Quotulatiousness

April 26, 2012

Rupert Murdoch: the secret ruler of Britain

Filed under: Britain, Law, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:09

At least, it’s quite clear that most of the chattering classes consider Murdoch to be the arch-manipulator/secret ruler of British life. Brendan O’Neill disagrees:

So there he was, the secret ruler of modern Britain, the dark, rotting heart of the British state, the man who has wielded his ‘extraordinary power’ in order to ‘manipulate officialdom’ and extend his influence over ‘politics, the media and the police’. I hope you weren’t fooled by Rupert Murdoch’s diminutive stature or his octogenarian demeanour as he appeared before the Leveson Inquiry yesterday, or his denials about using his ‘political power to get favourable treatment’. Because this small, old newspaper owner is, in fact, the mastermind of a ‘shadowy influence-mart’ who has exercised a ‘malign influence on our politics for the past 30 years’. And now, thanks to Lord Leveson, we finally have an opportunity to ‘banish’ this ‘tyrant’ from our shores and a ‘glorious opportunity for meaningful reform’.

At least, that’s what the Leveson cheerleading squad, the media and celebrity groupies of this inquiry into press ethics, would have us believe. These people are rapidly taking leave of their senses. Their depiction of Rupert Murdoch as the dastardly puppeteer of the British political sphere has crossed the line from rational commentary into David Icke territory, sounding increasingly like a conspiracy theory about secret rulers of the world. And their claim that Murdoch singlehandedly ruined British politics — that he is, in the words of one commentator, the architect of modern Britain’s ‘heartlessness, coarseness and spite’ — speaks to their inability to get to grips with the true causes of political crisis today. Yesterday’s shenanigans made it pretty clear that Murdoch-bashing has become a cheap substitute for grown-up debate.

It is of course true that Murdoch is very influential, as you would expect of a man who, in Britain alone, owns both the newspaper of record (The Times) and the bestselling tabloid (the Sun). But not only do the Murdoch-maulers overestimate how influential he is; more importantly they misunderstand the origins and nature of his influence in modern Britain. It is not that Murdoch set out to create a ‘shadow state’ that could ‘intimidate parliament’, as madly claimed by Labour MP Tom Watson. Rather, it was the increasing alienation of parliament and politicians from the public which boosted Murdoch’s political fortunes, making him the go-to man for ministers and MPs desperate to make a connection with us. In other words, Murdoch didn’t destroy British politics in his scrabble for greater influence — it was the already existing death of British politics, its loss of meaning and purchase, which, by default, made Murdoch influential.

April 21, 2012

Lazy reporting, ignorance, and an agenda to advance: Breivik and computer gaming

Filed under: Gaming, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:05

John Walker points out how many headline writers and reporters seem to be gleefully eager to pin Breivik’s horrific crimes on computer games:

It’s pretty relevant to note much of what the killer said in his opening statements, in which he described secret societies, battles for purity, global conspiracy, and refused to recognise the jurisdiction of the courts. Very few press outlets took his comments at face value nor reported them as fact, strangely enough, but rather pointed out that he was either mad, or trying to appear mad. Now he has told the courts that he played World Of Warcraft for apparently 16 hours a day for a year, and saw Modern Warfare 2 as a police-shooting simulator, and not only is the press at large taking it as fact, but most are twisting Breivik’s words to their own interests. Something has gone very wrong when the horror of his actions is being used to fuel irrelevant agenda.

Yesterday Britain’s Daily Telegraph spoke to Oslo University professor of sociology, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, who believes that one factor that “hasn’t sufficiently been taken into account” was Breivik’s so-called “fascination” with World Of Warcraft. Because Breivik likes order and doesn’t like chaos, erm, something something, it’s gaming’s fault.

[. . .]

Then comes Modern Warfare. This he told the courts he played between November 2010 and February 2011, and described it as “a simple war simulator”. He explained that it was helpful for learning about “aiming systems”, and then described in some detail how he had used the game to practice killing policemen.

So, well, an immediate thought. That’s not what Modern Warfare is, or lets you do. The scripted corridors, nor the multiplayer, offer no useful practice for any such actions, and don’t allow you to simulate practising killing policemen in the manner Breivik describes. There is of course the infamous No Russian airport level, in which you play as an undercover agent with terrorists, and are able to shoot (or not shoot) civilians and policemen, but I think it’s unreasonable to suggest that it offers what Breivik claims. Of course there are many other shooters out that that would let you create your own specific scenarios, attempt to rehearse escaping from armed forces, and so on. But Breivik, in keeping with much else of his rhetoric, doesn’t make much sense here. It is very unfortunate that while a sceptical press has been enjoying picking over his comments about being a member of the Knights Templar, and disproving them, they see no need to question his remarks on using Call Of Duty as a simulator for combating armed police in real life. Instead here it’s assumed he’s being honest and clear-headed. It’s also important to note that Breivik’s memoir makes it clear that he only played MW2 after he had entirely planned the attacks, and it was in no way influential on his decision to kill anyone.

