over.
Telstra's strategy seems to be to convince analysts and media that the deal hinges on the Government topping up the difference, which then gives them nowhere to go when the Government still doesn't act.
Telstra also hasn't thought hard enough about just how many other ways the Government can make their life uncomfortable. enying access to spectrum is only one element of it.
Stephen repeats the ground on the valuation gap but notes that any direct compensation by the Government to Telstra would need to be on budget and real.
That is very different to the NBN itself. Tony Abbott today was reported as suggesting that he'll save the budget by thre things, the magic public service cuts, cancelling the BER program and cancelling the NBN. We all know that public service cuts never reveal much and that Tanner is being pretty brutal on that anyway. The BER money will all be spent before Tony would have any post election chance to stop it. And the NBN is not a $43B on budget item, it is on budget only for $4.7B of which $2B was the communications fund. The marginal cost of the NBN is less than one year of the cost of Mr Abbott's parental leave scheme which he proposes to fund with a GREAT BIG NEW TAX. (All in caps because that's how Tony alway says it).
The point is that while there is no savng to be made by cancelling the NBN, the Government has no political rationale for paying Telstra compensation.
It looks that this Telstra strategy about the Government funding the difference is driven by the same Telstra strategy that thought that access prices should not just be based on cost but should effectively reimburse Telstra for foregone monopoly profits. They dressed this up in multiple ways over time, but it always amounted to the same thing.
There is some merit in the idea that the shareholders of Telstra bought the asset expecting to retain these rents - in the economics biz it is called capitalising the rent. But the prospectus for each float repeated the Government's policy in relation to telecommunications - which has always been about competition and has always therefore been about extracting rents. To buy the shares expecting the continuation of those rents was irrational (hands up all those shareholders who want to admit to making an irrational investment decision).
Ultimately the question is, as Stephen notes, how much pain does NBN Co need to endure if it has to go head-to-head with Telstra? The first thing to note is that Telstra's "threats" of competing with an alternative access strategy are this time all nonsense. They can't get enough wireless out there, they have major building access issues with HFC and they should be cricified by sharehlders if they try to over-invest in their PSTN. There might be an unhealthy period, but if the Government says "if it takes an extra $XB to make this happen we will do that by subsidising NBN Cos losses not Telstra's shareholders" then it is all over.
Telstra's strategy seems to be to convince analysts and media that the deal hinges on the Government topping up the difference, which then gives them nowhere to go when the Government still doesn't act.
Telstra also hasn't thought hard enough about just how many other ways the Government can make their life uncomfortable. enying access to spectrum is only one element of it.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Sometimes it doesn't take long (amended)
Sometimes it doesn't take long to find new information that would have improved an earlier post. In NBN madness I noted that Telstra shareholders who thought they were buying a network that would be operational for 25 years were delusional.
Then I saw the this story from David Braue about his personal experience with broadband. Yes folks - ead what he says about the PSTN being fundamentally broken.
As an industry practitioner I can understand a lot of what is going on in he processes here. But to deliver customers both high speed service and provider choice the NBN will indeed be the solution.
But in the interim we should also note the way our crappy processes affect customers.
Another example was on offer today - this time on a mobile. In reality this should be more configured as a problem for the banks because at core it is the problem of declining payment on authorised regular debits because a credit card expiry date has been reached. Do the banks realise just how many suppliers we'd have to update? Could the banks offer us a service that provides us with an automatic authorisation update?
in this case it might also be a telco problem, because as an industry it actually has a core of debt problems and so often has harsh credit terms, or harsh terms imposed by its bankers.
I wrote about one such experience last year, and also about customer service and regulation. This is the motivation behind recent comments by ACMA chair Chris Chapman.
It will be nice if the industry can respond well.
Then I saw the this story from David Braue about his personal experience with broadband. Yes folks - ead what he says about the PSTN being fundamentally broken.
As an industry practitioner I can understand a lot of what is going on in he processes here. But to deliver customers both high speed service and provider choice the NBN will indeed be the solution.
But in the interim we should also note the way our crappy processes affect customers.
Another example was on offer today - this time on a mobile. In reality this should be more configured as a problem for the banks because at core it is the problem of declining payment on authorised regular debits because a credit card expiry date has been reached. Do the banks realise just how many suppliers we'd have to update? Could the banks offer us a service that provides us with an automatic authorisation update?
in this case it might also be a telco problem, because as an industry it actually has a core of debt problems and so often has harsh credit terms, or harsh terms imposed by its bankers.
I wrote about one such experience last year, and also about customer service and regulation. This is the motivation behind recent comments by ACMA chair Chris Chapman.
It will be nice if the industry can respond well.
