I didn't fail my maths quiz. In fact I did good. I got completely the wrong answers, but because he's the rocking sort of purist maths guy, he doesn't care about arithmetic errors, only about process. So cheers to that.

And I still have a peanut butter sandwich in my bag. Which might even be OK if I eat it before it gets too badly squashed.

I had breakfast just before I left home. My stomach was already gurgling loudly and embarassingly half way through my social science lecture, which is my first one of the day.

Oh oh. And I saw Susan. Twice actually. The other day I did too. But today I stopped and chatted to her for a while. That was nice. Except my QMA tutorial folk made fun of me for chatting her up and being late to class as a result. It didn't matter anyway because our awesome tutor was late. And besides, I wasn't even chatting her up.

There are four people in that tutorial who are doing my same double degree with social science bit. Five people in my social science tutorial, and two in my economics tutorial. That's pretty good. I thought I'd be all alone. But I won't.

I'm a bit manic today. I've decided it must be the snazzy new hair and shoes that I got yesterday. The problem with my hair, is that before a hair cut my hair pokes out stupidly over my ears. And after a hair cut my ears poke out stupidly under my hair. It's a bit of a fine balance.

The local high school has a mufti-day today. You always get some funny combos.

My economics textbook sucks arse. The authors were saying that corporate profits are good for the poor, and that we shouldn't try too hard to even things out. Because corporations pay tax, and the government uses taxes to help the poor.

By that logic, stealing money isn't really bad, because I'll go and buy stuff with the money, and the shopkeeper will pay tax on that. And they'll buy stuff. And more tax will get paid. Before too long, all of that money ends up in the pockets of the government. So it's not really stealing at all. It's just indirect philanthropy.

There are only two United Nations members who have not ratified the CRC - the USA and Somalia - making it the most widely ratified convention in the history of the UN. HREOC Report

From the same chatper:

Furthermore, while the CRC does not explicitly define 'best interests' it is clear that in the case of actions and decisions affecting a child, it is the best interests of that individual child which must be taken into account rather than children generally.

I had to read that a few times to understand what they meant. It's referring to the government's justification that mandatory detention is justified in the sense it stops other children from attempting to come here in the future. Which the government believes isn't in their best interests. The children here are made to suffer, purely to deter parents from bringing other children. We accepted the deterrent argument for adults, but HREOC isn't suggesting it doesn't hold for children.

The exact words of the convention:

the best interests of the child must be a primary consideration in all actions concerning children (article 3(1))

It's hard to know if the authors meant this to suggest that the rights of any given child must be protected, even at the expense of children in general.

It's like having a law forbidding soldiers from interrogating child soldiers. It will, theoretically, protect child soldiers who are captured. But it will also encourage armies to use children to perform roles where they are likely to be captured.

What would the UNHRC view on that issue be I wonder? They'd probably be purist about it, and wouldn't go with the messy "greater good" line. I don't know what I think.

It's a bit similar to what Tom was saying. Should we violate international human rights agreements, if we think that doing so will result in a more humane outcome? The odd thing, human rights conventions are meant to be uncompromising - unsullied by political pragmatism and all that. It's our democratic laws that are supposed to be impure and practical at the expense of compassion. If you think that human rights aren't actually all that humane, what do you do?

Not sure how I feel about the original point. I'm probably inclined to believe that if making life less than perfect for a few hundred child can keep 1000s of others out of danger, then that's reasonable. Fortunately, this probably isn't one of those situations. If we were really concerned about children and the bigger picture, then we'd just let them all come here. If it's a choice between putting children in detention or having lots drown in boats on the way here, then that's very tricky. But if it's a choice between putting children in detention or paying a few hundred million dollars a year in welfare payments to all the refugee families that can't get jobs, then it's easy. You just pay the stupid money.

I just discovered there have been 8376 issues of the Economist since 1843. You could drown in that many magazines. And quite happily I might add.

Some depressed regions actively court immigrants: the chamber of commerce at Nashville, Tennessee, sees them as a source of dynamism, as does Tom Vilsack, the governor of Iowa, whose state has a meat-packing industry relying largely on Bosnian refugees. The Economist

I don't know why I find that so funny.

