Howard Reed | Software engineering is the new theology

The contest for the most arcane discipline is not likely to be resolved anytime soon but the one that is merely avoiding the title by sheer number of adherents – software engineering¹ – is indirectly pursuing a more consequential contest.

This here is to argue that the parallels between programmers and the priesthood² are becoming increasingly obvious. Let us review in order of trivialness:

• ‘Computer says no’ is now a cliche³ but the seeming arbitrary nature of how to negotiate some user interfaces requires levels of knowledge as meandering as Leviticus
• Hackers know – like all good Jesuits – that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission
• Filling out a web form increasingly demands enough information to seem like confession, and then submitting requires one to recite the incantation “I am not a robot”⁴
• There is a very thin ray of light between dogma and data validation – but the latter can be enforced far more effectively. No need for an inquisition when your expression will never be accepted in the first place
• Production and adherence to voguish concepts and terms of art at a rate that would make an economist blush – often to the detriment of the end user who has no understanding of Latin statelessness
• A class whose status has confirmed on them the ability to get away with far more than the parishioners would, and then be canonised for it – be it Uber willfully ignoring the law in the quest for growth or a profusion of AI startups with complete disdain for copyright⁵ – just call it a crusade disruption

Finally however – software engineering may do in practice what theology could only every do in theory. With the internet connecting a ubiquitous array of sensors bordering on omniscience, whose data is fed into a great intelligence that may with time become all powerful. The new priesthood will bring forth a new God.

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Critique accepted until responses are longer than 10 words (see the ReadMe).

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1. Welcome to the footnotes; here there will be a number of trite asides. Is it truly an engineering discipline? Especially the way in which Margaret Hamilton may have defined it? The AGC presented a far more challenging optimisation problem as it imposed many technical constraints on its designers, far more than the average modern programmer has to suffer. ↩︎
2. Always alliterate. ↩︎
3. It has been two decades in fact. ↩︎
4. One erroneously selected ‘not motorbike’ square away from being denied entry – your soul considered unworthy ↩︎
5. Something something glass houses ↩︎

Howard Reed | How to elect a President

It has been near to twenty-four years since the closest Presidential election in American history – one eventually decided by someone called Chad from memory – and in the meantime no particular tending to the clunking machine of American democracy has been attempted. At least however their system lends some air of stability. In the same intervening period in Australia our governing parties have managed to replace more Prime Ministers and their cabinets in the party room than the electorate at large has at elections.

The system for selection of an executive for the governing of the country is as varied as the countries themselves and fraught with peculiarities that lead to occasional incompetence. To simplify this variance into a simple spectrum for the purposes of a short and ill-informed essay, at one end the American model with a ‘popularly elected’ leader with the power to appoint a cabinet solely at their discretion or the Westminster model with an unelected leader forced to appoint a cabinet from a relatively shallow pool of candidates. Only a cursory review of the executives produced on both sides of the Pacific in the last two decades will prompt one to consider the effectiveness of either selection mechanism.

Ignoring that electoral systems are not ‘designed’ so much as ‘evolved’, I propose a novel system that in this example I will apply to the problem of selecting a President but can be readily adapted to any situation where a large group of people need to select one person – from local parliamentary representatives to the poor technician who has to enter the damaged reactor to shut it down. It combines the inherent strength of the American system in forming a competent cabinet but adapts the electoral college to be more representative and presenting different barriers through which the eventual winner must pass.

The selection process proceeds along these basic lines:

1. 5 eligible voters attend a meeting and nominate a representative form amongst their number
2. That representative attends the next meeting with 4 other representatives nominated at similar meetings, and they nominate a representative at that round in a similar fashion
3. The process iterates until there is less than ten people. At this point, the whole group nominates a leader

For a voting population of in America’s case of 250 million would require approximately 12 rounds to arrive at a result (if my memory of logarithms is correct). Each round being scheduled at a leisurely once a week would still mean the process is over and done in less than a third of the time of the current Presidential primary calendar.

Some caveats:

• Voting by all eligible citizens in the initial round is compulsory – this isn’t a stretch for Australians, five people is enough for a barbecue anyway so still good chance of democracy sausage and if your interest in politics doesn’t exceed this low threshold just ensure that you don’t get nominated
• The selected candidate selects their cabinet in the fashion that is done in the US – this is just a better system of selecting an executive for a country
• You cannot vote for yourself in any round – in the event that two people have the ambition to go forward to the next round the other three decide who it is. When there is three, one will be eliminated in the first vote and then will have the casting vote in the second.

As for the technical process, I believe that the collection of tokens from the other attendees by the nominated candidates at each round would suffice to ensure the validity of each stage. These could be mailed out to each eligible citizen by the electoral commission, even just a QR code that combines the electoral details of the citizen, a passcode known only to them and a ‘salt’ string known to the electoral commission combined as a hash. The winning candidate would then register these tokens with the commission.

In the event that a particular meeting of 5 people were unable to come to a conclusion, they could disband their group and reform groups using other members from meetings in a similar situation. In the event that a group of five cannot be formed as the number of electors in that round is not divisible by 5 then a smaller group would be permitted.

By providing multiple separate stages for the candidate to demonstrate their suitability for the job often to those antagonistic to their case particularly in later rounds, the eventual President would have had to demonstrate many qualities of leadership – adept negotiator, effective communicator and competent manager. By having 12 rounds, the average citizen can also modulate their direct involvement in the electoral process rather than being forced to choose between donkey voting, reluctant numbering or joining a political party.

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As responses to date have all been on the abbreviated end of the spectrum, critique on this post will be left open until there’s actually some site traffic.

Howard Reed | There was no ‘escape from history’ for Australia’s first inhabitants and that is why the Voice is necessary

The Referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice is a question I’ve been grappling with less and less reference to the wider debate. I sense that both sides have cogent points to make but these have been distorted by social media algorithm, mass media editorial bias and quite likely active measures on behalf of foreign governments. A resort to defining the contest in terms of race has been any easy fallback for the more extreme ends of both the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’ case.

There is certainly division between the Aboriginal people and the remainder of the population, but given the multicultural nature of this country to view the merits of the Voice in racial terms risks invoking a confused wider conversation as to under or over-representation of particular groups. This also seems to happen with regularity each time there is discussion over immigration; particularly when a crisis prompts a wave of refugees from a particular country.

On reflection, the most xenophobic views on these topics expressed in discussions I’ve had personally or absorbed through the media over the years seemed to be from relatively recent immigrants. Whilst on the surface this seems to be a perplexing failure of empathy, the actual motivations point to the continent sized blind-spot in the construction of our national myth.

In teasing out this intolerance to further immigration, the historical ‘baggage’ that those still yet to get on the plane might bring with them is viewed as a burden we cannot tolerate. It is this ‘escape from history’ that acts as a powerful advertisement for our country and it pervades our national conversation in ways we rarely appreciate. History is something that happens elsewhere – our involvement with it is expeditionary in nature – it doesn’t happen here, not in the ‘lucky country’.

We see it in our small regional towns – the most consequential event for the community being etched on stone memorials to the fallen on faraway French battlefields. We see it in the collective dismissal of soccer prior to the A-League when it was viewed as little more than a proxy for Eastern European strife. It has informed our hopes for the Federation since its beginning: Sir Henry Parkes proposing that the nationhood the Americans paid for in blood could be invoked in Australia in peace. It informs our fears; the distant threat of invasion looms over our politics because it would be the end of this comforting illusion.