NBN Madness (amended)
I normally have a lot of time for Alan Kohler, but his comment today on Telstra seems to reflect that any long consideration of telecommunications policy will in the end lead to madness.
In this piece he begins by noting the obvious - that the price the NBN is prepared to pay for Telstra co-operation and the price that Telstra is prepared to accept for that co-operation are a long way apart.
He then, however, progresses the theory that Telstra's shareholders bought the business assuming "that it included a network that would be viable for at least 25 years". If there really are any such investors I want to meet them - I have a bridge I want to sell them. Most importantly the T3 investors knew it NOT to be the case. Telstra delivered to its principal shareholder in July 2005 (subsequently released to all in August) that outlined their plan to replace most of it, for which they argued they needed regulatory concessions.
The full plan was released in November with a rider on "regulatory certainty". That request wasn't for NO regulatory change, it was for regulatory change biased in Telstra's favour.
While it may be true that the Government can make a political decision to make transfer payments of taxpayer cash to anyone they care to - including filling this gap in the valuations - actually doing so is another matter. The 10 million voters who are NOT directly shareholders in Telstra would take a very dim view. More importantly those 10 million voters are probably more inclined to change their vote on the basis of an irresponsible action than would any of the 1.4 million shareholders.
I don't think the PM needs to consult his pollsters too closely. Remember, NBN Cos point of indifference is the value to them of having the Telstra assets (ducts and customers) - at that price they are just as happy to go it alone. Rudd doesn't need to close the gap therefore to make the NBN happen.
Why would he anger 10 million voters to thrill a mere 1.4 million.
Note: I bought Telstra shares in all three floats. like the dividends, I just wish management would hurry up and realise the value of structural separation.
In this piece he begins by noting the obvious - that the price the NBN is prepared to pay for Telstra co-operation and the price that Telstra is prepared to accept for that co-operation are a long way apart.
He then, however, progresses the theory that Telstra's shareholders bought the business assuming "that it included a network that would be viable for at least 25 years". If there really are any such investors I want to meet them - I have a bridge I want to sell them. Most importantly the T3 investors knew it NOT to be the case. Telstra delivered to its principal shareholder in July 2005 (subsequently released to all in August) that outlined their plan to replace most of it, for which they argued they needed regulatory concessions.
The full plan was released in November with a rider on "regulatory certainty". That request wasn't for NO regulatory change, it was for regulatory change biased in Telstra's favour.
While it may be true that the Government can make a political decision to make transfer payments of taxpayer cash to anyone they care to - including filling this gap in the valuations - actually doing so is another matter. The 10 million voters who are NOT directly shareholders in Telstra would take a very dim view. More importantly those 10 million voters are probably more inclined to change their vote on the basis of an irresponsible action than would any of the 1.4 million shareholders.
I don't think the PM needs to consult his pollsters too closely. Remember, NBN Cos point of indifference is the value to them of having the Telstra assets (ducts and customers) - at that price they are just as happy to go it alone. Rudd doesn't need to close the gap therefore to make the NBN happen.
Why would he anger 10 million voters to thrill a mere 1.4 million.
Note: I bought Telstra shares in all three floats. like the dividends, I just wish management would hurry up and realise the value of structural separation.
NBN Co - why Tasmania?
The joys of being NBN Tasmania. The one thing you can be sure of is that you will be in the spotlight - such as this story about work practices in deploying fibre and OH&S.
Keynes, markets and the GFC
In a stirring review of Robert Skidelsky's Keynes: The Return of the Master
, Joseph Stiglitz manages a very good quick critique of economists and of finance markets.
On economists he noted (this is heavily edited);
While most of the blame for the crisis should reside with those in the financial markets ... a considerable portion of it lies with the economics profession. The notion economists pushed – that markets are efficient and self-adjusting – gave comfort to regulators. They provided support for the movement which stripped away the regulations that had provided the basis of financial stability ...; and they gave justification to those ... who opposed doing anything about derivatives.
We should be clear about this: economic theory never provided much support for these free-market views. Theories of imperfect and asymmetric information in markets had undermined every one of the ‘efficient market’ doctrines... [critics] had explained that Adam Smith’s hand was not in fact invisible: it wasn’t there. [critics] had explained that if markets were as efficient in transmitting information as the free marketeers claimed, no one would have any incentive to gather and process it.
Free marketeers, and the special interests that benefited from their doctrines, paid little attention to these inconvenient truths.
It remains extremely distressing that the choice left for the average citizen is to be a believer in unrestrained free-markets or to be labelled a socialist or believer in a planned economy.
There is a middle way which is to base public policy on a better understanding of how real markets work, and that the error cost of dampening some market activity unnecessarily can be far less than the error cost of taking no action when action is required.