Imagine if the government had the ticker to raise the tax-free threshold from $6,000 to $20,000. ACOSS, in their 'Info 347' June 2003 paper, say that the average tax rate on all income for someone earning $20,000 a year is presently 12 per cent, or $2,400. Andrew Murray

We can only dream. If John or Pete did this, I'd toast my boots and eat them with dorse.

Oh dear. An economics post. Stop it. Stop it. Must.... force.... self.... to read racist right wing immigration propaganda.

I agree with David. I know the best people. I keep deciding that I must have met all the absolute best people in the world, and there couldn't possibly be any more of them, and then I meet some more. The world is a lucky place.

So much to read. I've got three seperate browser windows full of unread tabs. At least, today, I'm being distracted by blog posts about social science instead of economics. It's a step in the right direction.

Completely unrelated - last night on the train home, I was sitting quietly by myself, eavesdropping on the conversation of the three people sitting near me. One of the girls was telling a story, and the other one said "Fuck off!" really loudly in response something. Then she realised how loudly she'd said it, and slid down a bit in her seat. She looked around and said quietly "Sorry everyone, I meant........ Oh my word, I can't believe she said that."

I don't like conservative, whining, racially-discriminating newspapers that talk about assimilation. But this, otherwise crappy article, aptly titled Too Many: Looking today's immigration in the face brought up an interesting point. One that, happily, isn't really to do with immigration at all.

But assimilation is much more than learning to speak English, or driving on the right side of the road. It involves what John Fonte of the Hudson Institute calls "patriotic assimilation," the belief that American history is one's own history. A century ago it meant that immigrants and their children came to see America's past as something "we" did, not something "they" -- white people of European ancestry -- did. To the extent that immigrants are assimilating they are doing so, in many cases, as "multicultural" Americans.

It made me think about patriotism, and what it means. Is it about where you draw the lines between "we" and "them"? I don't think I like the implications of that sort of idea. But what does it leave you with? Did "we" commit genocide? "We" as white people? "We" as Australians? "We" as British descendents? "We" as the children of the individuals that did it? "We" as people that have benefited? "We" as people that still do bad stuff? "We" as people that wouldn't have stopped it, even if we'd been alive? Is "patriotism" even relevant? Is it outdated? Is it a racism-like prejudice that was useful in the old days of constant war between countries? Can a Chinese immigrant who came in the 1850s feel responsible for the genocide? For the stolen generation? What if they came in the 1950s? Or in the last 20 years?

What relevance does it have to feel that "American history" is "your own history" apart from being a useful, and evocative (because racism often tries to be), "us vs them" line for conservatives to garner support?

Can you be anti-assimilationist but not anti-patriotism? I'm both I, but I don't know how strongly I the second one. Actually, that's not true, I would support assimilation to the extent that immigrants are willing to assimilate to make immigration more palatable to conservative voters. If immigrants are willing to go to English classes every week, and that means that we can have 100,000 more of them, then I would support it.

Does expecting people to value the UN Declaration of Human Rights count as being pro-assimilation? Would I be happy to have 5 million conservative Americans immigrate here, if that meant the destruction of our, already shaky, social welfare system? I'm not sure. Would John Howard permit more immigration, if immigrates could be prevented from voting for a few decades? Would that be a compromise I would be willing to accept in the interests of refugees? If I was a refugee I would be quite happy to move somewhere under the condition that I'd never be able to vote. But if there are a lot of people in that situation, what sort of a society does it create? A pretty shite one I reckon.

What would happen if the government gave a coalition of left-wing NGOs "sovereignty" over a big chunk of Australian land, a big chunk of UN funding, and said that they could accept as many refugees as they wanted. How many refugees would the coalition take? All of them? There 10.4 million according to the UN. Australia could support that many with some extra funding.

Maybe it would be simpler if white Australians assimilated themselves into the Aboriginal community. If multiculturalism is as bad as people think it is, that's the obvious solution. From this day forward, if you want to immigrate to Australia, you have to perform spear-throwing aptitude test, obtain references as to your berry picking skills, and learn one of the major Aboriginal languages at an accredited international language school.

The one problem with that is that we are right and they are wrong. Which is lucky for me? It would be hard to be a vegan in a properly assimilated Aboriginal community.

