The Writing's on the Queensland Wall.

You've got to love our elites.

A little less than 3 years ago, Campbell Newman (Liberal National Party, "conservative, centre-right, libertarian") was elected Queensland premier by a landslide:

Party                                          Seats
LNP                                               73
QLD Labor                                          9
Crossbenchers                                      7

After yonks in government, plagued by all sorts of problems, ranging from ineptitude, corruption and anti-people policies not different from those of their opponents, QLD Labor was reduced to 9 seats!

Let me spell that out: In a 89-seat parliament with just one house, this gave the LNP absolute power to do and undo as they pleased. And, boy, they did. After a while, I just tired of writing about it.

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About a year and a half later, in circumstances similar to those in Queensland, Tony Abbott led the federal Liberal/National Coalition ("conservative, centre-right, libertarian") to landslide victory against a weak Labor government, plagued by infighting, where the main distinguishing feature of both parties was their names, "Labor" and "Coalition", not their policies.

Indeed, the big difference between the Queensland and federal results was that at a federal level, the Coalition did not fully control parliament: they control the House of Representatives (90 seats out of 150), not so with the Senate (33 seats out of 76, with 18 utterly unpredictable crossbenchers). This has stopped the federal government from replicating at a federal level, the catastrophe the LNP caused in Queensland. Not that they didn't try and manage to do a lot of harm.

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Yesterday was the Queensland state election. With 9 seats still undecided, the preliminary results are:

Party                                          Seats
LNP                                               33
QLD Labor                                         44
Crossbenchers                                      3

It's a remarkable defeat by any account. Adding insult to injury, Newman lost his seat of Ashgrove to QLD Labor's Kate Jones, whom he defeated in 2012.

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No doubt, pundits will discuss these results and its implications for Abbott and the Coalition. But what are the conclusions Coalition supporters will draw from this? Should we celebrate Newman's defeat?

Let's proceed by steps. First: what will those people make of this?

Judging by the puppeteer's tweet a few days ago:

(source)

The puppet only needs to get rid of an obnoxious advisor, not change his destructive, odious, class-based policies. As simple as that.

Judging by his own party colleagues, he just needs to spin things better. It's all about style and marketing. We'll buy the lemon, provided the used-car salesman talks us into it. Failing that, they'll kick him out and change the figure-head:

Second: should we celebrate Newman's defeat? Well, yes and no.

Yes, because Newman's defeat will at least stop further damage being inflicted on Queenslanders.

No, because, per se, Labor's victory will not reverse the damage already inflicted and there is no guarantee Labor will be much better.

So, personally, I think it's a kind of a limited victory. Better than nothing, I guess.

And this applies to both, the Queensland and federal levels: it's not a matter of fucking-Abbott or of fucking-Newman, it's not a matter of labels, it's not a matter of spinning things better, it's a matter of policies, stupid.


UPDATE:
01/02/2015: Here's Michelle Grattan's account of Malcolm Turnbull's views on leadership:

"Leaders must be 'explainers and advocates, unravelling complex issues in clear language', Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said, outlining a strategy for selling hard economic messages."

Let's be sceptic. Maybe those weren't Turnbull's literal words, only Grattan's interpretation, after all, Turnbull is regarded as the smart one in the Abbott Cabinet.

Still, again you see the same thing. For our cognoscenti -- Grattan in this case -- the problem lies not in the policies, but in how they are sold to the public.

Incidentally, doesn't that sound like Turnbull's own sales-pitch as would-be PM?

Ylvis: "The (Marginalist) Fox"

Dedicated to marginalist mainstream economists (and their PoMo/PoKe long-lost twins)

"The secret of the fox, ancient mystery.
"Somewhere deep in the woods, I know you're hiding.
"What is your sound? Will we ever know?
"Will always be a mystery what do you say?" (Ylvis)

A couple of years ago brothers Vegard and Bård Ylvisåker (better known as the comedy duo Ylvis), from Norway, sang about an "ancient mystery" which, like the diamond-water "paradox", has bewildered sages since the dawn of history: "What does the fox say"?

One day this catchy and rather funny pop song may figure prominently in economics textbooks thanks to some young and intrepid economist (maybe a PoMo/PoKe one?). Mark my words.

The Paradox of Value that Never Was.

With a diameter of 12,742 kilometres, Earth is a small planet. It's certainly much smaller than Jupiter (with a 139,822 km diameter).

Relative sizes: Earth and Jupiter. [A]

And, yet, humans evolved on tiny Earth, not on Jupiter (indeed, couldn't have evolved there).