To discover some time after arrival (by boat, plane or birth) that for a now small minority of the population that the modern Australia does not represent an escape from history but rather a near-apocalyptic collision with it invokes a powerful moment of cognitive dissonance. Our response at worst is to deny it – combine it with imperial entitlement you get terra nullius, combine it with social Darwinism you get ‘smoothing the dying man’s pillow’, combine it with progressive social policy and well-meaning bureaucracy you get ‘Closing the Gap’.

This is not an argument that the latter should be abandoned but to delude ourselves that the process of reconciliation can continue without recognition the Aboriginal people do not participate in our national conversation in the way everyone else does is folly. A forum (or perhaps fora more appropriately) is required so that Aboriginal people can express their aspirations without them being distorted through a national myth that provides no comfort to the majority of them and we need to signal that we understand that this is the case.

A constitutionally enshrined Voice does this. Is the proposal imperfect? Certainly but the hard task of reconciliation remains and in the shadow of the Referendum’s failure may be one made much harder.

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As this was the eve of the Referendum, all contributions were published.

Anonymous ominously writes:

History is written by the visitors.

Meanwhile – over in long-form land – Matt Delarue honed his original submission:

Mr Read’s frame of reference is far too narrow – only liberal democracy and the rule of law offer any chance to spring the Locke and truly “escape from history”. 

Human history is a story of near-ceaseless conflict and violence – of tribe vs tribe, us vs them and the haves vs the have-nots. For untold generations we’ve murdered our enemies, oppressed the nonbelievers, crushed dissent and subjected members of even our own tribe to a range of tyrannical governments from god-worship to feudalism, military junta, dictatorship, fascism and worse.

The idea that all people might actually be of equal value is a tiny speck of light at the end of this very long and very dark tunnel of history. It’s a precious and fragile flame that must be nurtured and protected against the winds of division.

We might take the idea of equality for granted, but the default state of humanity is one of Hobbesian violence, greed, mistrust and division. Only in recent centuries have we taken our first steps up the hill towards that shining city where all are equal before the law.

Our precarious foothold on those slippery slopes depends on a scrupulously even-handed legal system, reinforced by institutions and customs that emphasise our common humanity rather than remind us of our differences.

In Australia, the constitution underpins our federal legal system and many of our institutions. To import a “Voice” that explicitly preferences one group of Australians over others is deeply misguided. It’s short-sighted at best and downright dangerous at worst. 

Our country is lucky, but also delicately balanced. As Mr Read notes, one of Australia’s greatest strengths is its diversity and acceptance of people from all over the world – irrespective of their race, religion or political opinions. The country functions because our legal system and institutions are deliberately blind to those characteristics and consider all citizens to be equal.

The Voice would upset that balance, by giving one group a privilege not afforded to others – ie: a constitutionally-enshrined megaphone, pointed at the highest levels of government.

The actual direct impact of the Voice probably won’t be significant – at first. But it’s unlikely to ever be repealed, ensuring inequality is woven into the fabric of Australia for generations to come. Furthermore, once the dam of equality is breached even once (albeit with the purest of intentions), demands from other groups will surely come pouring in.

What then?

We risk being pulled back into the blood-soaked miasma of our history.

Vote with your eyes open – our vigilance must be eternal. 

ps: Yes, I’m aware of s25 and s51(xxvi). Yes, I think they should be repealed.

Indigo Montoya elects to add some colour:

Less a critique and more some additional points:

This whole vote thing is a mess! What we’re being asked to vote on has been totally lost in the noise.

To bring it back to first principles: the constitution is a statement of principles about the country. It was made by a bunch of white British men 120 years ago. Indigenous people were given no involvement and no say in outlining those principles for the country. 

What we are being asked here is to include the principle that Aboriginal people were here first and that we’ll listen to them about issues that affect them. It’s pretty simple.

Or put another way: the majority (no one ever agrees on everything) of Aboriginal people are saying: “so we didn’t get to contribute to the constitution the first time around, we’ve been a bit [screwed] by it, we’ve got a small request that you add this one little bit into the constitution because we think it might help us”. I can’t believe we wouldn’t be generous and grant them that request. 

All the stuff about how it will work. That’s a legislative process. For example, the constitution has a couple of lines on taxes. It’s not going to tell us how we will be taxed.

All that stuff about it will give Indigenous people advantage that everyone else doesn’t have. That’s also BS. The fact is the constitution allows laws to be made based on race. Whilst I’m sure it’s been well meaning, there have been many laws made based on race and which only apply to Indigenous Australians. Not the rest of us! So if anything, they need more say because there is so much stuff that over-effects them!

If someone does give you a good reason for No – tell me. I’m yet to hear a good or coherent argument whilst not to add these additional principles to the constitution. But I’m all ears!

Anony Möuse wrote in via a back-channel to say:

I find it increasingly hard to digest that citizens of all races, are asked to vote for special powers to be given to one race. Asking this question has only hurt the nation and will make indigenous people feel more oppressed.

The government could’ve formed, funded and empowered an indigenous task-force to implement the recommendations of countless inquiry’s, commissions, and reports on the many [poor] outcomes for indigenous people. The advice is all there, they just gotta dust that well-known work off and do a good job of it (e.g. Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody). This seems like the minimum expectation of a functioning government (the art is in stacking the chairs of the enquiries?).

Left-leaning ALP aside, I really like Albo and hope he doesn’t die on that weird hill he is defending hard. He is by far the best of that bunch.

Now that I think of it, the [blasted] Greens started all of this [hokum] but seem to be flying under the radar (outside the Blak Greens). They [screw] up everything they are involved with.

Previously, Matt Delarue had written to say he remains unconvinced:

Nah. The proposal to establish a Voice is fundamentally wrong – it will permanently (well, technically not, but how many successful referenda have been reversed?!) divide our country into “Aboriginal people” and “non-Aboriginal people”.

Rather than uniting Australians, this proposal explicitly divides us into separate (and unequal) groups. Equality under the law is the foundation of our successful society, and the Voice undermines that.

Beyond this simple fact, implementing a Voice is also likely to encourage the growth of identity politics, deepen divisions along the woke/non-woke axis, and harden the attitudes of (the mercifully few) true racists in our country – exactly the opposite of what its many well-intentioned supporters hope for.

If the government of the day wants to consider the opinions of a particular group of Australians, it has a myriad of options (not least the ballot box). The constitution is a limited, apolitical rule book for defining the powers of government – not a tool for addressing specific policy issues (or establishing a glorified focus group). It’s strength lies in its brevity and neutrality. To start messing around with that is a very slippery slope indeed.

Due to a technical error, Alice Firedstone’s contribution was missed before the deadline (possibly as the AI that runs WordPress remembers what they did to site traffic last time he posted). In any case, some further reading for you all:

In reading your piece, I reflected on another piece I’d read recently (https://theconversation.com/i-cant-argue-away-the-shame-frontier-violence-and-family-history-converge-in-david-marrs-harrowing-and-important-new-book-215050) discussing a broader [publication] I haven’t read – David Marr’s new book on his family’s history in the native police and colonial massacres.

It perhaps hints at some of the points you’ve made about our silencing of history but also, more sadly, seems to make clear that, in at least some instances, that was a deliberate choice. Issues were known, reported, discussed but then forgotten. The collective ‘we’ made a choice to make its escape.