April 18, 2012

A guerilla war is fought in two primary theatres: in the field and in the media

Filed under: History, Media, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:57

A survey of US experiences in guerilla fighting over the years at Strategy Page:

After a decade of fighting Islamic terrorists the U.S. Department of Defense finally realized, at the most senior levels, that the nature of, and progress in this war was being poorly presented to the national leadership and the public. Actually, from the very beginning, there was a reluctance to reveal the masses of data collected and how it was analyzed. Partly this was to prevent the enemy from realizing how much information on terrorist operations it possessed. But another reason was the fact that such a large mass of data could be interpreted many different ways, some of them unfavorable to the United States. Thus there was no “body count” or any other type of measure released by the Department of Defense. Internally, there were various metrics (measurements) presented to senior military and political leadership. The big problem was the use of aggregation (combining a lot of data together that should not have been combined). That was a problem that slowly became obvious over the last decade.

It’s now recognized that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere, like Yemen, Somalia, North Africa and so on) were all somewhat different and that context for each of them was crucial if you were going to analyze them. For example; al Qaeda is more of an idea than a centralized organization. Thus the al Qaeda found in each country, or part of a country, usually has different means and motivations. The war in Iraq was actually several separate wars going on at the same time, and occasionally interacting with other “wars” nearby. Same thing in Afghanistan and places like Somalia. Measuring progress is more accurate if you show the unique trends in all the different wars. Some of them ended early, some escalated and some are still in progress while others evolve into new kinds of conflicts. In other words, the military should use contextual assessment in reporting what is going on with guerilla conflict (or “irregular warfare” in general.)

[. . .]

When the United States first got involved with Vietnam in the late 1950s, there was good reason to believe American assistance would lead to the defeat of the communist guerilla movement in South Vietnam. That was because the communists had not been doing so well with their guerilla wars. In the previous two decades, there had been twelve communist insurgencies, and 75 percent of them had been defeated. These included Greek Civil War (1944-1949), Spanish Republican Insurgency (1944-1952), Iranian Communist Uprising (1945-1946), Philippine Huk War (1946-1954), Madagascan Nationalist Revolt (1947-1949), Korean Partisan War (1948-1953), Sarawak/Sabah “Confrontation” (1960-1966), Malayan Emergency (1948-1960), Kenyan Mau-Mau Rebellion (1952-1955). The communists won in the Cuban Revolution (1956-1958), the First Indochina War (1945-1954) and the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949). The communists went on to lose the guerilla phase of the Second Indochina War (1959-1970). Guerillas make great copy for journalists. You know, the little guy, fighting against impossible odds. What we tend to forget (and the record is quite clear, and easily available), is that these insurgent movements almost always get stamped out. That does not make good copy, and the dismal details of those defeats rarely make it into the mass media, or the popular consciousness.

April 8, 2012

The chronicle of the declining “old media” empires

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:32

Matt Welch explains why, even though more reporting is being done now than ever before in human history, the “old media” portrays the situation in the same way the dinosaurs might view the end of their era:

Imagine for a moment that the hurly-burly history of American retail was chronicled not by reporters and academics but by life-long employees of A&P, a largely forgotten supermarket chain that enjoyed a 75 percent market share as recently as the 1950s. How do you suppose an A&P Organization Man might portray the rise of discount super-retailer Wal-Mart, or organic foods-popularizer Whole Foods, let alone such newfangled Internet ventures as Peapod.com? Life looks a hell of a lot different from the perspective of a dinosaur slowly leaking power than it does to a fickle consumer happily gobbling up innovation wherever it shoots up.

That is largely where we find ourselves in the journalism conversation of 2012, with a dreary roll call of depressive statistics invariably from the behemoth’s point of view: newspaper job losses, ad-spending cutbacks, shuttered bureaus, plummeting stock prices, major-media bankruptcies. Never has there been more journalism produced or consumed, never has it been easier to find or create or curate news items, and yet this moment is being portrayed by self-interested insiders as a tale of decline and despair.

