A Defense of the IPA

Since Damien Eldridge has decided to offer this critique of the IPA’s article on climate change (Davidson, S and A Robson (2007), "Certainty clouds the IPCC", Institute of Public Affairs Review 59(1), March, pp. 7-9), now might be a good time to offer a reply.

Damien’s major bone of contention is that sections of the article are misleading. Damien claims that figure 2 of pg8 was set up in such a way as to obscure the fact that there is an upward trend in the data. Now, I don’t have a problem with that conclusion, what really concerned me was that Damien objected to it on the grounds that the data presented in figure 1 clearly shows a large positive trend, thus contradicting the authors of the article.

Now, my point it that as figure 2 seems to obscure the upward trend in mean global temperature, figure 1 grossly exaggerates it. Now it turns out that according to the data set that was cited, the average yearly increase in mean global temperature (i.e. the trend) is about 0.004Cº. Now given this, one could easily make a claim that the figures provided by organizations such as the IPCC are equally misleading, if not more so.

Now a brief digression: I was able to calculate the 0.004Cº using a technique that is familiar to every econometrician, namely I regressed the mean global temperature against a time trend (the estimation output can be found below). Now whenever you perform this, you can interpret the coefficient of the trend as the mean increase in the dependent variable (here I’m referring to the mean global temperature).

Milton Friedman dead at 94

http://www.hoover.org/pubaffairs/releases/4667846.html

Milton Friedman, one of the giants of the Chicago School of economics, died yesterday of heart failure. He was 94.

Professor Friedman will probably be best remembered as the most successful advocate of free-markets that the western world has ever seen

In addition to his work in the public arena, Friedman's work as an economist has had a lasting impact on the profession as a whole. His work covered a wide range of topics including monetary theory and history, consumer choice, uncertainty and econometrics. But most surprisingly, Friedman was the first economist to predict the breakdown of the relationship between inflation and unemployment, helping lay the foundations of the Rational Expectations revolution along the way

The cause of freedom has known no greater hero

My thoughts on the North Korean crisis

Earlier on today, the North Korea government had announced that it had finally carried out a successful test of a nuclear weapon. Setting aside questions as to whether or not the North Korean government is being truthful, the fact that it (probably) controls nuclear weapons raises some interesting points. A few hours before the announcement, I was discussing my previous post with Damien Eldridge who raised the point that the U.S Armed Forces will have no problems suppressing an armed rebellion since they control most of the firepower. To me, this argument applied to the United States because it assumes that the cost of taking a humans life is zero. I suspect that this is far from the truth. The first major cost that comes to mind is the fact that the, for lack of a better word, killer has to live with the fact that he has killed a fellow human being for the rest of his life. In addition to that, he is also aware of the fact that the next time he sees one of his friends or loved ones, it may be down the barrel of a gun. These two factors could be enough to trigger a mutiny. Now as there are more guns circulating, the cost of a rebellion should go down as the insurrectionists should have more people that are equipped to join their cause. This should mean that since there are more insurrectionists there are, the higher the probability that the soldier will have to kill one of the insurrectionists. This will mean that the costs of following orders will now be higher which should lead to more mutinies within the ranks. Given that a coup now be less likely to succeed, the plotters will probably think twice about launching a coup that will not succeed.

Damien’s argument seems more plausible when applied to North Korea. The key difference is the fact that the cost that the Korean soldiers face will be different. This is because of the fact that, because of ideological conditioning, the soldiers will view any insurrectionists as enemies, making it easier for the North Korean soldiers and leadership to suppress the insurrection. Now that they have a new tool that they can use, it will now be even easier to suppress the insurrection. This means that the North Korean government and the military should have greater flexibility in its choice in it’s policies, which should lead to a more extreme position being adopted by the North Korean government.

My thoughts on Gun Control

Every now and again, some madman (or madmen) decides to take a couple of firearms into some very highly populated areas and indiscriminately start killing innocent bystanders. It happened in 1996 when Martin Bryant decided to kill 35 people at Port Arthur and it happened in 2002 at Monash University. Following these two events there were repeated calls for new gun-control legislation. The proponents of these laws claimed that it would make it harder for future mass-murderers to get their hands of the weapons that they would use to carry out the killings.

