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Last Notes

2026-05-28 07:33:52 CEST

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The managerial staff should be sacked for not understanding that their job is to support the academic staff in carrying out the core functions of the university (research and teaching).

2026-05-06 08:32:12 CEST

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In Australia there's clear evidence that on aver for-profit childcare centres provide lower quality, less safe services. A simple explanation is th e profit margin is achieved through reducing staff costs. Methods include paying minimum rates and gaming staffing regulations.
https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2025/03/19/what-is-going-wrong-with-childcare-in-australia.html

2026-05-03 11:06:03 CEST

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One Australian state used to have a very good prisoner release program. It covered a range of services including housing and support to get a job. It reduced parol offences, reorienting etc, and saved the government money. Despite this it was canned.

2026-04-22 09:08:22 CEST

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By your logic France and Britain, or Denmark and Sweden, or ... could also impose shipping tolls. Apart from a war, the same logic applies.

2026-04-07 10:31:23 CEST

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My view, which may be simplistic, is that the primary purpose of the finance sector is a facilitator and enabler of production and trade of goods and services. As such, like lawyers and accountants, they are an essential and necessary overhead if the economy.
Taking this view, an important question is at what point do they move from being an efficient and effective service, to being a fat inefficient overhead that is having a negative effect on the economy.

2026-04-06 23:50:28 CEST

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While the US isn't a member of the ICC, it has similar legislative offences, it also criminalises the following of illegal orders. These means post Trump many in the US military could face criminal prosecution.

2026-04-02 07:42:26 CEST

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Trump would like people to think he is transactional. But he's not, as he regularly reneges on the deal.

2026-03-29 10:28:21 CEST

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In the 1980s there was the growing ideology that government regulation was bad, including regulation of the traditional forms of monopolies.
This ideology deliberately ignored the negative impacts on individuals and broader society.
Then we were hit by a new form of monopoly that emerged in the digital world. In this form, the cost has high product development costs, next to 0 marginal costs for new customers, and high exit costs for customers to move to a new product. Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft are all examples. These monopolies only die when a new paradigm comes along.

2026-02-18 08:28:46 CET

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I have belief (untested) that MBAs train people in how to manage costs, but not on how to invest. This results in lack of investment in equipment and staff training. Symptoms of this is include reduced productivity growth through lack of investment in capital and staff. An indicator is industry lobbiests bleating for migration of skilled staff instead of training.

2026-02-17 23:48:40 CET

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I wonder how many voters who supported right wing parties in part due to fears of "cancel culture" are noticing that its the right wing parties are cancelling their critics. Its time people on the centre and the left point out who is doing the cancelling and censoring their critics.

2026-01-31 23:41:28 CET

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My personal belief is university and similar student fees have more negative outcomes than positive. The underlying, fundamentally flawed, assumption of fees is each individual student benefits more from education than broader society.

2026-01-16 09:12:12 CET

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I hope the ban works, but in the long term I have my doubts. I think an essential small step, that no government is taking, is to classify services that use algorithms to fill feeds as publishers. Thus holding companies account for their services.

2026-01-07 08:07:14 CET

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I found some quotes attributed to Nehru on fascist methods, both definitely describe Trump's:
Fascism has the unique distinction of having no fixed principles, no ideology, no philosophy, only a definite technique of violence and terrorism.
The fascist method consists in creating a popular mass movement, with some slogans which appeal to the crowd, meant for the protection of the owning capitalist class.

2026-01-01 08:04:26 CET

One way to get a visa approved in Australia is to report vulnerabilities in the visa system
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/cyber-expert-gets-rare-australian-visa-by-hacking-the-government-20260101-p5nr28.html

2025-12-26 09:36:20 CET

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I think its a lot more complicated. I think one outcome of the factors is reduced quality.

2025-12-17 09:19:30 CET

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Agreed, Netanyahu's deliberate and consistent conflation of all criticism of Israel as anti-semetic increases risks to all Jews

2025-12-14 10:32:49 CET

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It's very hard to properly measure a complex thing with one metric. GDP (or GDP per capita) is a quantity metric, not quality. A simple example is accident resulting in serious injury (and high medical costs) has a higher impact on GDP than an accident resulting in death.

2025-12-09 03:58:57 CET

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While no voting system is perfect, I don't understand strong defence of FPTP voting systems. It has the unique ability to elect the most unpopular candidate, or more precisely, elect a candidate with over 50% of voters not wanting them.

2025-12-09 02:43:42 CET

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And, political organisations often follow grassroots movements (at the risk of twisting them). They are a form of external pressure that, if politicians notice, are either adopted or squashed.