Stiglitz disagrees with Skidelsky mostly in the extent to which the latter asserts the errors leading up to the GFC were from confusing risk and uncertainty. Instead Stiglitz focuses on the way incentives operate to guide corporate behaviour. As he notes;
But markets are not necessarily rational, and even when they are, they are not always well intentioned. The objective of a speculative attack is to generate profits for the speculators, regardless of the cost to the rest of society. They can make money by inducing panic and then feel pleased with their ‘insight’: their concerns were justified, but only because of the responses to which their actions gave rise.
So to the author's claim that "underlying the escalating succession of financial crises we have recently experienced is the failure of economics to take uncertainty seriously’" (Stiglitz description), Stiglitz response is not that we fail to deal with uncertainty but that we continue to use models of markets that we know to be wrong.
This creates an interesting aside for the philosophy of science as applied to economics. Both a Feyerabendian view and an inductivist view (as most recently promoted by James Franklin in What Science Knows: And How It Knows It
the usefulness of a theory is context sensitive. For Feyerabend we use the theory because it works, in Franklin's case the theory is used because it accords to the observations in what is usually then specified as a confined domain.
Both theories therefore allow for the ongoing use of Newtonian mechanics, but both ith the proviso that distances and speeds are of "human" scale. Economists keep making the error of having a very well developed theory of markets that works in relation to some very specific assumptions (fully informed, lots of buyers and sellers etc) and applying it in circumstances where those constraints do not apply.
Thankfully we do not rely on these economists for designing integrated circuits or for planning space missions. Unfortunately, we seem to rely upon them for far more serious issues - like how to organise our economy so that our needs and wants can be met from our limited resources.
, Joseph Stiglitz manages a very good quick critique of economists and of finance markets.On economists he noted (this is heavily edited);
While most of the blame for the crisis should reside with those in the financial markets ... a considerable portion of it lies with the economics profession. The notion economists pushed – that markets are efficient and self-adjusting – gave comfort to regulators. They provided support for the movement which stripped away the regulations that had provided the basis of financial stability ...; and they gave justification to those ... who opposed doing anything about derivatives.
We should be clear about this: economic theory never provided much support for these free-market views. Theories of imperfect and asymmetric information in markets had undermined every one of the ‘efficient market’ doctrines... [critics] had explained that Adam Smith’s hand was not in fact invisible: it wasn’t there. [critics] had explained that if markets were as efficient in transmitting information as the free marketeers claimed, no one would have any incentive to gather and process it.
Free marketeers, and the special interests that benefited from their doctrines, paid little attention to these inconvenient truths.
It remains extremely distressing that the choice left for the average citizen is to be a believer in unrestrained free-markets or to be labelled a socialist or believer in a planned economy.
There is a middle way which is to base public policy on a better understanding of how real markets work, and that the error cost of dampening some market activity unnecessarily can be far less than the error cost of taking no action when action is required.
Stiglitz disagrees with Skidelsky mostly in the extent to which the latter asserts the errors leading up to the GFC were from confusing risk and uncertainty. Instead Stiglitz focuses on the way incentives operate to guide corporate behaviour. As he notes;
But markets are not necessarily rational, and even when they are, they are not always well intentioned. The objective of a speculative attack is to generate profits for the speculators, regardless of the cost to the rest of society. They can make money by inducing panic and then feel pleased with their ‘insight’: their concerns were justified, but only because of the responses to which their actions gave rise.
So to the author's claim that "underlying the escalating succession of financial crises we have recently experienced is the failure of economics to take uncertainty seriously’" (Stiglitz description), Stiglitz response is not that we fail to deal with uncertainty but that we continue to use models of markets that we know to be wrong.
This creates an interesting aside for the philosophy of science as applied to economics. Both a Feyerabendian view and an inductivist view (as most recently promoted by James Franklin in What Science Knows: And How It Knows It
the usefulness of a theory is context sensitive. For Feyerabend we use the theory because it works, in Franklin's case the theory is used because it accords to the observations in what is usually then specified as a confined domain.Both theories therefore allow for the ongoing use of Newtonian mechanics, but both ith the proviso that distances and speeds are of "human" scale. Economists keep making the error of having a very well developed theory of markets that works in relation to some very specific assumptions (fully informed, lots of buyers and sellers etc) and applying it in circumstances where those constraints do not apply.
Thankfully we do not rely on these economists for designing integrated circuits or for planning space missions. Unfortunately, we seem to rely upon them for far more serious issues - like how to organise our economy so that our needs and wants can be met from our limited resources.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Anzac Day
We tried to do something we wouldn't normally do, go to a movie on Anzac Day. But we couldn't get in.