It is no insult to the hard work and good faith of either newspaper reporters or media-beat writers (and I’ve been both) to acknowledge that their conflict of interest in this story far exceeds that of, say, academic researchers who occasionally take corporate money, or politicians who pocket campaign donations from entities they help regulate, to name two perennial targets of newspaper editorial boards. We should not expect anything like impartial analysis from people whose very livelihoods—and those of their close friends—are directly threatened by their subject matter.

This goes a long way toward explaining a persistent media-criticism dissonance that has been puzzling observers since at least the mid-1990s: Successful, established journalism insiders tend to be the most dour about the future of the craft, while marginalized and even unpaid aspirants are almost giddy about what might come next. More kids than ever go to journalism school; more commencement speeches than ever warn graduates that, sadly, there’s no more gold in them thar hills. Consumers are having palpable fun finding, sharing, packaging, supplementing, and dreaming up pieces of editorial content; newsroom veterans are consistently among the most depressed of all modern professionals.

March 28, 2012

Science and journalism, two flavours that have uneven results when mixed together

Filed under: Environment, Health, Media, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:54

James Randerson on the intersection between science and popular journalism:

Just to be clear, we are talking here about standard news stories based on a single journal paper — the science hack’s bread and butter. For me, the answer is straightforward. Of course a good science/health/environment journalist should read the paper if possible. It is the record of what the scientists actually did and what the peer reviewers have allowed them to claim (peer review is very far from perfect but it is at least some check on researchers boosting their conclusions).

Without seeing the paper you are at the mercy of press-release hype from overenthusiastic press officers or, worse, from the researchers themselves. Of course science journalists won’t have the expertise to spot some flaws, but they can get a sense of whether the methodology is robust — particularly for health-related papers.

In any case, very often the press release does not include all the information you will need for a story, and the paper can contain some hidden gems. Frequently the press release misses the real story.

The tricky question is whether you go ahead and write the story if you can’t get hold of the paper. I think a blanket ban would be going too far. Sometimes, it is not possible to get hold of the research paper in the time available.

I’m not scientifically trained, so the odd time when I post something with a link to a recent scientific paper, you can be pretty sure that I’ve only read the summary — but I’m not being paid to present my readers with scientific information. I’d expect professional science journalists to at least do a bit more due diligence than I expect bloggers to do…

March 26, 2012

Stephen Gordon: financial headlines you’ll never see

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:00

In the Globe & Mail Economy Lab column, Stephen Gordon points out the monotonous message we get from our financial news sources every time a foreign company buys a Canadian firm:

Here is a headline that will never, ever run over a foreign takeover story: “Foreign buyers taken to cleaners by savvy Canadian investors.”

The reason you will never see that sort of a headline is that all stories in which foreigners buy Canadian-owned assets are based on the assumption that foreign investors are — yet again! — snapping up Canadian-owned assets on the cheap, and why oh why won’t Ottawa intervene and put a stop to it? The notion that Canadian investors are fully capable of assessing the value of their holdings and that they might earn a tidy profit in selling them never seems to make an appearance in these accounts.

Debating “granny tax” and generational warfare

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government, Health, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:38

In the Guardian, Patrick Collinson looks at the media’s response to the British government’s recent “granny tax” moves:

In case you missed every newspaper front page (the Telegraph went for “Granny tax hits 5m pensioners”, the Daily Mail said “Osborne picks the pockets of pensioners”, but Metro won with “Gran theft auto”), at issue is the decision to freeze and then scrap the higher personal allowances for people over 65.

But let’s first ask why people in retirement are awarded better income tax breaks than those who are working? There was a fascinating analysis in the Financial Times last weekend of the economically “jinxed generation” — and they’re not pensioners. It found that today’s adults in their 20s will be the first generation who won’t be better off than their parents. What’s more, the disposable income of people in their 60s is now higher than people in their 20s, for the first time ever. We’ve created a society where the non-working retired earn more than working people — and that’s before adding up the largely unearned wealth tied up in the houses of those in their 60s.

It wasn’t like this when the welfare state started. Before the second world war, retirement was for most people short and miserable. It was entirely right that as a rich society we found a way to improve the lot of the elderly with better state pensions and free healthcare. Along the way, we added better personal allowances, fuel payments, free bus passes, free TV licences, free prescriptions and so on.

March 24, 2012

Rex Murphy on Islamophobia

Filed under: Media, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:50

He’s against coining new “-phobia” memes:

It is far too late to protest what I see as the false coinage of “phobia” words — not that I will let that stop me.