The one point I will make on broader Voice arguments I shall do through concise imagery (if that’s within the rules) –https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-29ae7b0679acb4d9103cdb1835714e79-pjlq

Finally Henrietta Featherstone reminds us to consider the origins of this proposal – The Uluru Statement from the Heart – re-printed below (sourced from here):

We, gathered at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, coming from all points of the southern sky, make this statement from the heart:

Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs. This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according to the common law from ‘time immemorial’, and according to science more than 60,000 years ago.

This sovereignty is spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.

How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears from world history in merely the last two hundred years?

With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood.

Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.

These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.

We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.

We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.

Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.

We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.

In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.

Alice Fiverston | Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is not a concept album

As a long-time reader of this glorious blog I can say with certainty there has been a lot of somewhat considered opinion and discussion. But if we, as a community, are to rise in the eyes of the world and become an unpassable place of pointed philosophising we need to get more petty (partial alliteration, nice – Ed).

So, welcome to me winning an argument that I drunkenly had with a guy who’s name I can’t remember at a house party approximately 10 years ago. 

The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Is NOT a concept album. Hear that, you paisley-shirted yuppie?! It’s not a concept album.  

Now, in deciding to write this ‘contribution to humanity’ I did quickly google the album and it’s status as a concept and it does seem this has been argued and justified in many other forums, probably by much more informed people, and significantly better authors. But I haven’t read any of that so you can now fully enjoy my ill-considered thoughts. I should probably also admit I don’t remember any of the arguments he made in favour of his position so the following will have all the logical precision of a primal scream. 

Definitions are a good place to start. So, what is a concept album? I don’t know, but probably one that has some kind of central theme on which everything is based.  

Now that we’ve got some Ph.D level of definitional detail, what’s the concept of this album? The title track kicks off with The Beatles loudly declaring they are actually Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and that they’re hear to play for us. There’s then a reprise at the end where the band says goodbye. From that, I guess we could go with we’re listening to the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band rather than The Beatles. But how does that happen through the rest of the album?  It doesn’t. It’s like Season 8 Game of Thrones level of forgotten and it’s the usual Beatles shenanigans with no discernible relationship to the theme. 

We get ditty’s about friendship, psychedelic weirdness, some rockishness on self-improvement, home repairs, narrative about teenage runaways, old-timey circus chicanery, more psychedelic weirdness, love and ageing whimsy, creeping on the meter maid, endless routine, and then the band says goodbye. Not exactly consistent heartbreak and loneliness ala Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours.  

It can’t even be argued there’s a concept to the musical genre given that is also all over the place. 

So no lyrical concept, no musical concept, just 4 people in costumes on a cover with a strange album title. 

“But it’s a concept album for I wear bookish glasses and go to uni and sleep with a night light’ I hear you say in my mind. To which I say, well compare it to the albums either side of it, Revolver and Magical Mystery Tour. Both are thematically and musically all over the place, just like Sgt Pepper’s. Though, though at least Magical Mystery Tour sound-tracked a movie so that gives it one greater argument for having some form of concept then Sgt. Pepper’s. Maybe Magical Mystery Tour is the secret Beatles concept album??? 

The keen eyed amongst you will have noticed there’s a track on the album which I have not yet mentioned, A Day in the Life, and that is because I am extremely clever and it fully proves my point. Because, you see, how can it be The Beatles as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band still singing to us after they’ve already said goodbye? AHA! QED! OMG! ETC.! 

So basically, I’m right because I think so. Fun album, not a concept album, I hope you were really hungover the day after the party and lost your keys.

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The first iteration of Week to Critique did not survive this post from the 12th of August 2020. It remains here published as a warning to others.

Matt Delarue | Improving the crude signal that is the retail price of fuel

Few retail products are subject to such pricing volatility as fuel – the petrol and diesel that we purchase at the servo. In the past 3 months alone, unleaded petrol has ranged from 87cpl to 148cpl in Brisbane, and fluctuations of up to 30% are common in a single week. Prices can differ widely between service stations, even within the same brand.

At time of writing, service stations in metro Brisbane were offering 1 litre of unleaded at anywhere from 107c (Costco, Northlakes) up to 135c (BP, Wynnum). The spread within the BP chain was a whopping 26c – from 109c at various BP servos on the south-side to 135c at Wynnum and Cleveland. That’s a nearly 25% variance, between franchises that share a common terminal-gate price and nearly identical delivery costs.

Now, this is not necessarily a problem – it’s just the invisible hand of the market at work – and various websites allow price comparisons. Obviously there are many complex factors which inform the pump price – the price of oil, refining costs, storage costs, transport costs, fluctuations in currency exchange rates, right down to the franchisee’s assessment of what his local competitors are doing, and what the hyper-local market will stand on any given day.

In theory, it’s a balanced and competitive market: sellers are free to set prices, and buyers have a wide choice of fuel outlets. In practice, you take what’s on offer, with no possibility of negotiation or control over prices (unless you’re a trucking company, or bulk fuel trader)

But could this market be improved? Could price volatility be reduced, and competition further improved, giving consumers more certainty and lower average prices?

My proposal (for your ill-informed criticism and abuse) is a secondary futures market for retail fuel. Such a market already exists for every conceivable bulk commodity (including oil and wholesale petrol of course), where it serves an important function in spreading risk and reducing volatility. So why not extend this to retail fuel?

Essentially, customers would be able to purchase an option to take a certain volume of petrol, at a certain price, at a future date. This option could be in the form of a redeemable voucher, or (more likely) a unique PIN or QR code. Importantly, the options would be infinitely divisible, and transferrable at a price to be determined by the market. The trading platform would be a smart-phone app, perhaps similar to an online gambling or share-trading service.

For example:

1. The advertised price at XYZ brand servos is 120cpl.
2. I purchase an option to take 100 litres at 125cpl, open for 7 days.
3. Tomorrow, the advertised price increases to 130cpl.
4. I could either:
   • Fill up my car, using my option for 125cpl;
   • Sell my option (or the unused portion) on the app, at a price between 125cpl and 130cpl – making a small profit, and saving the purchaser a few cpl off the advertised price; or
   • Forget, and let the option expire.

The price of options would initially be set by the fuel company, and the spread from the advertised price would depend on volume, the expiry date and the fuel company’s forecasting of future costs. To extend the above example, you might be able to purchase options for:

• 100 litres at 125cpl, open for 7 days
• 100 litres at 130cpl, open for 1 month
• 1,000 litres at 125cpl, open for 3 days
• 10,000 litres at 128cpl, open for 6 months
• 1 million litres at 130cpl, open for 6 months

I imagine this would create a tertiary market for options, as a few traders with deep pockets make bulk purchases and then sell off portions to retail customers, who then trade those portions.

For big trucking and construction companies, who spend millions of dollars on fuel each week, would end up employing full-time fuel traders to forecast and manipulate the market to their advantage.

Small retail traders (ie: mums and dads filling up the Tiguan) would probably see it as akin to online gambling – I can imagine Karen on the train home, getting an alert that her order for 2500 litres at 137.52cpl has been partially filled… she immediately swipes up on the app to trigger her preset preference to on-sell 2000 litres at 139.00cpl, realising a $25 profit to pay for a bottle of sav-blanc with dinner.

Some further considerations for discussion:

• Would this actually have any impact on prices? As the initial issuer of the options, the fuel company would also have visibility on their expiry dates and could set option prices accordingly. There would have to be a reasonably large percentage of daily volume hedged to make it worthwhile for the fuel company to lower prices to meet the options market.

• The owner of the trading platform would take a very small percentage of each trade. There’s a big incentive for a third-party to set up such a system, but why would the fuel companies opt in?