So we had to wait for today to see Beneath Hill 60, a remarkable movie about the tunnellers in France. When we got there it transpired the difficulty in seeing the film was that Greater Union had it in their smallest cinema (normally for Silver Screen). At least it was shown at a major cinema chain!
The story is compelling but it really does leave you with the simple question, why did the troops keep fighting? Niall Fergusson in his Pity of War poses this question, and the answer that I can remember was the misinformation created about the treatment of prisoners by both sides. Unfortunately there were a few incidents on both sides that gave just enough credence to this.
It was refreshing to hear the minister at MacChap (whose grandfather was one of the tunnellers who survived) preach an Anzac Day sermon (sermon not loaded at time of writing) that was a sermon that preached that the only possible response to War is either to be a pacifist or that the war met a standard of a "just war". Good message, though of course the same message could be preached in a "humanist" or "secular" ethics. It is just that I don't see that many of those people bothering.
The service wasn't all brilliant. One person incorrectly described Villes-Bretineaux as a battle fought to turn back the German "fighting machine" and stopped it swarming Europe. Well, it can be figured as one of the "turning points" ... but the troops had been facing each other in essentially static trenches for two years.
Anzav Day is a great day to remember one thing. War is not the solution.
Having said that, I disagree with the Minister's view. When started the war in Afghanistan was a just war, but they blew it once they went to war in Iraq. By the same token threatening war in Iraq was the right strategy, but it should never have been waged without 100% European support (at which point it wouldn't have needed to occur - Sadam never believed the Americans would invade).
But exitting Afghanistan now would equally be unjust - the rules go you broke it you fix it.
Strangely, fixing it would be the mosy Christian of acts, but can only occur through the application of secular ethicial and political values.
So we had to wait for today to see Beneath Hill 60, a remarkable movie about the tunnellers in France. When we got there it transpired the difficulty in seeing the film was that Greater Union had it in their smallest cinema (normally for Silver Screen). At least it was shown at a major cinema chain!
The story is compelling but it really does leave you with the simple question, why did the troops keep fighting? Niall Fergusson in his Pity of War poses this question, and the answer that I can remember was the misinformation created about the treatment of prisoners by both sides. Unfortunately there were a few incidents on both sides that gave just enough credence to this.
It was refreshing to hear the minister at MacChap (whose grandfather was one of the tunnellers who survived) preach an Anzac Day sermon (sermon not loaded at time of writing) that was a sermon that preached that the only possible response to War is either to be a pacifist or that the war met a standard of a "just war". Good message, though of course the same message could be preached in a "humanist" or "secular" ethics. It is just that I don't see that many of those people bothering.
The service wasn't all brilliant. One person incorrectly described Villes-Bretineaux as a battle fought to turn back the German "fighting machine" and stopped it swarming Europe. Well, it can be figured as one of the "turning points" ... but the troops had been facing each other in essentially static trenches for two years.
Anzav Day is a great day to remember one thing. War is not the solution.
Having said that, I disagree with the Minister's view. When started the war in Afghanistan was a just war, but they blew it once they went to war in Iraq. By the same token threatening war in Iraq was the right strategy, but it should never have been waged without 100% European support (at which point it wouldn't have needed to occur - Sadam never believed the Americans would invade).
But exitting Afghanistan now would equally be unjust - the rules go you broke it you fix it.
Strangely, fixing it would be the mosy Christian of acts, but can only occur through the application of secular ethicial and political values.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Google take down requests
ZDnet ran a story today following the release by Google of statistics on take down requests. The author posed the question that 17 requests for 9 successes was a poor strike rate.
Elsewhere a blogger wondered which blog had been subject to a request. The article seemed to have the flavour that blogs must be innocent and any attempt to get one taken down must be motivated by some deep political goal.
Then along comes a comment on that post that read;
My household has two blogs currently subject to court orders, and thus shut down, of the half dozen we currently own.
Apparently, criticism of thieving landlords, incompetent government and police officials is enough to get a court order to shut down websites.
We're currently fighting to have such court orders overturned.
By our estimation, 2% of the Google "data requests" relate to our case, and at least 2 of the takedowns.
Interesting for all to note that the judicial system does in fact work that way, there is no unrestrained right to free speech and if you want one go campaign for a bill of rights not just assume you have the right because some IT geek told you the internet was free!
PS This blog is, as a matter of interest, hosted on blogger which is a Google site.
Elsewhere a blogger wondered which blog had been subject to a request. The article seemed to have the flavour that blogs must be innocent and any attempt to get one taken down must be motivated by some deep political goal.
Then along comes a comment on that post that read;
My household has two blogs currently subject to court orders, and thus shut down, of the half dozen we currently own.