We have (from some time back) francophobia; somewhat more recently, homophobia; and, most volatile and recent of them all, Islamophobia. All of these, in one form or other, are founded on a loose analogy with the genuine phobias — arachnophobia, agoraphobia or hydrophobia, for example, which speak to a morbid and irrational dread of — in the case of these terms — spiders, open spaces and water. But the new phobia words are more terms of art, than clinical descriptions.

Islamophobia is meant to be a blanket term that refers to unthinking hostility to Islam and Muslims. There is no doubt that such prejudice exists. But there is no doubt, too, that cries of “Islamophobia” are issued to suffocate argument, to deflect or deter analysis of some behaviour that is factually related to Islam. There is no doubt either that some Muslims have acted as terrorists, either singly, or in association with various Islamist groups. To point this out is not a phobia, but a simple respect for reality.

[. . .]

Bin Laden’s declared purpose, his “war” on the West, and his overt linkage of his cause with a fundamentalist version of Islam, are the primary drivers of our non-phobic — which is to say, very rational — fear of, and hostility to, manifestations of Islamic fanaticism. When post-9/11 successor attacks took place, taking off from Bin Laden’s example or direction — such as in Madrid, London or Bali — it was not Islamophobia when some immediately assumed these were al Qaeda, or Islamist-inspired. It was just a natural first response, the acknowledgement of a pattern. In most cases, that first response proved correct. In fewer cases, such as Norway, it was not.

We should be clear on such matters. The too-energetic effort to fall outside the shadow of prejudice has served to distort the response of investigators. Looking for everybody else except the most “likely” suspects first, wastes time and resources. In France, for instance, the yearning for the villain to be a “far-right neo-Nazi” clouded the initial response of police. Blindness as a form of social or ethnic courtesy is never good policy.

March 15, 2012

Abusing the homeless … by giving them money to perform tasks

Filed under: Media, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:13

Chris Selley skewers the bien-pensant journalists who got so upset that some homeless people were given an opportunity to earn money:

Now, you might think homeless people, development directors at homeless shelters and anti-homelessness activists would know a thing or two about what homeless people need and want, and you would be correct. You might therefore think this was a good-news story, and you would be wrong. BBH took heavy fire from keyboard warriors who think the program was just ghastly.

Here in Canada, Maclean’s technology correspondent Jesse Brown, perhaps testing out a new hyperbole app, led the pack. He called it a “disgusting marketing ploy,” an “epic milestone in the history of bad taste,” “grotesque” and “degrading — literally.” Yes, literally.

“Yes, [the employee] keeps the money. No, that doesn’t make it okay,” he sniffed, presumably enjoying easy access to many multiples of $50 as he typed.

[. . .]

There ought to be an official term for this phenomenon, wherein well-meaning, bien-pensant carer/sharers freak out on behalf of a group of (homeless, poor, oppressed, disaster-afflicted) people, only to be told by those people to shut their goddamn pie holes. We saw it after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, when people criticized Royal Caribbean cruise lines for continuing to sail to its private beaches in the country, where it employs locals and, for a time, donated the proceeds of its visits to relief efforts. Such bad taste!

March 14, 2012

The red meat of medical churnalism

Filed under: Food, Health, Media, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:38

Rob Lyons on the latest red meat scare from the medical press, who “churn out scary-sounding studies about steak and bacon faster than McDonald’s produces Big Macs”.

It’s official, it seems: red meat — particularly processed red meat — will be the death of you. ‘Small quantities of processed meat such as bacon, sausages or salami can increase the likelihood of dying early by a fifth, researchers from Harvard School of Medicine found. Eating steak increases the risk of early death by 12 per cent’, declared the Daily Telegraph yesterday. BBC1 Breakfast’s resident GP, Dr Rosemary Leonard, told millions of viewers the link was ‘very, very clear’.

[. . .]

The topline results were that, after adjustment for major lifestyle and dietary risk factors, there was a 13 per cent increase in the risk of death for each portion of red meat eaten per day and a 20 per cent increase in mortality for each portion of processed meat consumed per day. This is not the first study to suggest that eating meat is bad for you. But that might simply mean that this study shares many of the same problems that all the other studies have had.

However, before we get to the problems, here’s some brighter news. At the end of the study, the members of the two groups studied had, on average, reached the grand old age of 75. How many had died along the way? Less than 20 per cent. Those who started the study were four times more likely than not to reach 75. So, whatever your eating habits when it comes to eating red meat or processed meat, the most important lesson is that most people live a long time these days. ‘Early death’ is very much a relative concept.