• Because there is no requirement to actually take physical delivery of the fuel, it is highly likely that some options (or part thereof) will simply expire without the fuel ever being taken. This volume would then be sold on the “spot market”, ie: the advertised price at the servo. Maybe that’s sufficient incentive for the fuel companies to get involved?

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First, the author adds:

I initially approached this idea from the perspective of the app developer/market maker, and perhaps that’s where it’s greatest potential lies – as a quasi-gambling app that gives consumers an illusion of choice, while funneling profits to the market maker and third party advertisers. Thinking about it, fuel prices probably wouldn’t change.

Next, some sniping from the wings:

Yes, what the world has been waiting for is yet another way to trade value that doesn’t really exist and make smart and lazy people wealthy on the back of the less privileged! No, sir. Just ride your bike to work and fuel up in a small town on the weekend – they can use the extra business.

Probably only taken up by a small number of overall numbers given financial risks involved and knowledge required… one of the more practical things here. So I vote this author be banned for bringing this place into ridicule!

Finally, Rhea Worded failed to poke holes in the proposal but muses:

Who would have the incentive to implement it?

Wholesale pricing of fuel in Australia is fairly well internationalised now. In 2010 we were already importing 83% of our crude oil so there’s a good chance that the fuel in you put in your tank this morning about 10 weeks ago was under Saudi sand. At that point only half our fuel was locally refined so it was a coin toss as to whether or not 5 weeks after that it was in an Asian oil refinery. As such, Australia is always at the mercy of the international parity price for fuel which follows crude oil prices reasonably closely.

Contrary to popular belief, fuel retailing is actually a low-margin business. The most profitable part of the oil supply chain is getting out of the ground* – the ‘downstream’ parts of refining and marketing have historically been very competitive in Australia. This leads to some interesting market strategies namely follow the price quickly up and slowly down or value add by retailing other products alongside fuel. This is one of the reasons supermarket and convenience chains have got so heavily into fuel retailing as they can increase margins on product lines they already have. In fact, the supermarket chains have realised that they can used fuel as a loss leader to gain customer loyalty – whilst customers won’t drive down the road to save 4c they will attend a particular supermarket that is to do the same – and by doing so their market share has increased to 50% and continues to rise.

Supermarkets aren’t likely to be the one’s to encourage more rational fuel buying behaviour. Volatility is what the existing refiner/marketing organisations exploit to make any money so would be hesitant to allow their consumers to take advantage of it – though the possibility of ‘free’ money for sale of options that expire without being taken could pique their interest. Possibly the independents which make up 20% of the market could use it as a point of difference but have less capital to risk in setting such a system.

Seeing RACQ seem to be prepared to risk their brand on banking, I see no reason why they couldn’t be the one’s to implement this. They already spread the risks of breakdown amongst the driving public, why not the financial rollercoaster of the weekly fuel tank?

*The most extreme example is the Ghawar oil field which produces crude at about $4/bbl – hence why the House of Saud is estimated to be worth $100 billion.

Alice Fiverston | Container recycling schemes should go back to the future

Countless calendars cast aside as capricious and conceited caitiff Coca-Cola corrupted the citizenry to conserve and covet its continued capital count. My English teacher always told me to have a strong opening. Though I was probably also told, “There is a limit to the value of alliteration, Alice.”

Anyway, South Australia got in early with a ‘container deposit scheme’ whilst Thomo and Lillee were listening to disco but then the rest engaged in a bullshit argument for yonkies about the merits of an expanded or nationwide scheme with Coke and others lobbying hard against it. Wasn’t until 2012 that any other State switched to Pepsi and started doling out the dosh.

But like disco being dead much has changed since 1977 and ‘Cash for Cans’ is no longer an environmental achievement and is a significant barrier to more effective and radical action being taken in the world of consumer sustainability. I believe the solution lies in even more nostalgic times, back when your Grands bumped uglies to Ella Fitzgerald, and also in a re-examination of a three word slogan.

‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.’ Like ‘Stop the Boats,’ ‘Axe the Tax,’ and ‘Jobs and Growth’ the order of the original three words has an important purpose. Best environmental outcomes are achieved where overall material usage is reduced, silver goes to reusing, and recycling is the guy whom no one remembers standing next to the Olympic civil rights protesters.

All a container deposit scheme does is support recycling which in 1977 probably needed all the help it can get, kind of like our cricket team after Thomo and Lillee retired. But in the today time household recycling has been universally accepted for quite a while. Many other public spaces also provide recycling bins. Which leads me to suspect that the expanded schemes are no longer improving environmental outcomes, i.e. shit would’ve gotten recycled anyway.

So what’s the solution? What’s my point? Why is it taking me so long to get to it? I’m sure as hell not advocating for Reducing because I like my choccy milks and I like me beers, usually in the order opposite to which I’ve listed them here as choccy milk is a criminally underrated hangover cure. But please drink responsibly.

Which leaves us with reusing. Taking a beer bottle and going through 17 steps to end up with another beer bottle seems rather redundant to me (basically South Park’s ‘cash for gold’ episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uhiUnavxTk). Bottles used to be reused probably until companies did some maths and realised they could simply externalise some ‘costs’ as the consumer’s rubbish and move to single use. So let’s move back to a closed system. Beer gets made, gets put in bottle, I buy bottle with costs for reverse distribution/deposit scheme built in, I drink beer, I return bottles to store and get my additional cost back. Empties then get collected and returned as part of the distribution system ready to again have their insides blessed by beer.

YTBAQ (Yet To Be Asked Questions)

Does this idea have gaping flaws? To which I say, isn’t that the point of this blog? 

What about cans? Yeah, you can’t refill a can. But the trend towards cans could possibly be reduced as cost of reusing bottles may be less.

What about smaller brewers? Yeah, there’s probably issues with barriers to entry though if they’re stocked in bottle shops they’ve still got some sort of distribution system which could possibly be adapted. People can also take empties straight to the brewery as the whole thing requires standardised bottles (probably should’ve mentioned that earlier).

What about things that aren’t beer? Well, yeah, I’ve gotten a bit captured by the beer thing in attacking the scheme as a whole but you got to follow your heart.

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Per tradition, some tasty appetisers…

…my suggestion which many economists would also like: tax the things you don’t want at the source (burning fossil fuels, smelting new aluminium, making new plastic bags, chopping down trees, discharging pollution in the river, etc.) and let the market figure out the most efficient way to respond to that. This would encourage all 3 rhyming words in the environmental “re* triad”: bottle re-use schemes could make sense without even needing to legislate for it.

Why not do away with bottles altogether? Breweries could install outlets (or “teats”) in their external walls, so thirsty patrons could simply slip on a hygienic single-use sheath, have a drink and carry on down the street. You could (but probably shouldn’t) market it as “slip, suck, spew”.

Finally, Rhea Worded responds…

Turning to one of the great things that Keating had something to do with apart from our now universal love of antique French clocks and Mahler, the Productivity Commission has looked into container deposit schemes (CDS) in 1991 and again in 2006. Attempting to synthesise the fairly partisan research presented by both sides of the CDS debate they concluded that container deposit schemes are only the most efficient option economically speaking if the cost of illegal disposal is high – read containing toxic substances. They found that kerbside recycling and general anti-litter programs were more effective in diverting bottles to reuse and recycling.

As usual, governments gubernational or otherwise indulged these inquiries by ignoring their findings and hence I find myself agreeing with Alice’s appraisal of the current situation. That said, can we safely say that because we aren’t doing something anymore that the good old days were better? Why did we give up on reusing bottles and start smashing them up just to reform them into an identical shape?

