I saw a story in the April copy of Australian Personal Computer, in a section they have about “dumb users”.

In the story a tech support person was upgrading computers. A user was wary of losing data in upgrade and asked the tech support person, who responded that it would be fine and the data would be saved. After the upgrade the user was distraught as all the data had been lost. When the tech support person asked where the data was saved the user responded “In that little bin on the desktop!” (cue laughter).

For a computer literate person this is I guess kind of funny. But with the now pervasive use of computers, most people are not computer literate. When you compare a computer to most devices that people use, it is incredible complex, and the user interface can sometimes seem to have be designed by aliens. Why is it that when a person cannot understand the interface, the user is blamed and not the designer? We are still designing computers for computer geeks who can understand the complexity of the machine, not for the millions of ordinary people who now use computers. Most of the other machine around us: cars, stereos, TVs are fairly simple to use, industry should be trying to make computers more like those devices.

I believe the computer industry will have matured when computers are generally more like consumer devices, with simple interfaces, a range of universally useful programs, and very little ability to expand the system, get viruses or have your computer hijacked by hackers. This machine will be perfect for the vast majority of people who use their computer for web surfing, writing emails and managing their digital photos.

COAG, the Council of Australian Governments meet a couple of weeks ago (see their website here). They released a long and detailed communique expanding a range of achievements in health, skills, counter-terrorism etc. From the length of the document it is obvious that all this detail was worked out well in advance by officials. On the big issues, water and climate change, nothing much was achieved.

Why is the Howard Government taking on the States so much? Obviously there is a political element to it, but why doesn’t the Howard Government focus on issues that are within its domain of control? Perhaps they are a victim of the success of the Australian economy. Of course, this has not had too much to do with the Howard Government, the economic reforms of the 90s put in place by the Hawke/Keating Government(s) have been the driving force (along with the global economy) of the Australian economy’s success. In fact the Howard Government has had very little to do on economic policy, besides have a steady hand on the tiller and wondering what to do with all the additional revenue driven by the resources boom and bracket creep (people rising into higher income tax brackets as their incomes rise). Nonetheless, there have not been massive economic issues that have needed to be addressed by the Howard Government.

Maybe Howard has achieved his two big objectives, the GST and labour market reform, and does not have much more he wants to do. This would make sense for a conservative government, which believes in some ways that the way things are now is probably the best way of doing things (or at least that changes are risky).

Still, you would think that there were issues in the Commonwealth sphere that the Government could focus on. For example, the Commonwealth Government controls large parts of the health system, are there no further issues of reform in the health system? Has the Howard Government run out of ideas?

McSweeney’s reports on this “Oversimplified List of Options for Iraq”, quoted in full:

AN OVERSIMPLIFIED LIST OF OPTIONS IN IRAQ.

Cut and run.

Stay the course for a while. Then cut and run.

Truly, I think they have got it wrong. This list is not overly simplified. If anything it is too complex. Are there any more options? Can you think of any?

The newspaper reported on the Pope’s humility recently.

Its good how the Pope reflects Jesus’s humility, by washing the feet of some other Vatican priests using water poured from an ornate gold jug, into an ornate gold dish. Jesus was well known for his humility and how he would keep his gold items down to a bare minimum, just his jewelry, clothes, furniture and toilet, eating utensils and of course gold foot washing items. This was how Jesus demonstrated his humility. He also demonstrated it by building gigantic cathedrals.

In the Saturday Age Michelle Grattan commented on the recent Ken Henry “mishap”. If you missed it, Ken Henry, Secretary of the Commonwealth Treasury, gave an in-house speech that was leaked to the media, and subsequently (and due to the leak) published on the Treasury website, saying “…the Government’s water and climate change policies would have been better if Treasury had been properly consulted over the years. In the (leaked) address, Henry also warned about the hazards of “bad” policies as the election approaches.”Grattan notes that in the Westminster system public servants need some secrecy from the public to provide frank advice to the Government, but that recently the public service has become a black whole, and the public policy debate becomes more stunted.I think that Michelle has the wrong end of the stick here. The Westminster style system exist for good purpose, if public servants fear their policy advice will become public, then there will be pressure to not provide that frank advice, and just provide the advice the Government wants.

If we want robust debate of policy ideas in the public arena, we need a institutional framework that will provide that. the media has a central role in that debate. We need more journalism looking at substantive policy issues, and not just press release journalism. We also need more organised policy advocates and analysts, such as think tanks. To some extent that role is fulfilled in our system by academics, but there is a role for more policy think tanks than the rather meagre crop in existence at present.

