Evolving from a "disaster" to "not very supportive"

I trust that people who have been reading Sinclair Davidson's series of articles on plain packaging for tobacco have noticed how he has changed his rhetoric over time?

First, March 27, noting that industry says it sold 0.3% more in the first twelve months:

What a policy disaster! The situation of the ground must be even worse.

 June 6, based on the same information:

For a policy that had the intent of reducing smoking rates, this is a disaster.

June 10, after thinking about it a bit more:

It is an open question as to whether existing smokers are smoking more, or if new smokers are taking up the habit.

Today:

A lot of very careful work needs to be done into the efficacy of the plain packaging policy – the early evidence isn’t very supportive of the policy.

And yet he complains when others (according to him) don't take him seriously enough at a forum discussion?

And how was this for a classic bit of arse covering by Judith Sloan after she wrote an Australian column which virtually repeated every argument Davidson had run up the flagpole:

Sinc, you are doing a great job on this.

But we should not forget that this is really an issue of principle rather than empirics.

Inspiring work, hey, by economists who shoot their mouths off first, and think harder later.

Update:

I also note that Sinclair Davidson's post of today tries on a "gotcha" that Media Watch quoted a 1.4% figure incorrectly for two different things.   He even quotes from the BT letter to show "what it actually says", but in doing so clips off the first reference to 1.4% in the letter.  Here's the full section, with 1.4%'s double appearance in bold:

 “From 2008 to 2012 smoking incidence, or the number of people smoking, was declining at an
average rate of -3.3 per cent a year. Since plain packaging was introduced, that decline rate
slowed to -1.4 per cent,” Mr McIntyre said.
“Over the five years in the lead-up to the introduction of plain packaging, total tobacco industry
volumes were declining at an average rate of -4.1 per cent.
“Subsequently, since plain packs were introduced on 1 December 2012, industry volumes have
actually grown for the first time in a long time to +0.3 per cent.
“Further, the number of cigarettes smoked on a daily basis declined at a rate of -1.9 per cent in the five years leading up to plain packaging, while it slowed to -1.4 per cent after green packs hit shelves.

 Oh dear, the letter is "not very supportive" of the attempted gotcha after all.

Now Davidson then goes on to criticise Media Watch for omitting the paragraph in the letter that argues, in spite of the percentages it just quotes:

“With growth in industry volumes, fewer people quitting and a jump in the amount of cheap illegal cigarettes on the streets, you could draw the conclusion that people are actually smoking more now than before plain packaging came into effect.”

Yes you could draw that conclusion - at least if you're an economist who brings no skepticism at all to tobacco industry spin and doesn't think about the letter as a whole.

Surely the actual problem here, for people other than Davidson and Sloan, is that the letter's conclusion makes little sense in light of its own quoted stats.   The number of smokers is reducing, the number of cigarettes per day smoked is reducing, but the industry is telling us that we can conclude people are smoking more now?   [They might have an argument there, somewhere, if they want to critique how the different sets of figures they quote are compiled, but they certainly don't make it.  The simple fact of the matter is that their claimed increase in sales volume, together with the alleged increase in black market sales, don't naturally gel with declines in the number of smokers and the number of cigarettes smoked per day.]

Here's the thing:  the industry wants to discredit plain packaging (absolute certainly on that point) and had an "obvious" way to do it - to offer cut price cigarettes and claim that any increase in sales volume over any short period shows the "failure" of the policy.  (They were likely assisted in this by the timing of the excise increase which may have led to some stockpiling before the price rise.)   But of course it is a self serving tactic, just like the IPA will campaign in the media by touring climate skeptics, and then quote any drop in polling for "public concern" about the issue to tell the government "see, this is not an important for the public, no need to deal with it." 

And above all of this is the clear fact that many proponents of plain packaging expected it to work long term by discouraging the young from starting, and assessing whether it is working that way or not would take some time to establish.  (Teenagers represent a small proportion of total smokers anyway - under 18 year old smokers now are well under 10% of the total*, and it's substantially more popular with girls at that age.  Somehow, I suspect that it is probably exactly that gender at that age that may be most put off by the de-glamourisation of cigarette packaging.)

Update: * not sure what the right figure is - the percentages in the link I was looking at was for percentage of under 18 teenagers who smoke - not what percentage of total smokers they represent.  That figure is proving hard to track down quickly.

Stuck on unpopular

I see from Newspoll that Abbott's "dissatisfied" polling went from 50% earlier in the year up to close to 60% with the budget, and has stayed there.