Apparently, criticism of thieving landlords, incompetent government and police officials is enough to get a court order to shut down websites.
We're currently fighting to have such court orders overturned.
By our estimation, 2% of the Google "data requests" relate to our case, and at least 2 of the takedowns.
Interesting for all to note that the judicial system does in fact work that way, there is no unrestrained right to free speech and if you want one go campaign for a bill of rights not just assume you have the right because some IT geek told you the internet was free!
PS This blog is, as a matter of interest, hosted on blogger which is a Google site.
Ahhh - The Democrats
From the Crikey Tips and Rumours section today;
The failed candidate on the undemocratic Democrats: Jeanie Walker, the lead candidate for the Upper House in South Australia for the Australian Democrats, has resigned in anger from the party. She was unsuccessful in the election, winning only 0.9% of the vote -- the Democrats' worst-ever result in SA. Walker has blamed her poor showing upon the large number of other candidates, the low third party/independent vote, and David Winderlich -- whom she accuses of "stealing" her seat. She also blames individuals within the SA Democrats who did not support her as candidate. She has expressed her unwillingness to continue to work with certain individuals who are seeking constitutional reform within the Democrats -- and has accused them of "spamming" her, verging upon "harassment".
They really know how to rip into themselves. I have certain first hand experience on how the party choses to conduct itself as a collctio of personal campaigns and feifdoms. They make ALP factionalism look civilised by comparison.
The well meaning few souls who are trying to keep the ship afloat need to do something far more radical than they have been doing thus far. While their policy development work has at least revived their relevance hasn't.
The battle cries of "keep the bastards honest" don't reverberate, the need for a soft liberal party doesn't exist (it is mostly what the non-socialist ALP has become). Too much of their reason for being is to commemorate the glories of a Democrat past.
What they really need to do is claim the mantle of being the antithesis of the Howard Liberals. Totally libertarian in social policy, heavily social democrat in economic policy, and the champions for an internationalist outlook.
The failed candidate on the undemocratic Democrats: Jeanie Walker, the lead candidate for the Upper House in South Australia for the Australian Democrats, has resigned in anger from the party. She was unsuccessful in the election, winning only 0.9% of the vote -- the Democrats' worst-ever result in SA. Walker has blamed her poor showing upon the large number of other candidates, the low third party/independent vote, and David Winderlich -- whom she accuses of "stealing" her seat. She also blames individuals within the SA Democrats who did not support her as candidate. She has expressed her unwillingness to continue to work with certain individuals who are seeking constitutional reform within the Democrats -- and has accused them of "spamming" her, verging upon "harassment".
They really know how to rip into themselves. I have certain first hand experience on how the party choses to conduct itself as a collctio of personal campaigns and feifdoms. They make ALP factionalism look civilised by comparison.
The well meaning few souls who are trying to keep the ship afloat need to do something far more radical than they have been doing thus far. While their policy development work has at least revived their relevance hasn't.
The battle cries of "keep the bastards honest" don't reverberate, the need for a soft liberal party doesn't exist (it is mostly what the non-socialist ALP has become). Too much of their reason for being is to commemorate the glories of a Democrat past.
What they really need to do is claim the mantle of being the antithesis of the Howard Liberals. Totally libertarian in social policy, heavily social democrat in economic policy, and the champions for an internationalist outlook.
The underside of Web 2.0
No this isn't about facebook and privacy, but it is about a far simpler kind of "user generated content". I've written before about crowd effects of online recommendation or condemnation, but the generally accepted position is that the "risks" of these is that the contagion (the story) can spread faster than the antidote (often truth). We are also familiar with the idea of political groups - or people with a cause - swarming to start a crowd (if that makes sense).
In the corporate world we are particularly concerned about the prospects of well-meaning employees using aliases on forums to trash competitors or make unjustified positive assertions.
The latest though is the story that asserts that an academic's wife was writing reviews on Amazon to deneigrate her husband's "competitors". More bizarre is that the person alleged of the actions is trying to use defamation law to shut down the claims.
UGC is a great development, but we have to re-educate ourselves about the reliance that should be plced on it. Then again, we've long said that you shouldn't believe what you read in the papers, but we do.
It is one of the features I notice most in senior corporate xecutives - their angst that almost every story written about them or their firm gets the story wrong, but a fascinating ability to believe every story written about competitors or government policy.
In the corporate world we are particularly concerned about the prospects of well-meaning employees using aliases on forums to trash competitors or make unjustified positive assertions.
The latest though is the story that asserts that an academic's wife was writing reviews on Amazon to deneigrate her husband's "competitors". More bizarre is that the person alleged of the actions is trying to use defamation law to shut down the claims.