On the Australian Libertarian Society website there is an article about the welfare state:Poverty and the Welfare State Safety Net: Thoughts on FreedomI recommend you read it, at least for an interesting perspective on the issue. However, I came away unsatisfied, the arguments in many cases did not appear to be well made. I have selected a few below.

“The economic orthodoxy behind the welfare state includes the belief that deliberate inflation of the currency by government is a legitimate instrument of policy…However even a low rate of inflation is very very destructive. For example, Australia’s current inflation rate is three percent, which, according to the economic orthodoxy is acceptably low. You divide 72 by the inflation rate to find out how long your money will last. So even at that low rate of three percent inflation, a hundred dollars saved in the bank today will be eroded to nothing in 24 years.”

I am not sure where to start with this comment, but I do not think that there is any aspect of the principles behind the welfare state that would have much to say about inflation. Obviously economic theory does, but the welfare state is not a macroeconomic theory, is a theory about Government assistance to individuals.

The example given in the article is that 3% inflation will erode savings to nothing over a period of time. and this is of course true for cash, but not for other saving methods (which would be the predominate form). So it is not at all clear that a particularly valid point has been put forward at all.

“The income tax is a tax on the employee’s income. So why should the employer have the liability of paying and administering it? The employees are not dependent children, they are adults. There is no reason why they should not have to pay and administer it themselves.”

I don’t think this is a very valid point to make. When Governments come to look at how to levy an income tax, they have to choose between putting the burden on millions of individuals with little experience with Government paperwork, or on businesses (of which there are much fewer) who are more experienced with Government paperwork, and in many cases already have systems in place for dealing with payroll. Any reasonable cost benefit analysis is going to clearly point out that it is more efficient to make business do the processing.

“It is important to understand that the project of the welfare state comes out of the socialist belief system. And it is surprising the number of educated proponents of the welfare state who do not understand that the ideas they are putting forward derive from Marxism.”

It definitely would be surprising as the welfare state does not derive from Marxism. Anyone with a passing interest in Marxism would realise that it was a theory of the economic system and the class struggle and was solely based around how the current class system would collapse through class struggle to be replaced by communism. If anything, Marxist’s opposed the welfare state as mollifying the class struggle and hindering the more to communism. If anything the welfare state flows from social democrats and social liberals, people who generally accepted the capitalist system, but saw a need to moderate some of the more vicious aspects of capitalist production (by, for example, banning child labour and creating the eight hour day).

Of course, some of the issues raised in the article, such as OHS laws and tax paperwork, are not so much derived from the intellectual history of the welfare state but are the result of the (maybe unintended) interaction of multiple Government controls accumulated over time by states operating in advanced democratic capitalists systems. It may be very well true that this has gone to far and that some form of revision, either in the specific or generally may be warranted. But blaming marxism is no substitute for clear analysis and discussion of the specific issues and the specific solutions.

If you want to understand where this kind of article comes from (theroy wise) I think you should have a look a Fred Argy’s post over at Club Troppo:What is the difference between a true economic liberal and a ‘hard’ (libertarian) liberal?

Although the old airport in Hong Kong no longer exists, we can still relive the glory through the powers of youtube.com

This following video is a short couple seconds of what appears to be a completely hair raising landing. The following video shows that it was the standard operating procedure.

The Age reported that Police are to cop new drug-test rules:

“COMPULSORY drug testing of Victorian police will be introduced by the end of the year, with the Government set to rush legislation through Parliament.”

Of course compulsory drug tests are going to be necessary in certain professions, they exist for miners and operators of heavy machinery, but are we going too far in pushing for compulsory drug test for all kinds of professions? The Police are a large organisation, their thousands of staff will represent the broad cut of society, there will be drug users, alcoholics, tee-totalers, over achievers, wife bashers, religious conservatives, straights, gays and all kinds of people.

I always thought that part of the implicit social contract about drugs in this country was a combination of intolerance and tolerance. We are intolerant of drug suppliers and drug pushers, and, while we might criminalise drug use, in practice it is tolerated (certainly it is not prosecuted in the way that it could if we really thought that it was an issue).

It is not at all clear to me that we should grab this large mixed bag of society (the Police) and hold them up to higher standards than what we do for the rest of society. Certainly the Assistant Commissioner quoted in the story claimed that drug use might effect the ability of police in serious physical confrontations, but then why apply the test to the majority of police who are never in those situations?My suggestion is that we should expect our politicians to be leaders. If they wish to force compulsory drug test on their citizens then they should lead form the front on this as well. The new legislation should mandate compulsory drug tests for Members of Parliament. What more important activity than passing legislation is their in our society? Why should we expect that activity to occur in any less than a sober state?