I read a bit more. I love this little bit.

Some conservatives, and even some liberals, have a different conception of assimilation, but it is not at all clear that those who wish to see a more robust love of country inculcated in our children (immigrant or native) are winning the debate. It simply makes no sense, therefore, for a society that cannot agree on its own history or even what it means to be an American to welcome over a million newcomers each year from outside.

In other words: The majority of America disagrees with the author. Therefore, America should do what the author says, at least until everyone starts to agree with the author. Once everyone agrees with the author, America should do what the author says.

I'll have to use that one more often. "If you disagree with me, that's all the more reason to do what I say."

Oh yay. I just found some statistics on maximum ecologically sustainable populations in various countries. Wackernagel and Rees did a few different studies and they seem to be pretty smart, reliable folk. They reckon that Australia can support 154 million people maximum. Most countries seem to be way over their sustainable levels, but Australia is way under. Canada was the only other country in that particular sample (of 10 or 15 countries) that was under their sustainable level. So that's tops. We could take in all the refugees in the world. And still have 144 million places left for conservative Americans..... enough for almost all of them.

Australia shows it's heart. There are only two developed countries in the list. We suck bad.

Countries Accepting Refugees

No one is ever going to guess what I've got for breakfast...... give up? Well, it's tinned pear slices. Except they are in a plastic tub with a lid. Still good though. I love the word tub.

Twooooo Of The Beeeest Ereeectile Dysfunctiiion Drug Availaaaaable

I got this is in the mail (e). I'm assuming that these drugs prevent erectile dysfunction. But just out of curiosity, what would you call a drug that caused erectile dysfunction. Although I suppose that's the same with all drugs. Cancer drugs don't normally cause cancer.

Last night there was a strange man at Rough Edges who gave Jai his address. He had a "Youth Off The Streets" jacket, which I think is a good thing, so he must be nice. On his business card he had "Family and Domestic Violence Coordinator". What a funny sort of thing to coordinate.

Why is it so much easier to say nice things about people you know are never going to read your blog?

Dear me. What a long night. It's 2am, and I only just got home. Cityrail is a bum. Should that be plural? Cityrail are bums?

Dave the Poet came up to me tonight while I was in the kitchen. He started "Have you had your meeting with James about my website yet?" This is the meeting I never said I'd have, and don't really want to have. "No", I replied. "You're lucky I don't have a gun aren't you," he said suddenly. "What?" I asked. "You're lucky I don't have a gun," he said again. "I suppose so," I offered. Then he chuckled at me, thoroughly pleased with his joke.

We had a snazzy new volunteer tonight. Who isn't that new, because it's her second night. But I haven't met her before. Her name is Bonnie. She's fun and makes good jokes.

Apart from all that, my foot is sore, my nose is running, and it's way way past my bed time.

Who was ever inspired by quiet patience and grace? If you are to be patient and gracious, you must shout it to the heavens; so that others my be the moreso inspired and uplifted.

Comment on Tom's post about breaking the law. It was too long for silly Haloscan. Tom said I don't think God would lock up refugees. But should we actively work against those laws illegally?

I would be breaking asylum seekers out of prison if I didn't think the consequences would be worse than the benefits. We could do that. But we would be breaking democracy, because most people want them in there. We'd be further alienating asylum seekers by making them look like "law-breakers". We'd be further alienating people who are opposed to mandatory detention, and be making us look like "extremists". Which I guess we are. :) They'd probably just get recaptured and automatically deported. Or put into normal Australian prisons, with no chance of getting out. And/or I'd have my right to visit detention centres permanently revoked.

If Jesus was here I don't reckon he'd be cutting through the barbed wire with wire cutters in the middle of the night. I think he'd be talking to people and convincing them they letting immigrants out might be a nice idea. Although who knows how much influence even Jesus would have on the Liberal party.

I wonder if Jesus made the lives of anyone worse by standing up for them. Could the tax-collectors and prostitutes have become even more marginalised, because people saw them as "Jesus-pets"? Does that matter? Maybe the sense of value that asylum seekers could get from a few Aussies trying to break them out, would be worth the costs of "middle Australia" deciding they were naughty. But I don't know if I have the right to make that decision on behalf of the hundreds of people in detention. Maybe we should start a petition amongst detainees.