On page 211 of the PC’s report there is a fascinating table that shows that South Australia, already good at what you propose – that is reuse of refillable bottles – got even better in the period between the CDS introduction in 1976 and the late ‘80s. The reason for this is that the CDS used to discriminate between refillable and single-use bottles being 15c and 4c back in each case.

Since then though things went pear-shaped. First was a High Court decision being Castlemaine Tooheys Ltd vs. The State of South Australia which ruled this distinction unconstitutional removing the even-at-that-point small incentive to preference refillable containers. 

Second beverage manufacturers figured out that gently carrying ‘heavy-weight’ bottles back to the factory and washing them is somehow more expensive (to them) than having others smash light-weight bottles up, melt them down and re-sell the bottles back to them at the price of a virgin bottle.

Thirdly, marketing geniuses figured out that people buy more stuff if it changes shape occasionally and looks different to the competitors’ offering leading to the end of any hope of standardisation of bottle shapes across beverage producers that ‘your’ scheme would probably require to be economic.

Basically the level of regulation required would probably equal that of what we do to discourage cigarette use but without the obvious public benefits. A country like Japan is capable of doing this but not our laconic brown land. This is not a hill even those that breathlessly argued for the CDS scheme in the first place seem to be prepared to die on.

To distract you from lament regarding the parlous state of national decision-making consider this point. All the above applies only to beer bottles; the invention of PET and the growth of the aluminium industry have meant that for the remainder of the beverage industry, single-use containers are a no-brainer – at least in the current regulatory environment.

Arkady Galt | A scalable solution to the housing and sustainability crisis

In the apartment above us, I hear incessant scratching which I hope is a dog but sometimes picture to be a massive rat crawling through the walls. To our side there are the sounds of late night urination that are so loud and prolonged I can only assume the neighbours are keeping a horse as an indoor pet and are training it for a long distance precision peeing.

These are some of the trivial trials of apartment living, but are they the real reason that most Australians retreat to a freestanding home protected by a moat of grass? Urban planning books actually say that living in densely packed cities is better for our quality of life, better for our health, better for the environment, better for the economy, and just generally better. So what is going on with us – why are we so apparently irrational (at least communally) when it comes to housing? There are 3 main issues that dent the cause for dense living: strata, space and supply.

Strata committees, with the unpredictable power they wield, undermine the sense of independence and security we crave regarding our shelter. A cohort of zealous residents could approve unnecessary works on your building and increase strata fees beyond what you budgeted for, or pass by-laws on just about anything. Committees controlled by a developer or absentee landlord could withhold important improvements and maintenance. Finally, strata tile robs home owners of the power to pursue their own dreams, tastes and projects on their “land” and consequently deprives the community of the diversity in streetscape and housing options that such freedoms yields. There is a clearly a fundamental problem with the strata title system as the way of governing dense living environments.

If the uncertainties of the strata committee were dealt with though, you still have to deal with the rat in the wall, the peeing horse and the tiny tiled balcony that struggles to grow even a weed – what you really need is space, or at least the sense of it. Space for privacy, space for a connection to nature, space to bring up a family and let the kids play on the grass. This desire for space is deeply engrained in the Australian psyche and it needs to be incorporated into denser housing arrangements if they are to replace the detached house as the desired home for families. In a classic chicken and egg problem, apartments are mostly thought of as a stepping stone for young people or a ghetto for the poor, so that is the type of design that developers build. There is also nothing pushing against the natural economic motivation to build as many apartments as possible, as cheaply as possible, on a given block of land. With this need for space remains unmet in our classic apartment housing market, suburbia on the distant urban fringe continues growing like mold on a Petri dish, out-competing the other uses for our most fertile land and accessible wilderness along Australia’s eastern seaboard.

Why has the market not yielded supply of innovative denser housing options if they are so good? Alongside the strata and space issues, regulations and approvals are a killer of innovation today. A developer can lodge a single development approval for a massive subdivision of 500 identical homes on the urban fringe, but would have to fight out the approval of each building individually if it were going to build those 500 dwellings in a number of apartment blocks within the existing city. Apartment buildings are also more complex to build and for councils to assess and it can be a lottery as to what comments and obstacles the local residents will throw up in its path. In the cut throat time critical world of real estate development, it is just much more profitable to build either suburbia on the fringe or dehumanising concrete box apartments designed for the lowest common denominator.

What we need is a new housing framework that:

1. Gives people the same sense of independence and security as freehold land but allows for residences on top of others and hassle-free governance of the shared assets
2. Yields denser housing designs that are also spacious and desirable for families
3. Can be rapidly scaled to deliver lots of quality housing stock affordably and quickly

The Idea

If it is conceded that individual choices and markets are the best way to deliver results, then the ideal solution is to change rules governing the housing market and then interfere as little as possible on building design details. To change the market so that the above outcomes are better met, the idea of volumetric freehold combines a new type of “freehold land” ownership title with some simple and easily assessed rules for how those volumes are arranged in space on a site and how the shared structural parts (kept to an absolute minimum) are built and governed.

In additional to the normal lot boundaries of earth, fences, council building height limits and street-fronts, volumetric freehold lots could also be bounded by structural platforms below and above and one or more shared walls of prescribed quality (for excellent noise insulation) with nominated doorway locations. Specifications for attaching to the “structural framework” and utility connection points designed for easy access would also be part of the title. Just as with normal freehold title, owners would have the freedom to build whatever they want within the volume of space they own. In practicality, the initial developer of the block may “pre-fill” the lots with residences but these should be customised and assembled off-site then efficiently inserted into the framework in a non-destructive way to allow for future replacement or modification.

Shared assets like the structural platforms and walls, standardised lift and fire stair columns and minimal communal paths and gardens would be designed by regulation for long-term resilience and minimal maintenance. Management of these assets could be entirely handed over to council after initial construction in the same way as streets and parks in new subdivisions are, or perhaps transitioned to an ultra-minimalist and constrained type of strata management with externally prescribed “rates” and performance expectations.

The plan as described so far would deal with the strata and supply issues and dense but flexible housing quickly and affordably, but the spaciousness and “quality of life” issues would require some more regulations about how the volumetric lots are sized and located on a site. For example:

• For a given area of land, a certain number of lots of a certain variety of sizes must be allocated to achieve moderate density targets and cater for various households in the community (ie, young singles or couples, small families, large families, retirees or disabled, etc.)
• Access to sunlight for all lots and % of perimeter boundaries in each lot that are open to the air
• Privacy for all lots (such as by prescribing obstacles to lines of sight between lots)
• % of space within lots that must be open-air/green space
• % of lots that must have ground level gardens, or % of overall land in development that must be green

The important thing about these regulations is that they do not dictate any stylistic details of what people build in their lot and they are easily assessed, potentially via a website for instant approval.

In summary, this new volumetric freehold option and the accompanying construction techniques, regulations and governance approaches would make dense and affordable housing for the average Australia much more desirable and faster to deploy at scale. I concede that it would still not be as desirable as a massive freehold block on the shores of Sydney Harbour, but this entire concept is in in the context of our current suburban sprawl approach being destructive to ourselves and the environment and hence not a valid (or ethical) option going forward. This proposal unlocks the potential of emerging technologies like automated home construction and transport as a service to usher in a new chapter of Australian urban life that captures the benefits of density withouts its drawbacks.