The authors claim that 9.3 per cent of deaths in men and 7.6 per cent of deaths in women could be avoided by eating little or no red meat. To put that into some back-of-an-envelope statistical perspective: multiplying that 9.3 per cent by the 20 per cent who actually died shows that about 1.8 per cent of red-meat eaters would die by the time they were 75 because of their meat-eating habit. Even if that claim were absolutely accurate (and even the authors call it an estimate), would you really give up your favourite foods for decades on the slim possibility of an extra year or two of old age?

March 13, 2012

El Neil on Limbaugh’s “show of weakness”

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:01

L. Neil Smith weighs in on the Rush Limbaugh “apology” to Sandra Fluke and the media feeding frenzy it perpetuated:

Please understand that I am not a conservative of any kind. As a more or less lifelong libertarian, and a proud, battle-scarred (and, I like to think, highly decorated) veteran of America’s 1960s Sexual Revolution (which actually began in the 1920s), I’m very much in favor of individuals finding joy, and generally doing whatever they desire with their own lives. Love (or whatever floats your boat) is such a rare commodity that they ought to revel in it whenever they can. What I am vehemently opposed to, however, is making other people pay for it.

But then, despite the basic truth behind what he’d said about her, Limbaugh decided — far more likely it was decided for him — to apologize.

John Wayne became famous, among other things, for declaring, in several of his movies, “Never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.” Mark Harmon has said it, too, in the role of Leroy Jethro Gibbs of NCIS. And there’s a basic, Darwinistic truth in what they’ve both said, as illustrated by what happened next to the Formerly Fat Flumpus.

When his ideological enemies began screaming about what Limbaugh had said, if he’d told them to stick it where the sun don’t shine and break it off, their screaming would have subsided and finished with a whimper.

But the minute he apologized, the minute he rolled over on his back, sticking his paws in the air and exposing his belly, they fell on him like wolves. With the ladies and gentlemen of the evening who constitute our news media cheering them along, public figures called for removing him from the air the way they had Don Imus — and Imus, true to the sad, broken figure of Winston Smith he had become, joined in.

“Do it to Limbaugh!”

Meanwhile animals and barbarians of all kinds showered Limbaugh with death threats and other worst-wishes, and the Internet writhed like a pit of snakes with vile, anonymous accusations of every kind against him. Clearly free speech in this country is supposed to be reserved to the creatures who call themselves “progressives” because they’ve dirtied the word “liberal” to the point it can’t be used any more.

March 6, 2012

Nick Gillespie: Short memories and shorter tempers

Filed under: Humour, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:34

A very funny trip down a memory lane not quite in the same dimension as we currently occupy:

With Super Tuesday upon us like a plague of 24-hour locusts that threaten not just the GOP but the very fabric of the nation itself (a wool and Lycra blend explicitly forbidden in Leviticus, btw) which is being stripped more bare than the bride by her bachelors even or the dessert bar near closing time at a Golden Corral buffet, it’s as good a time as any to wonder:

Was it just four years ago that The New York Times was running stories about the deleterious effects of a long, drawn-out, bruising fight for the Democratic presidential nod?

[. . .]

Good god, how does the nation ever survive the primary process? Isn’t it a scientific fact that nobody has ever won the presidency after having gone through a difficult nominating race? Obama was forced to visit all 57 states (by his count) multiple times until he kept fainting on stage from exhaustion like that guy from the Black Crowes who used to be famous.

After all, hasn’t a poll just scientifically proved that the GOP is hurting its “brand” (you know: Depends-wearing, anti-government crackers who only leave their houses on the Medicare-purchased personalized motor scooters to cruise to the mailbox to pick up their Social Security checks and oil-company dividend checks) by not immediately appointing the candidate most likely to get smoked by Obama in November?

The only subgroup of Americans who have weaker memories than high school seniors (99 percent of whom contend that the War of 1812 was fought between the Crips and the Bloods over the last Cabbage Patch doll between 1983-1986) are political journalists, many of whom, you may recall, took Donald Trump and Herman Cain seriously.

March 1, 2012

The plight of Britain under austerity

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:03

Vuk Vukovic wonders why the notion that the British government has imposed austerity still has any traction in the media:

The UK had the one of the strongest fiscal stimuli (relative to the size of its economy) in the world as a response to the crisis, during the premiership of Gordon Brown. The result was making the situation much worse with a rising public debt and the third highest budget deficit in the world behind only Greece and Egypt in 2011, and behind Greece and Iceland in 2010. This comparison is striking since these countries were doing much worse than the UK at the time and were countries with highly unstable economies – Iceland before the restructuring, Greece whenever, and Egypt after a year-long revolution which saw the downfall of a dictator and an inability to consolidate ever since.