"Do you want extremist Australian sympathisers to break Australian law on your behalf? Please list laws below."

That would be fair. :)

Of course, you can argue that this entire line of argument is a total copout, and really, if I had any integrity, I'd be down the hardware store in my lunch break today buying bolt-cutters.

Sudan's government signed a peace deal with rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, bringing hopes of an end to a civil war that has lasted for decades. The Economist

Yay. Poor old Sudan. I hope they stop killing each other for good. Such a nice country. And such skinny people.

It did also mention this.

But bloodshed continues in a separate conflict in the western region of Darfur.

But we'll just pretend they didn't.

Today in my uni gap I went up to Randwick - as I've done every week for about six - and got some food for lunch. I didn't have much money so I wandered into Coles hoping I'd find something bargain-liked. And boy oh boy, did I ever. I found big packets of chilli Kettle chips for $2.50. And I was going to buy a Ribena popper for 80c, but at the last minute I found some "Brekky Juice". It was a whole litre (as opposed to 250ml of Ribena popper) and it was only $1.48. Such a bargain. It had all different fruits in it, but what really sucked me in was the vitamin C and folate content. Wow. One bottle had 1000% of one's recommended daily intake of vitamin C. And all of your daily folate requirements. And it was yummy as all get out to boot.

That had kind of already made my day, so I was pretty happy as I left the supermarket. But then, as I walked outside, I got this really strong whiff of South American market, which made me go all nostalgic and even happier. And then a good Bob Dylan cover song started on my MP3 player. All these happy things, converged at the one time on this humble little shopping mall in Randwick. If I believed in an interventionist God, then I'd reckon he was silly buggers with me right then.

On the train on the way home a girl I recognised got on and came and sat down across the aisle. I wasn't sure where I'd seen her, but she looked at me funny, and smiled sort of. I smiled sort of back. Then I got out my accounting text book and started reading. I couldn't work out where she was from. Then she got out her accounting text book and started reading. I laughed at us quietly to myself.

My head is still sore. I think from last night with my clunk. It hurt all day. And I couldn't think. I sat in front of a EITC supply/demand curve for about half an hour in the library. And my economics tutorial was even worse. And in my accounting lecture I had this funny thing where I thought the room was shaking. Quite odd. I hope it gets better.

I got asked out on my first date ever today. Well, kind of. I was walking past the Commerce Society card table HQ - where they have all their leaflets - and I was approached by a ComSoc leaflet-bearer inviting me to the Postgraduate Ball. I took one. Then I realised it was for the Postgraduate Ball. I said "Sounds good, but I'm not a postgraduate." And he said "You don't have to be. You can go with someone else. You could come with me." I took the leaflet and tried to say "Thankyou" in a way that wouldn't make him think I wasn't heterosexual, and wandered off to the uni bookshop.

I really do need a "Romance" category.

Airplane (a song by those harmonising lesberyans) reminds me so much of Laura. There's this bit where they do a nice off-key bit, and I can imagine Laura liking it a lot. Liking it so much that she might even want to sing it herself. I miss her when I think about her. Romeo and Juliet reminds me of her too, but not for the same reason.

I was listening to the Indigo Girls this morning on my rocking MP3 player. I was reading a bit about revenue recognition at the same time, and it felt like a nice mix. Indigo Girls are good study music. Not too loud or angry, but they still make you want to jump up excitedly and hug people.

I was thinking about them singing Romeo and Juliet. They do it so well. Better even than Dire Straits I reckon. Which is interesting, because the most good lines are the ones about the romance. It might make more sense if the Indigo Girls were lesbians. That might explain a bit why they chose it. And why they didn't sing about Romeo instead of Juliet. And it would explain why they do it so well. They might not be of course. Although it might also explain why their harmonies are so good. I love their harmonies.

I've still got 20 minutes of nothing until my accounting tutorial starts. I like accounting. Although it's very silly in spots. Like how it lets you capitalise interest costs on loans, but not the opportunity costs when you spend your own money. So incredibly silly. If someone hasn't started a business offering loans where the collateral is just cash, then they really should.