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First, some choice morsels from other responses…

An attractive proposal from a philosophical and technical point of view. The idea of customisable ‘cassettes’ that readily slip into positions within a supporting structure is superbly simple. A vision of construction drones lifting one’s entire home into position in the ten minutes before you move in is an exciting one.

The question of space would not necessarily be resolved… The economic incentives towards smaller and smaller allotments would still exist in the longer term. For councils to maximise rates and the developers or even title holders to maximise return would not be removed inherently in this scheme. As usual strong governance measures (which is to say good law and good enforcement) are not substituted by any particular philosophical underpinning.

…I don’t believe high density living is better. I would much rather live in a tent where I could fire a potato from a rudimentary spud gun in any direction without it leaving the property than a suburban 1/4 acre leave alone even a finely appointed apartment. I think the freedom longed for (or perhaps a conflict-less existence) is impossible to achieve in any context or under any governance structure where you are in near-constant contact with your neighbours.

Your vision for modular, semi-communal 21st-Century HDB (see: Singapore) is admirable, but it doesn’t solve for the main issue: neighbours would still be [expletive deleted]

Finally Anonymous writes…

Arkady makes a commendable effort to attempt to resolve a large-scale societal issue, with some practical issues that may limit take-up and therefore effectiveness of the proposal. 

Urban sprawl and overpopulation is a major issue, causing (among other things) environmental, economic, and societal issues. The primary issue is that geographic space is of course limited. This drives up land prices, as demand overcomes supply, and pushes urban sprawl outwards, causing environmental issues. Creative town planning solutions are therefore needed to overcome this issue.  

In my view, Arkady’s proposal has a lot of merit. It would, in principle, allow people a greater degree of freedom and therefore provide a greater incentive to purchase units for long-term living or investment. However, there are some practical, economic, legal, aesthetic and societal issues that would need to be overcome. 

Practically, I question the engineerability of the proposed lots. As I understand it, Arkady is proposing large, multi-level towers designed like divided bookshelves, such that each lot does not have internal partitions (to allow customisation). Many internal walls are structural and engineering away all internal partitions may not be feasible (but I will leave that to the engineers).

Economically, this may drive down supply by de-incentivising developers from constructing apartment blocks. This is because developers currently (generally) secure favourable finance conditions for these developments by pre-selling units off the plan. They do so by attracting buyers with high-end fit outs and other incentives (such as free appliances). If they were instead required to build a standardised tower with basic fit-outs, it would likely reduce the ability of developers to incentivise buyers off the plan. 

Legally, you would be asking a lot of the Council. Recently, we have seen a lot of defect issues with multi-level residential towers (e.g. Opal Tower in Sydney). This is caused by developers constructing these developments using the cheapest builder (which then naturally uses the cheapest work methods and materials). Where these issues come to light (as they inevitably do in these developments), there is often a bunfight between the developer, builder, architect, certifier, subcontractors and various consultants as to whose responsibility the defect is. Passing all ownership of structural elements to the Council would require the Council to (likely) manage a high volume of litigation. 

Aesthetically, I believe that allowing entirely bespoke spaces within the same apartment block may result in a cacophony of customisation; a hodgepodge of habitats akin to the ‘stacks’ in the Spielberg film, Ready Player One. Personally, I am not sure how I would feel if I decorated my apartment in tasteful muted pastels, only to discover my neighbour preferred a bright pink colour scheme. There is a reason that strata schemes currently require approval to carry out changes affecting the outside look of an apartment block. 

Societally, recent events may lessen the demand for unit living. There have been countless articles written recently about how a post-COVID world might look, but one thing that seems for sure is that the attractiveness of living in densely packed areas will be diminished. There’s nothing like being trapped in an apartment for months on end to make you realise their limitations. Further, the obvious increase in remote working reduces the need for densely packed urban spaces close to the CBD. 

Ultimately, I believe that Arkady’s proposal is a step in the right direction. As a species, we cannot continue expanding our population without finding ways to live more closely and with less of an impact (unless of course we move off-world, which seems a while away). Otherwise, we will only accelerate the decline of the natural world and towards a (seemingly inevitable) future of climate change catastrophe and resource scarcity.

Howard Reed | Turning any footpath or surface into a baby’s dreamscape

One of the more pressing matters for humanity at large is how to reduce the number of frustrated parents being produced due to tired yet non-compliant babies. A favoured tactic for some is the long walk in the pram however based on my statistically insiginificant survey of five children, a determining factor in the success of this tactic appears to be agitation of the pram by an uneven surface.

In the case of one outlier, turbulence approaching that witnessed on particularly bad plane flights does the trick (though this level of movement is flirting with the threshold of involvement by child services). However, on average from this casual study, the motion provided by running the pram along a gravel driveway or tactile paving appears to provide the best result.

Whilst tactile paving may be becoming more prevalent, the occasional litigation of local councils has tended to push urban surfaces towards the smooth, less-gravelly end of the spectrum. If however the pram itself offered the capability to produce agitation at will then problem solvered.

To this end, I propose modifying the standard pram wheel as follows (reference to Figure 1 will also aid the reader in understanding the mechanism).

When attempting to get the infant to sleep, the user would be able to deploy rubber feet on each of the pram’s wheels that change the shape of each wheel to induce mild shaking a la tactile paving. When not required the user could then turn the centre pivot to stow the rubber feet returning the wheels’ shape to normal.

The number of feet in this instance is four however any number of feet to a point could be placed on a wheel using this mechanism. In configurations with more feet, a locking mechanism to hold the feet in the desired position may not even be needed. In this case in the deployed position the user could over-rotate (compared to the figure) to a stop and the weight of the pram on the lowest foot would hold the mechanism on the stop and in the correct position. When stowed, the weight of the pram would prevent the feet from deploying.

This would open a world of possibility for the desperate parent as even indoor surfaces and small spaces become suitable for putting the child to sleep. The night now free of parents being dragged about by a stroller could return to its rightful owner – the urban speleologist.

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First, as is quickly becoming tradition, some choice lines…

Clearly this wasn’t written by a parent. No parent would have time to produce such a detailed engineering sketch.

Did the author consider noting ‘patent pending’ on this article the Shark Tank judges ask?

Finally, “Your Thinking Needs to be Squared” writes…

I don’t blame you, but rather your tertiary education as your solution is a clear-cut case of over-engineering. Why re-invent the wheel? (pun intended).

As with most things in life, the simplest solution is often the best. So I’m scratching my head as to why any parent would complicate his/her/their already hectic life with something with so many extra moving parts that it would no doubt fail.

My solution is a simple one: square wheels.

The Mythbusters already proved they work (please see link below), making it obvious that anything else is simply an exercise in engineering frivolity and wasteful design.

And before you argue how your design allows you to easily switch between round and bumpy, I can once again offer a simple solution. Buy two prams – one with square wheels and one with round wheels.

Howard Reed | Balancing private communication with public interest

Although I confess to being an early internet fanboy with delusions that it would solve all the world’s problems, it is now easy to observe that deploying a technology that allows everyone to connect immediately to everyone else in not necessarily an unalloyed good.

The proliferation of hardware and software that allows surveillance on a scale never before seen – Edward Snowden’s “turnkey tyranny” – is no doubt a threat to liberalism. Naturally, Silicon Valley has sought technical solutions to this problem (rather than pursue political or legal routes) and in doing so have prompted the wide-scale deployment of end-to-end encryption (E2E) technologies designed to ameliorate people’s concerns over said surveillance.