2025-12-09 02:25:32 CET

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I can see your frustration, sadly the other factors to create change is having a strategy (often hidden), resilience, and time.

2025-12-09 01:31:49 CET

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I think a more nuanced is better. I agree being blindly loyal is not a good idea. But, if one has strong views, joining a party to actively try and shape their policies and candidates (which requires compromises) can be as productive, as intelligent criticism from the outside. A political party facing both internal and external pressures will change faster.

2025-12-06 09:30:07 CET

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He designed a brick clad building in Sydney, an amazing design and challenge for the brickies.
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/671/668/679/062/802/original/44603336e07838a5.jpg

2025-12-01 08:29:52 CET

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So would reducing administrivia workload of teachers and providing better support for managing behavioural problems, thus allowing teachers to spend more time actually teaching.

2025-12-01 08:15:39 CET

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There are some brilliant examples of countries with good patient data sets successfully making it available for research with full protection of patient privacy. One common theme of these examples is access to the data is through a government organisation, not a private business. Privatisation of access reduces public good and privacy constraints over profit. This includes limiting access of the data to potential competitors.
Treasury control creates a risk of priotising revenue over broader society benefits which could include improved public health, and potentially improved productivity.

2025-11-28 08:17:39 CET

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Reducing emissions of individual ships is a good idea. But, in the short term the most pragmatic solution to reducing emissions of shipping is to drive hard to electrify land transport, because a significant proportion of international shipping is shipping oil, petrol and diesel.

2025-10-19 11:26:48 CEST

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From Australia's experience, raising the taxes on gambling will make it harder for the government to minimise the harm.

2025-10-17 07:59:42 CEST

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It's one indicator of the global growing inequality of income and opportunity.

2025-10-17 07:56:09 CEST

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None of the above. Like many technologies, AI can be used for good and evil. The overhyped LLMs are predominantly
dangerous. But, there are other AI services quietly transforming an industry.

2025-09-30 23:48:36 CEST

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No, its their problem for not considering their potential customers.
Throughout my career, I was involved in the roll-out of new technologies to end users and the general public. Despite the myths, age was only a small predictor of takeup. One simple example is that we found grandmothers were early adopters of video calls, connecting with grandchildren was a powerful motivator.

2025-09-28 11:29:11 CEST

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I wonder if they're bots?

2025-08-27 12:20:32 CEST

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aka ethnic cleansing

2025-08-27 08:34:30 CEST

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Yep, my similar take is that many of the far-right supporters have real issues and concerns.
The far-right listen, respond, and offer simplistic and fraudulent solutions.
Others, such as mainstream US Democrats, don't listen and respond by proposing tweaks of existing policies that created the problem. What they need to do is to listen and respond with well communicated policies that address the fundamental causes.

2025-08-24 11:38:04 CEST

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I thought the book would work better as a film than a novel.

2025-08-24 09:58:55 CEST

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I'm always dubious of tax comparisons, as almost all comparisons assume countries are similar in their approaches. Eg In the US, you have to include state and local government taxes, and countries differ in how they describe specific benefits taxes, ie unemployment and health insurance etc.

2025-08-04 08:19:49 CEST

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I think the right to buy can be made to work for both the social housing provider, the buyer, and even the building industry.
The problem, worldwide, is the social housing providers haven't been reinvesting the money into new social housing, ie using it as an opportunity to refresh their housing stock.
Sadly, in most cases, I think governments used right to buy policies as a cover to get out of social housing.

2025-07-31 13:12:02 CEST

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Microsoft and Meta have extremely low marginal costs for each customer, a high product development cost, and a very high cost for customers to migrate to a new product. This makes them a natural monopoly.

2025-07-31 06:09:23 CEST

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In a war zone, the army in control of a piece of territory is responsible for the welfare of non combatants. There, the IDF is responsible.

2025-07-27 09:39:49 CEST

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In other countries, particularly the US, there's a link between poor sex education in schools and/or poor access to contraception with high rates of abortion.

2025-07-09 11:10:45 CEST

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A question to the Israeli government- what would you do if this was done to your citizens.
A question for supporters of the Israeli government- why do you support these crimes.

2025-06-04 11:04:36 CEST

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There's plenty of evidence that increased sentences do not add any deterrence.

2025-05-18 23:25:20 CEST

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Just a quick look at recent history suggests a likely consequence of Israeli action will be more extreme groups.