I suppose it is only 6 weeks or so since the budget, but it's nonetheless pleasing to see a flaky, windvane of a PM with a policy he is most committed to that is considered an eccentric dog by most in his own party; who takes advice from business ideologues who can't even believe in science and climate change; who is prepared to operate border control under a fake veil of "operational secrecy" so that the public doesn't even know if it should be concerned; whose government drifts into unnecessary terminology changes so as to score points from an Israeli PM who is a favourite of Fox News; and who introduced with no pre-election discussion a major change to tertiary education that has unseen equity consequences while his daughter got free education pretty much for being his daughter, is stuck on unpopular.

Marijuana and capitalism

I see that tonight's Foreign Correspondent is about how business is rubbing its hands with glee at the prospect of a legal marijuana market in much of the United States.  An article along similar lines from the US can be read here.

This does strike me as a very serious issue.  As that second article notes, there's little doubt that tobacco use in the 20th century took off as a result of both a more convenient product pushed along by the profit motive.

The inadequacies of an under regulated market with regards to marijuana in Colorado have already been displayed by the stupidity of selling things like candy bars full of multiple "doses" of THC, with next to no labelling of the danger of consuming too much too quickly.  Talk about your obvious danger with no care taken by the profit maker.

Now, I guess some may argue that, like alcohol, where profit pushes sales, marijuana with find its natural level of societal use.

But the legalisation advocates like to argue that the ubiquity of its use is one of the reasons for legalising it.   Hence you could argue that there is already is a "natural level" of use in society, and what you see by legalisation is permission to give capitalism its full force behind manipulating a market to increase it:  to redefine a new "natural level".   The example of tobacco shows, of course, that capitalism left alone can  take scant account of the interests of public health and productivity. 

I suppose you could argue that the State, if in future concerned about the increase in use, could seek to drive it down by increasing taxes, as they do with smoking and alcohol.   But the higher the taxes, the less likely you will ever actually remove the black market for the drug, which in this case is even easier to manufacture than either tobacco or alcohol. 

I therefore think there is every reason to be leery of legalisation because capitalism and its role in promoting markets makes for an uncomfortable mix when it comes to a "new" product it is not actually in our societal interest to see becoming too popular.

Saudi money causes problems, again

ISIS: The Saudis helped create a monster they can't control in Iraq.

If you were playing a world building game on your computer, about the last strategy you would want is to put a large amount of a very useful resource under the ground of a region made of sand with humans living there who (probably partly because of the harsh environment itself) think they hear God talking to them.

Yet that's what our God seems to have done, and world peace has been paying for it in one way or another for quite a time now.

Maybe this should be added to the atheist arguments against God - an all knowing being would not be so bad at game strategy.

Internal affairs

Health Check: the ins and outs of burping and farting

Well, I didn't realise there was a gas recycling system going on in such a large scale inside me:

Imagine how much space 25 litres of gas would occupy – about one third of the interior of a small car. That’s how much gas you produce every day in your intestines. So it’s little wonder that farting, bloating and burping are relatively common.

Much of this gas production is recycled – by re-absorption and use within the gut, particularly by the almost two kilograms of bacteria in your colon. Indeed, almost 22.5 litres is absorbed by the gut, used by gut bacteria or expires through the lungs.

I think that's a useful fact to drop into my script for episode 3 of the show about time travelling fecal transplanting doctors.  

Fermented fish from another part of the world

Korea’s Fish Special: A Delicate Mix of Outhouse and Ammonia - NYTimes.com

Well, it turns out that Scandinavia is not the only region that has developed a fondness of what many say is the most gut wrenchingly smelly and offensive food of all - fermented fish:

But fermented skate from this southern island tops them all. By far South Korea’s smelliest food, the fish, called hongeo, is described by lovers and detractors alike as releasing odors reminiscent of an outhouse. Served most often as chewy pink slabs of sashimi, hongeo is prized by enthusiasts for the ammonia fumes it releases, sometimes so strong they cause people’s mouths to peel.

“I used to think that people could not possibly eat this stuff unless they were crazy,” said Park Jae-hee, a 48-year-old marketing executive. “But like smelly blue cheese, it has no replacement once you fall in love with it.”

I'll pass, thanks.

Common sense not heard so often in the US

It's Really Hard to Be a Good Guy With a Gun

This article in Gawker makes much sense.   I find it incredible that over my life time, the US has moved more towards something resembling the Wild West, rather than away from it.  Like libertarians generally, gun loving NRA types live in a fantasy world and discount the common good.

And I would also note that while LDP eccentric Senator elect Australian David Leyonhjelm is doing media bits claiming that our drop in firearm deaths both before and after the gun buyback means that the buyback affected nothing, in the US the NRA and gun loving nutters continually draw a connection between concealed carry and a drop in crime.  It's OK to draw the connection sometimes then, is it?

Stern on the inadequacies of economic modelling of climate change

Climate change will ‘cost world far more than estimated’ - Climate Change - Environment - The Independent

Just as I suspected:

Lord Stern, who wrote a hugely influential review on the financial
implications of climate change in 2006, says the economic models that
have been used to calculate the fiscal fallout from climate change are
woefully inadequate and severely underestimate the scale of the threat....