While I don’t doubt the fact that gun-control legislation will reduce the level of gun related crimes, I just think it’s highly unlikely that the effect will be as great as the proponents think. This is because that even though the potential criminals are prevented from acquiring guns through legitimate channels, they still have other options. They could either commit the crime unarmed or they could acquire weapons through alternative means such as the black market. The trouble is. Neither of these options will probably be as good as good as a legal purchase of a gun. If I were to commit the crime unarmed, I may encounter a victim who is more than willing to fight back (maybe with a weapon he acquired) or if I were to acquire the gun illegally, the cost of committing the crime would increase in the form of a punishment I would expect to incur when I engage in the illegal purchase of a gun. This means that the criminals are, in effect paying a tax equal to the increased cost in carrying out the crime using the next best alternative. This will discourage those criminals whose benefits are less than the new costs and encourage them to lead more legitimate lives.

The interesting question is why we have gun control legislation in the first place when the impact of the gun control legislation may not be all that great. One of the explanations I’m most familiar with was the one that was probably put forward by David Friedman who argued that an abundance of weapons make it easier for a countries population to engage in armed rebellion if they are dissatisfied with their governments policies. On the other hand, if the supply of firearms were restricted, then the government of the day would have less of an incentive as to whether or not their population is happy with the current situation.

I’m not quite sure whether or not this argument has much merit due to the fact that most people will have faith in democracy’s ability to look after its citizens which will mean that the citizenry will look for a legal solution to their grievances. Rather, I suspect that following a massacre, the population will demand that such an event will not happen again which will mean that they will ask for a solution. My guess is that a politician who has an interest in getting elected again, will ask some government official to come up with a solution to this problem. The official, recognizing that his bureaucratic empire will expand if a government based solution were implemented, will offer a solution that will expand government power and by extension, his empire, such as gun control.

My thoughts on Libertarianism and Responsibility

One of the central ideas of modern Libertarianism is that responsible adults should be free to run their own lives as they see fit provided that they do not violate other people’s right to life, liberty and property.

Some critics of Libertarianism will argue that certain people (usually adults between the ages of 18 to 24) aren’t responsible when it comes to things like drugs and alcohol. Instead of dismissing them outright, as is the case with most libertarians, I actually realised that they may have a point. Libertarians consider anyone over the age of 18 as a responsible adult. But what is so special about the age of 18, in other words, what changes does a person undergo when he turns 18 that turns him into a responsible man.

This has lead me to believe that we might need to re-examine the rules that define who exactly should be considered to be responsible. The best alternative that I could possibly come up with is a rule that defines a responsible adult as someone who is not a dependent (in other word, he doesn't live at home with his parents). The reason behind this is that once one becomes independent, the person will be exposed to the full costs and benefits of their actions. This means that they will hopefully start to learn to exercise better judgement when they weigh up their decisions because if they don't they will obviously be landing in some very deep strife (this is why I believe that the welfare state should be dismantled)

The only problem with this rule is that in order to enforce such a concept, we probably need to set up a highly intrusive government program that is completely at odds with modern Libertarian thought.

Maybe the status quo is the least bad option available, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be thinking about the issue.

My thoughts on the Haileybury controversy

To me, it seems that the media has incredible difficulty distinguishing between good and bad news. Just this evening, the channel 10 news had announced that Haileybury College had “poached” 10 female volleyball players from Upwey High School. Predicably, the AEU was up in arms over the incident, claiming that it is a waste of taxpayers while the state government tried to put some positive spin on the fact that the state school system wasn’t able to retain the students.

While this was all going on, nobody made any mention of the fact that 10 students have just accepted a scholarship to attend one of Melbourne’s most prolific private schools and Haileybury now has a better volleyball team that is worth at least as much as the value of the scholarships and as a result both parties are now better off. The only people who didn’t come out on top was Upwey High School but the fact that they weren’t able to convince the students to stay suggests that the students weren’t worth all that much to Upwey High School.

My only hope is that the government doesn’t cave into pressure from the unions and enact legislation that will prevent schools from competing for students