2025-04-20 04:32:39 CEST

https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/114/367/935/783/143/327/original/7db1adb815a8c62b.jpeg

2025-04-19 10:52:13 CEST

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Supply chains and specialision are complex issues.
High levels of competition and the low cost and low profit margins of global shipping is a contributory factor. This has resulted in worker exploitation and increased environmental risks.
Global supply chains have also relied upon and probably created geographic concentration of key capabilities. For instance, many high precision medical instruments are made in a small area in Germany and Switzerland. This requires a skilled workforce. Also, most of the world's Christmas decorations come from a small region in China.
Tax regimes also play a part. At one stage Japan had, and possibly still does, a small wholesale tax for goods sold between companies. This encouraged vertically integrated businesses.

2025-04-15 23:27:37 CEST

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Essentially, what the US Constitution establishes is an elected 18th-century monarchy. However, like most constitutions, much is unwritten. Previous President's generally respected the balance between courts, Congress, and King. Trump isn't.
I think this risk is common across many presidential systems. Ireland is probably an exception, as their president is more of a figure head.

2025-04-15 00:53:07 CEST

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Can the lawyers lose their licence for knowingly lodging false information?

2025-04-08 23:29:04 CEST

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Many administrators never get that their job is to help the core functions of an organisation to operate efficiently, not the other way round.
Modern complex and conflicting reporting and record keeping requirements require innovative admin staff.

2025-03-19 03:06:14 CET

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Interesting, years ago I came across literacy study that found one simple predictor of a child's literacy levels was the number of books in the home.

2025-01-17 23:14:20 CET

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Your question also raises the question of how goodwill is calculated and reported. I can't recall an instance of a company's annual report commenting on goodwill, even after their reputation tanked through their own actions.

2025-01-17 09:24:51 CET

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One approach, which is used in Australia for some offences, is to make directors personally liable for corporate offences.

2025-01-03 09:09:39 CET

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If the UK trends are following the US, the middle classes are being hollowed out with increases in the working poor, those in poverty, and the wealth of the ultra rich.
A couple of consequences include: 1) an increase in social unrest, 2) decrease in overall quality of life, 3) and little incentive for businesses to invest in productivity improvements as it's easier to push wages down.
Essentially, the national pie isn't increasing as fast as the wealth growth of the ultra rich, so their extra share has got to come from somewhere.

2024-12-21 09:54:44 CET

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Not just British society, it's a global problem. One approach, which may not apply to the Royal Mail, is to require Directors and senior execs to show why they shouldn't be held responsible if the company is convicted.
There was recent case in Australia where a company exec was found he couldn't hide his responsibility for unsociable conduct by his company. Sadly this was a rare case

2024-12-20 21:44:27 CET

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https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/113/687/092/039/830/239/original/c983d8e31f645cf9.webp

2024-12-13 22:49:26 CET

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I'm wondering when it's will be time to call the court of Trump a kleptocracy

2024-11-25 23:02:40 CET

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This podcast, by Andrew Denton, gives a thoughtful discussion of the issues. It's from an Australian perspective, but he examines other countries, common playbooks against assisted dying, and palliative care.
https://www.gogentleaustralia.org.au/better_off_dead_s1

2024-10-14 08:04:31 CEST

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It's plausible and verifiable, that the collective cost of the delays are resulting higher government costs, ie a short term injection of funding may result in long-term savings.
Savings would come from reduced costs for detaining people when bail is refused; reduced fruitless court appearances by barristers, judges, police etc; reduced societal costs for people found not guilty etc

2024-10-06 10:10:03 CEST

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From my experience in working with IT infrastructure, I came to the conclusion that infrastructure should be invisible to its customersand users. This requires good management with appropriate investment.

2024-09-16 00:36:12 CEST

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Interesting history of the problem
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/rearvision/water-privatisation-in-england-and-why-it-s-failed/104238770

2024-09-14 14:45:13 CEST

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Revolution 9 is by far the worst. I don't know many people who have heard Good Night on the White Album, because they stopped listening at Revolution 9.

2024-08-19 08:01:48 CEST

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Sustained profiteering requires an economic imbalance such as constrained supply or monopolistic markets.
Covid created supply issues. We also have near monopolies in many goods and services. In the tech sector we have the problem that there are very high costs for new entrants and low to 0 marginal costs for existing players.
Economists should understand this. The difficulty is to develop and implement regulations that identify and correct price gouging.
There also has to be an acceptance that many tech services may be better managed as natural monopolies.

2024-08-15 09:11:42 CEST

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I wouldn't trust anyone who says a policy will benefit all. Even if there is an overall benefit, there will always be people who will be negatively impacted by change. They need to be identified and assisted with the change. There is also a risk of an increase in inequality.
Both of the negatives above creates the risk of social disquiet or unrest. The rise populist politicians and riots are examples of this.

2024-08-09 07:50:21 CEST

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If you are discussing this with a Christian, quote Mathew 7:12. Their reaction will be interesting.