Now the Cranberries are on. I used up all my Indigo Girls songs.

I tried plugging my USB MP3 dooby into this computer, but the computer security got in the way.

Do you spell "dooby" like "dooby" or "doobie"?

"Moi choild". Maybe the Cranberries are Irish. I've never thought about it before.

I've got to start organising my time. I could start now. Instead of blogging until 9:30 and then rushing to the toilet and being late for my 9:30 choot, I should leave now, go to the toilet, and be just on time for my choot. What a smashing thought.

I forgot to say - a couple of months ago I saw Martin Drinkwater on the bus. He goes to UNSW. He used to go to St Ives and everyone teased him because he was smart and tall. He's still tall, and presumedly smart, but people seemed to have stopped laughing at him. I'll bet he's doing engineering.

I had fun playing with my friends tonight. We went to the Blue Gum and Rachel invented a tops game with four coins and three people. I thought that I had invented it, and felt bad that Kaye didn't seem to like it that much. But then Rachel told me that she had invented it, so it was really her fault that Kaye wasn't enjoying it. But then Kaye started to enjoy it, after we stickied up her side of the table with some lemon, lime and bitters.

We had a bet on the State of Origin. Me, Robert, Rachel, Kaye, Chris and Jem beat Tom, Jo, Julian and David. We didn't really watch the game, but we saw the last field goal. It was a pretty tidy kick.

Robert is the next Michael De Beer. He used his special access to get us into Jack's Island and we played pool and obstacle course-type games. We were trying to set it up at the beginning and I had the brilliant idea of diving off a chair onto a big cushion. I demonstrated how it might work to everyone, except I slipped as I stepped onto the chair and leapt but my head missed the cushion and I hit the ground head-first pretty bloody hard. My teeth chattered when I hit, and now I have a headache. But it gave me a good laugh.

Rachel tried to learn to juggle but gave up when her arm got sore. I put the ball in the cup thing 20 times in a row, and the Jack's Island record is apparently only 30 times. Tom and I lost one game of pool four times in a row. Jo and Robert lost the same game once.

Oh dear me. Four economics posts in a row. And this was meant to be a social science study day as well.

(1) Use mathematics as a shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life. (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can't succeed in 4, burn 3. This last I did often. Alfred Marshall

After the budget came out, I had a bit of a go at Peter Costello for saying $50,000/year was middle-income. It turns out that he was right. I said it was somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per year I think. I'd based that on ABS data, which wasn't entirely accurate because it didn't separate part-time wages from full-time wages. However I made an estimate based on the number of part-time workers against the number of full-time ones. But I've just found some Reserve Bank data which seems to disagree with the ABS data. By I large amount too. According to the Reserve Bank the mean wage of all working adults in $38,000 and according to the ABS it's about $30,000.

The Reserve Bank data is on at the RBA website Prices and Output (G Tables). Whatever G Tables are. Who knows.

The other side of this, is that it makes Costello's budget far more reasonable. The one-off payments are still stupid, but the tax cuts make some sense.

I still find it kind of hard to believe that $50,000 is the mean Australian full-time wage. But if you can't trust the Reserve Bank, then who can you trust.

Economic rationalism is no different to typical decision-making, except the "evaluation framework" is far simpler. Using the term "rational" implies that normal decision-making is irrational. But all the choices we make are based consciously or sub-consciously on costs and benefits. Normally we try to evaluate more than just the monetary costs, because that will give us a more realistic assessment of something, even though non-money factors are hard to quantify. Rationalism isn't any more rational, it just doesn't try to quantify anything that is difficult to quantify. Social costs, environmental costs and moral costs are all too difficult for "rationalists" to think about, so they don't bother.

I talking before about thinking Coase is kind of a dufus. And telling my lecturer about it. I went and chatted some more today. He thinks I'm at least a bit right. I'm not entirely sure.

This following bit may be considered mildly daggy by some folk.

It starts to get a little complicated. You've got two player models and n-player models. I think Coase breaks for n-player models, in much the same way that collusion breaks when there are no barriers to entry. Regardless, unless there are property rights protecting the party with the most to lose, then the party with the least to lose will have a negotiating advantage. In the short-term "creators" will be bled dry; in the long term no one will produce anything dependent on "rights" obtained through Coasey sorts of negotiations. Coase doesn't seem to explicitly look at the long term, but if there is no long term, then even if your short-term is "efficient", it's not that interesting.