Never in the history of telecommunications has it been technically impossible to eavesdrop on the electronic communication of the public. This combined with the ability to essentially broadcast messages to possibly hundreds of people with great ease is creating some interesting side-effects – some of which the creators of this technology are beginning to acknowledge.

As our use of this technology becomes more sophisticated my principal fear is that as it stands E2E services provides the ability for a group of people – geographically separated – to co-ordinate their activity completely in secret. This is already well recognised by intelligence agencies and militaries the world over when it comes to terrorist groups (for the military a loss of advantage in the monopoly they once held on this technology).

Terrorism aside, any form of organised criminal activity becomes a lot easier using these technologies. Any form of political organising – particularly that not palatable to the majority and requiring secrecy to protect it from scrutiny – becomes significantly easier. Any form of corrupt conduct that requires co-ordination becomes significantly easier. Any bizarre craze that would quickly be hosed down if it were known about builds critical mass.

How then to balance the desire for private communication with these unwanted effects? I would propose a legal solution rather than a technical one. Instead of demanding ‘backdoors’ being programmed as some countries have (which leaves devices vulnerable), it could be legislated that the communications programs only permit end-to-end encryption between two people. Group chats would not be protected by encryption.

There is a very definite place for secure remote communication between people – in the case of the journalist communicating confidentially with a source for example – but the ability to broadcast secret messages to multiple people in an instant I believe will create more problems than it solves. If a message is critical enough that it needs to be sent in secret, then one would take the time to ‘laboriously’ send it to multiple people.

An obsession with frictionless communication combined with a valid concern about the interest of the government in the average person’s affairs has led us to this point. I fear that a continued technological arms race between governments and their citizens will lead inevitably to a government victory. A compromise must be reached though it may be one that neither party will be entirely comfortable with.

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Some it seems are waiting for government to raise the white flag…

E2E would have had far less popularity if [expletive deleted] governments hadn’t abused surveillance power to hoover up all the internet and communication. Stop that and I’ll stop using it.

Yes, this is a pie in the sky put the genie back in the bottle argument.

And Narcissus strikes a more hopeful note…

If ‘corrupt conduct that requires coordination becomes significantly easier’ then surely non-corrupt conduct should also become significantly easier? And therefore it follows that governments should be able to sufficiently operate and organise in the current environment in a manner that successfully maintains the same balance of control that has always existed?

And perhaps one could argue, from a social Darwinian perspective, that if modern governments indeed can not maintain this balance, then their extinction is nigh, and new forms of social organisation will emerge. Attempts by governments to use traditional approaches (threats of violence and incarceration) to contain, restrain, control their subjects (be it justified or otherwise) will not survive the information age. 

The age of control through bullying and force is sun-setting. In a digital world without borders, only those leaders that demonstrate leadership merits will be followed. Politicians holding anachronistic Machiavellian playbooks and attempting to ‘lead’ by a show of alpha-male strength and power will only attract those followers who would happily follow the path of the dinosaur.

(‘The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia’: there may be constituencies and politicians that did not pass maths at school, but inevitably their influence on the world will be diminished to the point of non-existence).

Howard Reed | An alternative to universal basic income

With the federal government – and indeed several Western countries – quickly acquainting themselves with the concept of wage subsidies, proponents of universal basic income quietly (or not so) have been wondering if our current crisis would be a convenient segue to their ultimate aim. Their recognition of problems with our economic structure is welcome but the idea of the state being responsible for the redistribution of cash to every citizen is problematic.

Automation is a certainly a threat to the existing economic order as it is slowly eroding the pyramid of labour at its base. As machines and the algorithms that run them become capable of increasingly complex tasks – replacing workers – the social contract and the resultant tense thread tying labour and capital together is being frayed.

This tension has provided the stability that allows modern societies to thrive. Whilst workers can no doubt reskill, my personal experience suggests that at some point in the majority of domains, humans will no longer be able to compete with machines if the benchmark is efficient production. It follows that income will increasingly flow to the shareholder at the machines themselves have no particular demand for it beyond their maintenance and repair.

There is also no doubt that the distribution of wealth is becoming unequal. Since the 1980s the demands of the investor has bred an insipid culture in financial management that regards the market not as the most efficient means for allocating resources but merely a capital pump for transfer of wealth. It should be no surprise that this machinery is working as intended exploiting the increasing power mismatch between labour and capital.

I will not argue that the twin forces of automation and greed should be abolished. In attempting to we would squander the realisation of a dream to rid human affairs of menial labour – a project I remain all for. Greed – or more preferably a competitive spirit – is a necessary driver of any market.

I will however argue against the intervention of government directly into dealing with these two issues as a universal basic income would require. This is because it potentially de-couples the citizen from the economic life of the country and in doing so places the task of hedging that income over their lifetime on the state.

Instead of universal basic income, I would propose that each citizen receives a share in each company over a particular size. The sum total of these citizen shares could be up to but would be no more than 50% of said company. This would be a voting share which could be allocated to a proxy which could be an interest group or even a political party. The share would also be non-transferable and expire with the citizen. This share will be equivalent in standing to those held by private investors in terms of distribution of dividends and voting.

Having a stake in the majority of the economy in this way provides an income and a signal to the citizen. In tough times, this signal will prompt some if not the majority of people to develop more sources of income such as employment or starting their own businesses. In good times, all share in the boom. Those with any financial nous will squirrel some of their income away whilst most may end up relying on fund managers in much the same way we do with superannuation today.

Retaining private investment is an important counterweight; otherwise this scheme is simply communism. As I have stated earlier, tensions are important for stability. They provide a dynamic equilibrium that can respond to changes in fortune. This scheme recasts the social contract from one between worker and owner to one between citizen and investor.

Giving citizens a vote in the decision making of companies allows them to dictate directly to companies their desires (if they wish) rather than through the indirect route of government legislation. Whilst this would thrust politics into the general meetings of every major company, increased scrutiny of boards would be a good thing.

The alternative in UBI would force the government to intervene increasingly in the economy, asserting control in order to manage the risks inherent in a gargantuan welfare system whilst its citizens can afford – in the medium term at least – to ignore problems developing in the economy. Typically this disinterest would only be resolved once the economy crashes leading to an under-damped response leading to more instability.

What would companies gain from this massive transfer of capital and corporate power? I would propose the abolition of taxes on business possibly even extending to other sources of government revenue such as royalty payments. Taxation of companies suggests they should have representation in government as the citizen enjoys. Whilst legal personhood for corporations has its usefulness, I am uncomfortable with any justification that extends their influence into government for similar reasons we have historically separated church and state.

This represents a colossal reform but one I believe is achievable from a technical level. Given the information technologies that exist today, very little if any of the transactions that would underpin this system would be mediated directly by government. In implementing it we have an opportunity for the benefits of automation to productivity to be shared by all and an incentive for the citizen to remain connected to the economic life of the country.

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First, some choice lines from selected replies…

Mr Reed paints with a broad brush, and it would be churlish not to respond in kind. In fact, I’m going to dispense with the brush altogether and just throw paint at the wall in rage – confident that whatever abstract splatter I produce will be more coherent than Reed’s ejaculatory mess.

…the scheme means that citizens are simply huddled together in the same overcrowded boat – rising and falling together, yes – but ever more disengaged from the titanic forces causing the tides.