Is this a paradox? Say, the Earth-Jupiter paradox? I mean, is it paradoxical that our planet, the home of all of humanity, the scenario of all of history, is small in relation to most planets in the solar system and revolves around a star, unremarkable among hundreds of billions of stars in a particular galaxy, unremarkable among hundreds of billions of galaxies?

It may be humbling, but I see no paradox there.

To see a paradox in the plebeian origins of our species, I'd first need to assume, maybe implicitly, something additional: that our species "deserves" a stately, special, or at least big, birthplace.

Since I don't assume anything additional, I don't find the Earth's small size or peripheral location conflicting with the fact our species evolved there. If you like, I've never spent a single sleepless night puzzling that out.

Historically, however, this was a serious matter for many.

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As Michael White (White 2002) and others have explained, many, too, claim to have found a paradox in the following passage from Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations":

"Nothing is more useful than water; but it will purchase scarce any thing; scarce any thing can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it."

The Library of Economics and Liberty (Econlib.org 2015) is a case in point:

"[Carl] Menger used this insight [i.e. marginal utility] to resolve the diamond-water paradox that had baffled Adam Smith (see marginalism)." 

Noted American economist Milton Friedman (Friedman 1999) provides another example:

"He [W. Stanley Jevons] resolved the classic diamond-water paradox—diamonds are a luxury, water a necessity, yet diamonds command a higher price than water—by showing that 'marginal utility'—the utility gained from having one more unit of something—not 'total utility' plays the key role in determining price."

Who should be credited with that, Jevons or Menger? Leaving that aside, if one believes that account, Smith and a host of other luminaries must have spent their nights tossing and turning, their thoughts devoted to solve that riddle: the diamond-water paradox!

But, is this really a paradox?

The parallel with the Earth-Jupiter "paradox" is evident. To be a paradox, it requires one to assume, perhaps implicitly, something additional. For instance, that what one gets in exchange for a good (say, water) should reflect its usefulness.

Since I don't assume anything additional, I see no paradox. Much more importantly, however, Smith himself appeared to see no paradox there. For one, he never wrote anything in WN to the effect that this was a devilish conundrum he had tried, unsuccessfully, to solve. (Check the link above!)

For all we know Smith was fully satisfied with his own solution: "what can be had in exchange" for water or diamonds (i.e. their values in exchange) does not depend on their usefulness (i.e. their values in use), but on their costs of production/labour time, as he explains later.

Friedman's quote above shows his own mistake: Smith never intended to explain value in exchange on the basis of use in value (i.e. "total utility").

For what it is worth, I think Smith wasn't too far off the mark.

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When mainstream authors like Friedman claim "marginal utility" solves a centuries-old mystery keeping economic thought from advancing, they are solving a "paradox" existing in their minds, only. It is a claim both self-serving and false. If someone ever badly needed a good night's sleep, it seems, it was them, for they weren't thinking straight.

"Marginal utility" seems to be their imaginary answer to an irrelevant question nobody, but themselves, ever asked.

References
Econlib.org, (2015). Carl Menger: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty.
[online] Available at: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Menger.html [Accessed 26 Jan. 2015].

Friedman, M. (1997). John Maynard Keynes. Economic Quarterly 83.2:1-20.
[online] Papers.ssrn.com. Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2129832 [Accessed 26 Jan. 2015].

White, M. (2002). Doctoring Adam Smith: The Fable of the Diamonds and Water Paradox. History of Political Economy, 34(4), pp.659-683.

Image Credits:
[A] "Rough visual comparison of Jupiter, Earth, and the Great Red Spot. Approximate scale is 44 km/px." January 14th, 2007. Author: Brian0918 on NASA images. Image in the public domain. Wikipedia.

Greece and Australia: Jan 26.

The Greek people voted for Syriza today, January 26 (Australian time). I imagine many "objective" journalists must be having little fits.

source

But it's too soon to celebrate. So, let's hope Syriza does not follow the same path to "respectability" lefties seem to crave. The respect of the enemies of the people is not a good thing.

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Here is Australia Day or Survival Day, depending on your perspective. Little to celebrate.

Wake Up, people! (See here)

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UPDATE:
26-01-2015. I had forgotten the big issue today. PM Tony Abbott decided to award the Duke of Edinburgh a Knighthood of the Order of Australia. Kinda "promoting" a colonel to sergeant.

This apparently caught all pundits by surprise.

Poppycock. I take Abbott's side on this. Every single Australian knows people like Abbott see society this way: you must suck up to your betters and oppress those below you. The only surprise is that he practices what he preaches.