I'm still confused about the impact various types of rights have on the system. There are binary property rights (e.g. a right to total silence), and continuous property rights (e.g. pollution levels). Rights involving omission (e.g. the right to the absence of something) versus rights involving commission (e.g. the right to the presence of something). They all seem to affect the outcome. If it's possible to translate Coase to an n-player model, then I think the equilibrium will be stable at an inefficient point. My lecturer seems to think so too.

The purely competitive market models strike me as a bit broken. I was thinking about collusion. With perfect information, then I'm starting to wonder if collusion maybe would thrive. Success at collusion in markets with low barriers to entry mean success at price wars. Which in turn is mostly about cash reserves. If that's the case and each business knows how large the reserves of other businesses are, then maybe that can accurately predict who would win a price war. So they could conceivably do away with price wars altogether - whoever is the most likely to win will simply take over the monopoly and the smaller business will move on. All of that price-cutting that might have benefited consumers, at least for a short period, will now all end up as profit. The problem with this is, no one really knows how things would work in perfect competition. But that's not particulary related to the Coase stuff.

I started drawing some diagrams. But they confused me more.

If you have a situation. One smog factory and 1000 fisheries on a lake. The smog factory is only just staying in business, and the fisheries are thriving. They pretty much leave each other alone. But one day the smog factory decides to diversify into water pollution. It doesn't stand to make much money from it (a few thousand dollars), but if it starts with it's new business plan, then all the fisheries will go out of business. That's millions of dollars in revenue lost. According to Coase the fisheries would go to the smog factory owner and say "Hey, if we pay you what you would make from your new water pollution business, if you promise to not start the business, you can make your money, and we can all stay in business." According to Coase, the smog factory owner says "Yes, absolutely. That sounds like a great deal." But I suspect that assuming there are no property rights whatsoever (which we are), the smog factory owner would say "Nope. If you don't give me $x of your profits, I'm going to start my new water pollution business." The smog factory owner has looked at his graphs and has worked out that $x is the exact point where some of the fisheries have gone out of business (all the ones who can't afford $x), but overall he makes the most money. If those fisheries that can afford the $x want to stay in business, then they will pay. Even if he's a bad negotiator and accepts some amount less than $x, any amount he obtains which is greater than the few thousand dollars the water pollution business would have earned, will result in some market distortion. So you have a very happy smog factory owner who sits in his factory all day and gets paid huge amounts for doing nothing at all to the water. You get a lot fewer fisheries, but still some who are making a profit. And you get consumers who are paying a lot more for their fish than they originally were, and are getting a lot less of it. Which is exactly what Coase says won't happen.

I'm not sure what happens if there is only one fishery. The smog factory owner could conceivably take 100% of the fisheries profits. Since he has total control over the fishery's viability. Yes. The fishery will be forced to pay 100% of its profits. Any fishery owner that refuses will be replaced by a different owner that will. It's like the talented chef moving around until he finds someone willing to pay him all of the money that is earnt as a result of him working there. The smog factory owner, who doens't have talent but controls the profitability of the company, can move around by forcing fishery owners to close down and sell the business. Only someone who agrees to pay the smog factory owner all the profits will be able to guarantee that the smog factory owner won't close them down. Or the smog factory owner buys the fishery himself for $0 (because it has no value unless he agrees to not pollute). This won't result in market distortion, just virtual piracy. It's like an arbitrary flat dollar rate tax on a company. I wonder why governments don't do that. Probably because it's kind of immoral. But economists don't care about that.

Ooof. I feel all out of breath. Dear me. Economics is silly when it comes to this sort of bizzo. I like the sort that doesn't use models and strategies a lot more.

I've become cynical about the politicians. They give us health care. They give us education. They give us security. They give us law and safety. They give us a strong economy. They give us tax cuts. They provide stability. They fund the arts. They fund sports. They provide so much that we would never otherwise have. But they only do it all just to win votes.

I'm not really cynical. I quite like most politicians actually. I just think it's funny when people say this sort of stuff.