Companies benefit greatly from government expenditure, for example having an educated populace to draw labour from, a functioning legal system in which to conduct predictable business and settle disputes, utilisation of state funded infrastructure etc. This alone creates an obligation to contribute to the systems from which benefit is derived… Removal of corporate taxes places the burdens for this more on individual taxation and consumption for [education, health, disability care etc] to continue

[A]llowing citizens to proxy their votes to political parties is an outrageous idea. Giving the LNP 10 million votes in BHP automatically introduces a huge conflict of interest and undermines all political policies.

…Mr Reed’s proposal would make today’s “capital pump” look like a lazy ceiling fan.

Why should we human beings, born free, be reduced to oiling the machines?

Finally, Arkady Galt responds…

I am happy that the author is promoting thoughtful conversation about inequality by throwing his hat into the ring to critique one of the leading proposed remedies and add his own novel idea to the mix. Whilst I wholeheartedly agree that rising inequality and the birth of ‘the useless class’ due to automation and capitalism is dangerous and needs action, I think there are serious issues with the argument against Universal Basic Income and the alternative citizen shareholder proposal. Over the course of this critique of the critique, I will highlight how the proposal is like using a sledge hammer to fix the issues with UBI, but then wildly missing the target and smashing the economic floor whilst the real problem still remains. Finally, I will suggest some alterations to UBI that might assuage the author’s concerns and propose additional measures to cure the disease of inequality and usher in the age of ‘noble leisure’ that has been a dream since the time of Aristotle and could soon be within our grasp.

Before getting to the meat of the argument though, I cannot resist taking the bait and calling out this poetic but confusing piece of hyperbole that muddies the otherwise sound introduction to the nature of the inequality problem:

Since the 1980s the demands of the investor has bred an insipid culture in financial management that regards the market not as the most efficient means for allocating resources but merely a capital pump for transfer of wealth. It should be no surprise that this machinery is working as intended exploiting the increasing power mismatch between labour and capital.

I don’t think any investor or financial manager has ever participated in the market with the altruistic goal of efficiently allocating society’s resources and even (or especially) Adam Smith would acknowledge that capital is invested with the utterly selfish goal of maximising returns on the investor’s money within the level of risk they are comfortable with. With the confusing talk of malfunctioning ‘capital pumps’, perhaps the relevant change the author was hinting at in the 80s is demand for higher returns in shorter timeframes. This change in investor expectations does promote higher risk ventures, more speculation and less investment in long-term innovations with their subsequent productivity enhancements. This is a problem for economic health and stability that will still exist when shareholders are given their shares ‘for free’ and calls for other reforms specifically targeted to combat short-termism. Also, I don’t think you can blame companies for acting within labour laws to maximise profit for their investors because it is the ideal role of governments (and perhaps unions) to set rules to avoid exploitation of low-skilled workers and the resulting inequality at this micro-economic level.

The main argument against UBI is that it disconnects people from the economy and I agree with this. However, the proposed citizen shareholder mechanism will not be very different top UBI in practice. Most shareholders today, who actually toiled to pay for their shares and did some analysis to select them, are very passive and content to let executives maximise profit so they can just receive their regular dividend cheques and enjoy capital growth. They are connected to the economic cycle in that they notice changes in returns but there is very little they can do about this fluctuation in reality, especially in downturns when options for new income are sparse. I would expect that when people are given 100 shares selected for them and have no ability to trade or sell them (the most important feedback given from society to companies), they will care even less than today’s shareholders. Whilst they will notice the economic cycle, they are still disconnected from the economy itself in that they are not personally contributing any value to it and hence are still ‘useless’ with all the negative impacts associated with this.

The other arguments against UBI are largely statements with justification assumed, but such assumptions must be challenged. There is a thread of disillusionment with a government run by political parties that implies they cannot manage a UBI redistribution mechanism, but this is ironic considering the alternative proposal endorses company boards becoming 50% controlled by those very same political parties! I would agree that government bureaucracies are often inefficient and political parties are often corrupt and self-serving, but UBI is frequently advocated by the ‘small government’ lobby precisely because it replaces complicated welfare arrangements with a simple universal automated money transfer system from tax payer to citizen. Just like there is an assertion that IT systems of today could easily manage the citizen shareholder system, it is safe to assume these systems could also manage the UBI’s transactions.

Regarding the asserted problem of governments having to hedge future UBI responsibilities and increasingly intervene in the economy to manage this, the future risk could, if desired, be outsourced to individuals in the same way as was proposed in the citizen shareholder scheme. Governments could scale their UBI payments based on current tax revenue and enforce compulsory superannuation as the mechanism for people to guarantee their own future security. However, I think Keynesian thought and recent GFC and COVID-19 experience shows that when the economic cycle turns down it is counterproductive for governments to stem the flow of money so I think this concern is not worth worrying about.

Although the citizen shareholder mechanism makes it seem like specific payments supporting the unemployed are no longer necessary, the end effect for companies could be largely the same as with UBI – it the simply difference between a 50% dilution of shares and resultant 50% reduction in dividends for paid investors versus a 50% tax on dividends to pay for UBI.

The main differentiator with UBI, in my opinion, is the direct political intervention in company boardrooms. Businesses need long range certainty and clarity about rules and a level playing fields across companies to plan investment and compete effectively. Moving the emphasis of citizen input from parliament and its transparent legislation into individual boardrooms will destroy these pre-requisites and have a terrible effect on company and economic dynamism. Like in normal representative democracy, most people will just want their cheque and the proxy capability will be exploited by power hungry politicians and is the road to corruption. In another ironic twist, the author is quite paranoid about business intervening in the state due to the obscure legal modelling of companies as people, but I feel the intermingling of politics and companies in hundreds of dimly lit board rooms and the adjoining corridors is much more corrupting of both institutions.

Now that the issues with the citizen shareholder proposal and its relationship to UBI have been discussed, it is worth circling around the core unsolved problems that were identified and that the proposal sought to address. Here are a four ideas that might progress the discussion and could be the seed for future essays and critiques:

1. To control parasitic, exploitative, monopolistic or otherwise destructive companies, fix the democratic process and legislate effectively! This could involve political and campaign funding reforms to reduce corporate influence on politics and deliberative democracy to bypass parasitic politicians and strengthen the voice of the rational informed citizen (and even create some of those which don’t currently exist).
2. Start reducing the work week and improve the quality of education. There will continue to be highly paid work for those at the top of the value pyramid, so create more people capable of doing these jobs and force companies to share those tasks (and wealth) across more people. That education should also include serious content devoted to cultivating the knowledge and skills of noble leisure, which should be the main use for non-work time and is a critical part of achieving personal happiness according to Aristotle.
3. Implement UBI as an immediate safety net for displaced workers and redistributive mechanism to move wealth from the machine owners to the rest of society. To target the redistribution better, it could be funded by a tax based on the company’s profit to employment ratio. 
4. To truly involve UBI recipients in the economic life of the country, a final innovation is needed to give meaningful and achievable work to those in the newly created ‘useless class’. I would suggest some type of ‘kickstarter’ approach for socially beneficial non-profit enterprises to access some UBI funding streams and employ people to strengthen the human and community experience of the nation. By definition, this will be a labour-intensive and relatively lower-skilled sector that would not attract capital in normal markets chasing high returns from AI and automation driven companies. There is some overlap with government services like aged health care and education so some of these sectors might simply be better funded as part of the system. Whether people would be penalized for remaining unemployed on UBI and not participating is a detail that would be discussed.

Although these measures are only described at the highest level, it seems clear to me that there are options where the fruits of automation and human ambition (or greed) can be enjoyed by those who possess them but are also shared with the broader society in which they were first nurtured so that a new society of shared flourishing and personal happiness can be created.