UGC is a great development, but we have to re-educate ourselves about the reliance that should be plced on it. Then again, we've long said that you shouldn't believe what you read in the papers, but we do.
It is one of the features I notice most in senior corporate xecutives - their angst that almost every story written about them or their firm gets the story wrong, but a fascinating ability to believe every story written about competitors or government policy.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The Economic Consequence of ...
The economic understanding of supply shocks really only developed in the 1980s as finally economists came to full grips with the implications of the oil shock and the consequent syndrome of stagflation. Put simply, standard theory on how to respond to either inflation or unemployment revolved around fiscal or monetary policy to expand or contract the market.
However, if prices are increasing and unemployment is rising due to a "shift" in aggregate supply due to something dramatic happening to a factor of production then these responses are inadequate. What needs to happen is rapid radjustment of the economy.
That ultimately was the explanation for the success of the neo-liberal crusade - a whole lot of deregulation was necessary to enable economies to adjust to the new price of oil. In hindsight, negative supply shocks aren't all that uncommon, war being a major one on post war labour.
The current air transport shutdown over Europe provides an interesting example. Apart from the fact we can't blame anyone for it, it is important to note that there are three economic impacts.
The first two relate to the movement of people, one for business the other for pleasure. Business movement can be substituted with teleconferencing. Travel for pleasure - vacations - creates a significant damage to many countries tourism industries.
The more significant is the movement of goods. Few people realise the extent of air shipment of foodstuffs -from the exotic and expensive to more mundane matters like oranges and bananas. The source of much of the produce to Europe is less developed countries in Africa, Asia and South America. The interruption to trade ca have significant impact on their economies.
And all of this due to an event that the article linked to above reminds us we can't blame on anyone, not Tony Blair, not George Bush or even the nanny state!
However, if prices are increasing and unemployment is rising due to a "shift" in aggregate supply due to something dramatic happening to a factor of production then these responses are inadequate. What needs to happen is rapid radjustment of the economy.
That ultimately was the explanation for the success of the neo-liberal crusade - a whole lot of deregulation was necessary to enable economies to adjust to the new price of oil. In hindsight, negative supply shocks aren't all that uncommon, war being a major one on post war labour.
The current air transport shutdown over Europe provides an interesting example. Apart from the fact we can't blame anyone for it, it is important to note that there are three economic impacts.
The first two relate to the movement of people, one for business the other for pleasure. Business movement can be substituted with teleconferencing. Travel for pleasure - vacations - creates a significant damage to many countries tourism industries.
The more significant is the movement of goods. Few people realise the extent of air shipment of foodstuffs -from the exotic and expensive to more mundane matters like oranges and bananas. The source of much of the produce to Europe is less developed countries in Africa, Asia and South America. The interruption to trade ca have significant impact on their economies.
And all of this due to an event that the article linked to above reminds us we can't blame on anyone, not Tony Blair, not George Bush or even the nanny state!
Monday, April 19, 2010
Has the Earth moved for you?
No, I'm not doing a survey that assesses how many people share Lily Allen's sentiment in "Not Fair".
It just seems that there is a lot more seismic activity these days. In just the last week we've had an earthquake in China and the ongoing volcanic activity at Eyjafjallajokull. (For those struggling to pronounce that take a hint and shorten it to "the Eyja-fjalla glacier" - and the first bit is easier if you realise it is island falls.)
This follows on from Haiti and a slew of other earthquakes.
Now, it is entirely possible that there isn't a real increase in seismic activity, just an increase in the reporting of it. The reporting can increase both because of the extent now of seismic probes - every tremor is well documented - and the prevelance of communications and media technologies which makes reporting the event and dramatic pictures more readily achievable. The US geological survey supports the view that there is no increase in numbers just an increase in the ability to locate them. (at time of writing their page was last modified Page Last Modified: October 27, 2009 14:01:59 UTC aand said;
Although it may seem that we are having more earthquakes, earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant.
A partial explanation may lie in the fact that in the last twenty years, we have definitely had an increase in the number of earthquakes we have been able to locate each year. This is because of the tremendous increase in the number of seismograph stations in the world and the many improvements in global communications. In 1931, there were about 350 stations operating in the world; today, there are more than 8,000 stations and the data now comes in rapidly from these stations by electronic mail, internet and satellite. This increase in the number of stations and the more timely receipt of data has allowed us and other seismological centers to locate earthquakes more rapidly and to locate many small earthquakes which were undetected in earlier years. The NEIC now locates about 20,000 earthquakes each year or approximately 50 per day. Also, because of the improvements in communications and the increased interest in the environment and natural disasters, the public now learns about more earthquakes.