Professor Stern and his colleague Dr Simon Dietz will today publish the
peer-reviewed findings of their research into climate change economic
modelling in the The Economic Journal.

Their review is highly critical of established economic models which,
among other things, fail to acknowledge the full breadth of climate
change’s likely impact on the economy and are predicated on assumptions
about global warming’s effect on output that are “without scientific
foundation”.

Professor Stern, whose earlier research said it is
far cheaper to tackle climate change now than in the future, added: “I
hope our paper will prompt ... economists to strive for much better
models [and] ... help policy-makers and the public recognise the
immensity of the potential risks of unmanaged climate change.”

What the heck, Andrew Robb?

Up on Business Insider:

Australia’s chief trade-deals negotiator has labeled the bid by President Barack Obama to cut U.S. power-plant emissions as lacking substance.

“There’s no action associated with it,” Trade Minister Andrew Robb said in a Sky News interview from Houston, Texas, where he was accompanying Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Abbott, who is seeking to dismantle Australia’s carbon- price mechanism before it hosts Group of 20 leaders in November, isn’t supporting Obama’s bid to pressure India, China and other nations to help form a world-wide agreement to combat climate change. The president is seeking state-by-state limitations on carbon-dioxide emissions to limit the effects of man-made global warming, and earlier this month proposed cutting power-plant discharges, the nation’s largest source of the gas, by 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels.

“Despite the rhetoric you get over here and all the targets for 30 percent reductions and all this, it’s just rhetoric,” Robb said.

I'm sure that Obama appreciates the two faced aspect of the Ministry of the government he just hosted.

Or is there some misreporting, because that sounds an extraordinarily ill considered thing for Robb to say.

Rude economist

I see on the weekend Catallaxy that Sinclair Davidson grumbled about being ignored:

I actually did start listening to the forum just at the point that SD was making his points.   Unless my ears deceived me, there was one direct response to him by one of the other people on the forum.  It was respectful.  As indeed Jonathan Greene always is to him.

Mind you, his apparent feeling that he wasn't adequately responded to in the forum, by posting this at his blog before the show was even on the air, indicates that he probably did deserve to be ignored - that's what people who engage in pre-emptive hyperbole should expect.  

Sure, there can be humour in hyperbole; but we all know that when people use it too much, depending on which audience they are talking to (calling anyone even slightly Left "commies", or admitting a fondness for thinking in terms of "moochers"), people soon start to cotton on that there is something more going on underneath.

This change of language by people who are writers or guests on media outlets when they are talking on their own blogs has always annoyed me - as I wrote last year in a more general attack on Catallaxy:

I used to get really annoyed with Tim Dunlop when he was a paid blogger for News Ltd putting on the "voice of reason" approach in that forum, and then sneaking off to his own personal blog to make snarky, nasty and personal attacks on John Howard.

That applies as much to the Right as to the Left.

Jericho analysis wins me again

Joe Hockey: all's fair in welfare and budgets | Business | theguardian.com

Yet again, I find Greg Jericho's take on matters to be far better argued than the ideologically driven take of the Coalition and, of course, The (laughably biased) Australian. 

Adam Creighton spinning faster than a wind turbine

Adam Creighton says today:



A couple of questions for Mr Creighton - no where in the article can I see an explanation of where the losses come from. I would have thought a steady process of erecting turbines and building other renewable energy plants, as well as adapting the network to be able to cope with it, would generate quite a few jobs. But I guess the report works out some way that it won't be a net employment benefit - it would just be good if you would tell us how that works.

Secondly - isn't the proper response, even if the job loss figure is plausible and not a beat up  - "what, only 6,000 jobs for a very sizeable increase in renewable energy? That's a fantastic deal".

The Coalition is said to be cutting 16,500 jobs in the space of 3 years. No Right wing economist is claiming that this is going to be a dire crush on the national economy, are they? So why then are you pretending that 6,000 jobs up to 2030 is a drama?  There are presently about 11,500,000 people working in this country.  Who knows what the figure will be by 2030, but at the moment 6,000 is about .05% of the work force.  

Lenore rips into Tony on climate change

Tony Abbott is no action man on climate change | World news | theguardian.com

This summary last week by Lenore Taylor explaining how Abbott is not serious about substantial action on climate change was very good.

And since then, we have a story in Fairfax today that Greg Hunt got rolled, in a big way, on spending on solar.

I don't know how Hunt lives with himself, really.  Supposedly devoted to emissions trading schemes, he was forced to reject them just so that Abbott could differentiate himself from Labor, and now can't even get good funding for solar up.