So the argument of Keynesians is that this wasn’t enough, and that Britain is crippled with austerity. The media is supporting the former view as well. Britain is running the hardest austerity policy in Europe and this is resulting in terrible growth performance and the inability to start up the recovery. However, Britain is far from austerity. Yes, some painful cuts have been made, tuitions were rising, unions were hit, wages in the public sector are stagnant, a lot of public sector workers have been laid off, but what does the government do with this saved up money? It “invests” in credit easing, housing subsidies, the youth contract and infrastructural projects. On the other hand, it’s guiding private sector investment and centrally planning credit, it announces an increase of the minimum wage, abolishing of the default retirement age, more regulation after claiming to remove regulation, the 50p tax rate and so on. None of these policies are policies aimed at growth. They are all part of a Keynesian response to the crisis.

After all, if one would just observe the spending data for the UK, it is still increasing, both relatively (as percent of GDP) and absolutely.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” To call a situation where government’s share of GDP is rising as “austerity” requires a brand new definition for the word.

February 27, 2012

David Friedman: The boy who cried wolf

Filed under: Media, Science — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:15

Although it mentions the global warming debate, it’s really more about being skeptical in general:

A number of political commenters have compared the current Republican contestants unfavorably with Barry Goldwater. The current crop, we are told, are religious nutcases, or possibly pretending to be. Goldwater, on the other hand, was an intelligent and reasonable man, even if not on the right side of every issue.

I have been reading my parents’ autobiography, and recently got to the Goldwater campaign. Their description fits my memory. What we were being told then — by people almost none of whom could have done a competent job of explaining Goldwater’s positions or the arguments for them — was that he was a dangerous madman. There was even a piece by some large number of psychiatrists, none of whom had ever examined the candidate, explaining how crazy he was. And the TV ad with the little girl, the countdown, and the mushroom cloud.

[. . .]

I am not competent to judge the climate science behind global warming, but I am suspicious of orthodoxies pushed relentlessly in the popular media, orthodoxies that claim that everyone competent agrees on an urgent problem which requires drastic action immediately if not sooner. I remember when we were being assured that it was simply a scientific fact that overpopulation was the cause of poverty and a near term threat to our own well being, if not survival. Also when we were assured that the only way to get the poor countries of the world up to our level was central planning, if possible supported by generous foreign aid.

When I see news headlines about global warming having shrunk horses to the size of cats, along with a picture comparing a cat sized dog to a modern Morgan — you have to read down a bit to discover that the ancestral horses shrank to the size of cats from the size of dogs, from 12 pounds to 8 1/2 pounds, and spent tens of thousands of years doing it — I suspect that what I am seeing is driven at least as much by what people want other people to believe as by the evidence for believing it.

February 24, 2012

Argentina, like China, publishes unreliable economic statistics

Filed under: Americas, Economics, Government, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:27

The Economist has finally decided to stop using “official” economic statistics from Argentina:

Imagine a world without statistics. Governments would fumble in the dark, investors would waste money and electorates would struggle to hold their political leaders to account. This is why The Economist publishes more than 1,000 figures each week, on matters such as output, prices and jobs, from a host of countries. We cannot be sure that all these figures are trustworthy. Statistical offices vary in their technical sophistication and ability to resist political pressure. China’s numbers, for example, can be dodgy; Greece underreported its deficit, with disastrous consequences. But on the whole government statisticians arrive at their figures in good faith.

There is one glaring exception. Since 2007 Argentina’s government has published inflation figures that almost nobody believes. These show prices as having risen by between 5% and 11% a year. Independent economists, provincial statistical offices and surveys of inflation expectations have all put the rate at more than double the official number. The government has often granted unions pay rises of that order.

What seems to have started as a desire to avoid bad headlines in a country with a history of hyperinflation has led to the debasement of INDEC, once one of Latin America’s best statistical offices. Its premises are now plastered with posters supporting the president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Independent-minded staff were replaced by self-described “Cristinistas”. In an extraordinary abuse of power by a democratic government, independent economists have been forced to stop publishing their own estimates of inflation by fines and threats of prosecution. Misreported prices have cheated holders of inflation-linked bonds out of billions of dollars.

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