According to long-term records (since about 1900), we expect about 17 major earthquakes (7.0 - 7.9) and one great earthquake (8.0 or above) in any given year.
They even record a list of them.
Another expert claims an increase in seismic activity could occur through global warming as even few degrees increase in rock temperature softens the joints between geological plates. When the sea level rises, pressure of the water may also release energy between plates in tension. We are coming out of an ice age so this will happen anyway, global warming is just accelerating the process.
This asame person notes there is an "apparent" increase in the number of recorded earthquakes but that is due to the increase in the amount of research stations. Further, earthquakes and tsunamis will seem to get worse as the world population explodes, more people getting effected by seismic activity than before, and media or television coverage becomes more dramatic.
So it seems like the conspiracy theory about the large hadron collider is wrong.
It just seems that there is a lot more seismic activity these days. In just the last week we've had an earthquake in China and the ongoing volcanic activity at Eyjafjallajokull. (For those struggling to pronounce that take a hint and shorten it to "the Eyja-fjalla glacier" - and the first bit is easier if you realise it is island falls.)
This follows on from Haiti and a slew of other earthquakes.
Now, it is entirely possible that there isn't a real increase in seismic activity, just an increase in the reporting of it. The reporting can increase both because of the extent now of seismic probes - every tremor is well documented - and the prevelance of communications and media technologies which makes reporting the event and dramatic pictures more readily achievable. The US geological survey supports the view that there is no increase in numbers just an increase in the ability to locate them. (at time of writing their page was last modified Page Last Modified: October 27, 2009 14:01:59 UTC aand said;
Although it may seem that we are having more earthquakes, earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant.
A partial explanation may lie in the fact that in the last twenty years, we have definitely had an increase in the number of earthquakes we have been able to locate each year. This is because of the tremendous increase in the number of seismograph stations in the world and the many improvements in global communications. In 1931, there were about 350 stations operating in the world; today, there are more than 8,000 stations and the data now comes in rapidly from these stations by electronic mail, internet and satellite. This increase in the number of stations and the more timely receipt of data has allowed us and other seismological centers to locate earthquakes more rapidly and to locate many small earthquakes which were undetected in earlier years. The NEIC now locates about 20,000 earthquakes each year or approximately 50 per day. Also, because of the improvements in communications and the increased interest in the environment and natural disasters, the public now learns about more earthquakes.
According to long-term records (since about 1900), we expect about 17 major earthquakes (7.0 - 7.9) and one great earthquake (8.0 or above) in any given year.
They even record a list of them.
Another expert claims an increase in seismic activity could occur through global warming as even few degrees increase in rock temperature softens the joints between geological plates. When the sea level rises, pressure of the water may also release energy between plates in tension. We are coming out of an ice age so this will happen anyway, global warming is just accelerating the process.
This asame person notes there is an "apparent" increase in the number of recorded earthquakes but that is due to the increase in the amount of research stations. Further, earthquakes and tsunamis will seem to get worse as the world population explodes, more people getting effected by seismic activity than before, and media or television coverage becomes more dramatic.
So it seems like the conspiracy theory about the large hadron collider is wrong.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Self-Referential Paradoxes
There is a roup of paradoxes which share in common being self-referential. The best example is the "set of sets which are not members of themselves". The paradox is that if this set isn't a member of itself then it is a member of itself, or if it is a member of itself then it is. Via lots of jiggery pokery you can get from this observation to Godel's theorem.
A while ago I fantacised about writing a self-help book called "How to stop buying self-help books". You can see all the delightful possibilities.
Today I listened to a podcast about something similar - a book called "How to write a book in 33 days".
This is about a non-fiction business book that really is a marketing pitch.
Given I've got two non-fiction books brewing in me - one on competition in telecommunications and ne that could be called "postcapitalism".
The podcast is actually quite useful as a standard guide to "report writing". Botto end is 35,000 words and really as a marketing technique 60,000 words. The author is a professional ghost writer of executive books - and her how to guide looks more like an attempt to frighten off authors.
A while ago I fantacised about writing a self-help book called "How to stop buying self-help books". You can see all the delightful possibilities.
Today I listened to a podcast about something similar - a book called "How to write a book in 33 days".
This is about a non-fiction business book that really is a marketing pitch.
Given I've got two non-fiction books brewing in me - one on competition in telecommunications and ne that could be called "postcapitalism".
The podcast is actually quite useful as a standard guide to "report writing". Botto end is 35,000 words and really as a marketing technique 60,000 words. The author is a professional ghost writer of executive books - and her how to guide looks more like an attempt to frighten off authors.
Ethics Again
I already commented on the NSW Government proposals for a secular ethics class to be provided in schools as an alternative in the period devoted to religious education.