Edge reviewed, and back to the 60's

So, I'm sure everyone's waiting to hear what I thought about Edge of Tomorrow?  Hello....?

Anyhoo, saw it yesterday, and yes it's a good, solid science fiction-y treat.  Cruise is fine, so is Emily Blunt, and the film looks a million bucks.  (Actually, about 178 million bucks, apparently.)   It is actually good to see that a movie involving extensive battlefield violence can do it without showing much at all in the way of blood or gore. 

But I have two reservations - it does involve one very  improbable fall that doesn't kill our hero; and the very end was a little too, I don't know, not quite clever enough?   In fact, from a time bending point of view, I'm not at all sure that the story makes that much sense if one examines the ideas carefully, but it doesn't really matter.  The pace keeps you from pondering it anyway. 

Cruise's last science fiction film, the (I think) under-rated Oblivion was, for me, actually a little bit more enjoyable.  (Virtually no one is going to agree on that, but it did have more originality going for it.)   But once again, Tom deserves to be rewarded for working in pretty intelligent and well made science fiction as often as he does.

Apart from the thematic similarity to both Groundhog Day and Source Code, and the somewhat Starship Troopers feel of the exosketons and the way they drop from the sky, the one connection I haven't seen anyone make is to Captain Scarlet.  Yes, the Gerry Anderson show from the 60's in which our "indestructible" puppet hero got killed near the end of virtually every episode.  This always seemed to me to be a silly and somewhat depressing set up for a kid's show, but I watched it anyway.   It seems nearly every episode may be on Youtube, as well as the awful looking later CGI attempt to revive it, which seemed to be based on the bizarre idea that computer generated puppet like characters would go over better than actual puppets.

Here's an episode for your edification.  If you do nothing else, you should go to the end credits, involving many scenes of our hero being killed, but over a very groovy song:



And from the somewhat ridiculous to the extremely silly, it was while looking at Captain S on Youtube that I found a link to something called Solarnauts, an atrocious looking British pilot that was never made into a full series.   It stars one familiar face - a young Derek Fowlds who later was famous for "Yes Minister".

The model work is spectacularly bad, and as for a British concept of what the well dressed lady astronaut of the future will wear, try this:

I sense that all actors involved were seriously happy that the show was never picked up.   Anyway, here it is:


  

Update:  by an odd coincidence, I read today that the actor who provided the voice of Captain Scarlet has died.  

Rugby union explained

Continuing my series "Pretty obvious things from a disinterested observer's point of view about various codes of sport (and why can't anyone else see these?)".

A game of union was on TV last night, and once again I just could not shake the old verdict I made years ago:   this sport looks exactly like a group of 4 year old boys playing rugby league.  

True, the ball did not stay out of sight under a group of boys blokes for as long as I have noticed in some previous (rare) viewings, but it's still a silly looking game.

That is all.

An interesting suggestion

The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth - NYTimes.com

Tyler Cowen writes:

Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the
world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less
urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars
improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and
destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that
preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work.
Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments
on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or
simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a
nation’s longer-run prospects.

Here's the last few paragraphs:

There is a more optimistic read to all this than may first appear. Arguably
the contemporary world is trading some growth in material living
standards for peace — a relative paucity of war deaths and injuries,
even with a kind of associated laziness.

We can prefer higher rates of economic growth and progress, even while
recognizing that recent G.D.P. figures do not adequately measure all of
the gains we have been enjoying. In addition to more peace, we also have
a cleaner environment (along most but not all dimensions), more leisure
time and a higher degree of social tolerance for minorities and
formerly persecuted groups. Our more peaceful and — yes — more
slacker-oriented world is in fact better than our economic measures
acknowledge.

Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war
deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something
our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are
whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace
is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.

 Spotting a large, alien spaceship in the outer parts of the solar system, heading towards Earth, may give a good replacement sense of purpose.

Soccer explained

It has a very low scoring rate, making it a boring game to watch.

That billions of people can still nonetheless get excited about it tells us something about humans, but I don't know what.

That is all.

Ratgrets, I've had a few...

Been forgetting to post about this rather intriguing study that indicates rats suffer from regret. 

That is all.

A man who thinks like me

Could the demand for affordable housing be solved by going back to tents? - Architecture - Arts and Entertainment - The Independent

In a Culture Show special, Tents: The Beginning of Architecture, to be broadcast next week on BBC2, Tom Dyckhoff wonders whether tents could be a solution to today's housing crisis. The
presenter seems to think that tents – or at least more comfortable, more modern, and bigger versions – might be an option if we can't build enough flats and houses. Maybe one of architecture's oldest forms could have a life past festival season?

Cool.   My vision of a yurt led economic recovery of Australia might be shared by someone else...
 

ISIS explained

Interesting article from December on the rise of this ISIS group of fanatics currently trying to take over Iraq.