This week the SMH has reported on concerns by bishops that the program is a threat to teach ethics instead of religion rather than an alternative to it. That is, that this is the thin end of a wedge designed to see the secular ethics class replace religious education.
The correct response to that is "so what." If parents want to provide education in religion they have two options, choose a school run by a religion which we still absurdly subsidise (see especially the case the the Exclusive Brethren schools), or send their children to a "sunday school" or equivalent in their faith. I was always happier with what my kids learnt in Sunday School than anything that hapened in school scripture class. My own secondary school religious instruction (at a non-denominational private school) I found useful because we did study the Bible as a text rather than as a religion e.g. we had no prayers that I can recall). This was highly useful for other studies like history (helping to understand religious wars) and english. We also had a year where we did comparative religion - we each had to research and present the case for a religion - I did atheism!
Anyhow the complaint about the ethics classes is the topic today. Jim Wallace made the point raised by the Bishop's in the National Times last week.
However, with the pilot trial due to start next term in 10 public primary schools, it has emerged they are being pitched with the obvious aim to draw students away from Scripture classes, despite the Government's assurances they would not.
Wallace, however, repeats the delusion I referred to the other day that somehow or other our ethical system is inherently Christian. There is certainly plenty of causal effects that can be shown of how Judeo-Christian beliefs and values have informed our political system and ethical values. But there is no "correspondence."
His most outrageous claims revolve around what is sometimes called the Golden Rule.
He wrote;
The idea of loving one's neighbour as oneself – or do unto others as you would have them do unto you – is religious. More accurately, it is Christian.
In an earlier work I incorrectly labelled this as the principle of mutuality. It is better known as the principle of recipriocity. To just help all those Christians out there understand that the principle ethics of their religion exist not because God commanded them but because they work, here is a list of the principle of reciprocity as stated in eight leading religions. There is a poster that has the rule in 31 religions.
Christianity All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:1
Confucianism Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the state. Analects 12:2
Buddhism Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. Udana-Varga 5,1
Hinduism This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you. Mahabharata 5,1517
Islam No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. Sunnah
Judaism What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. Talmud, Shabbat 3id
Taoism Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien
Zoroastrianism That nature alone is good which refrains from doing another whatsoever is not good for itself. Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5
It is an interesting feature that all the versions state the exhortation as an absolute, devoid of any reference to the deity.
This week the SMH has reported on concerns by bishops that the program is a threat to teach ethics instead of religion rather than an alternative to it. That is, that this is the thin end of a wedge designed to see the secular ethics class replace religious education.
The correct response to that is "so what." If parents want to provide education in religion they have two options, choose a school run by a religion which we still absurdly subsidise (see especially the case the the Exclusive Brethren schools), or send their children to a "sunday school" or equivalent in their faith. I was always happier with what my kids learnt in Sunday School than anything that hapened in school scripture class. My own secondary school religious instruction (at a non-denominational private school) I found useful because we did study the Bible as a text rather than as a religion e.g. we had no prayers that I can recall). This was highly useful for other studies like history (helping to understand religious wars) and english. We also had a year where we did comparative religion - we each had to research and present the case for a religion - I did atheism!
Anyhow the complaint about the ethics classes is the topic today. Jim Wallace made the point raised by the Bishop's in the National Times last week.
However, with the pilot trial due to start next term in 10 public primary schools, it has emerged they are being pitched with the obvious aim to draw students away from Scripture classes, despite the Government's assurances they would not.
Wallace, however, repeats the delusion I referred to the other day that somehow or other our ethical system is inherently Christian. There is certainly plenty of causal effects that can be shown of how Judeo-Christian beliefs and values have informed our political system and ethical values. But there is no "correspondence."
His most outrageous claims revolve around what is sometimes called the Golden Rule.
He wrote;
The idea of loving one's neighbour as oneself – or do unto others as you would have them do unto you – is religious. More accurately, it is Christian.
In an earlier work I incorrectly labelled this as the principle of mutuality. It is better known as the principle of recipriocity. To just help all those Christians out there understand that the principle ethics of their religion exist not because God commanded them but because they work, here is a list of the principle of reciprocity as stated in eight leading religions. There is a poster that has the rule in 31 religions.
Christianity All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:1
Confucianism Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the state. Analects 12:2
Buddhism Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. Udana-Varga 5,1
Hinduism This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you. Mahabharata 5,1517
Islam No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. Sunnah
Judaism What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. Talmud, Shabbat 3id
Taoism Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien
Zoroastrianism That nature alone is good which refrains from doing another whatsoever is not good for itself. Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5
It is an interesting feature that all the versions state the exhortation as an absolute, devoid of any reference to the deity.
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