A Modest Marginal Proposal

A recent report that concludes that the carbon footprint of food overwhelmingly consists of carbon emitted during the food's production rather than its transport (i.e. 83% from production, 4% of total footprint is preventable by "eating local"). Based on the report's conclusions Tyler Cowen (of Marginal Revolution) suggests:

In other words, when it comes to food the greenest things you can do, if that is your standard, is to eat less meat and have fewer kids.

But this suggestion just made me think of a modest proposal whereby we could solve both problems in one swift swoop...

Government Proposes Petrol Cartel Enforcement Legislation

I'm still astounded by the Australian Government's proposed Fuel-Watch scheme. Working at its best, Fuel-Watch might provide an extremely marginal decrease in petrol prices but it seems far more likely to me that Fuel-Watch will have the exact opposite effect!

The most difficult part about enforcing a cartel agreement with your competitors is monitoring their behaviour and making sure that they stick to the cartel's agreed-upon price. In Fuel-Watch, the government is providing just such a mechanism, the perfect way for petrol stations to enforce any cartel-like agreements. All that the petrol stations need to do now is agree on a monopoly-level price and rake in the profits while the government works hard to enforce their cartel agreement!

Does anyone have a clue in the Rudd government? (Don't take that as an endorsement of the Liberal Party, the opposition is no better, if not considerably worse...) *sigh*

Privatize Australia Post! Privatize it NOW!

Open the postal sector up to free competition! Other countries have done it and they didn't collapse into anarchy! Even Sweden, one of the countries that from my brother's account seems to be most likely to collapse into a communist dictatorship, has done it! Australia Post needs to be privatized and the postal sector opened up to competition.

Australia Post's:

• Diabolical customer service
• Absolutely ridiculous opening hours (have you ever tried to pick up a packet delivered to your house when you work full-time?)
• General ignorance about the services they actually offer (try sending something use Print Post Direct International, and you'll see what I mean)
• Need I go on?
  

all argue for change. For instance in Sweden where postal delivery has been opened up to competition, you can pick up packet deliveries from the local 7-11 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

And don't get me started with remarks like: "What about the people living in rural areas?". I've had quite enough of funding the lifestyle decisions of people who choose to live in rural areas. They can find out just how much their decision is costing the rest of us!

Privatize Australia Post! Privatize it NOW!

Maternity leave tax on women without plans for children a "Human Right"

What about: "Sex discrimination commissioner advocates lower wages and poorer conditions for women of child-bearing age"? Or perhaps "sex discrimination commissioner wants to make it harder for women of child-bearing age to find work"? That's what I read when I saw this article. The Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, wants maternity leave recognised as a "Human-Right" and for mothers to initially get 14 weeks of paid maternity leave. She eventually wants the maternity leave increased to 48 weeks.

This paid maternity leave can be funded in two ways, by forcing employers to provide paid maternity leave or through taxation. In the first case, employer financed maternity leave; anyone who understands any economics whatsoever will realise that obligating employers to provide these benefits is a sure way to increase discriminatory hiring and firing practices.

In the second case, getting tax-payers to fund other people's life-style choices is, in my opinion, morally questionable. Even in this latter case, the employer is presumably obligated to keep the job open for the new mother on her return after almost a year of leave. This will still create an, albeit lesser but no less real, incentive for employers to discriminate against women of child-bearing age.

Why not let people plan their own lives and make their own decisions? A free market economy already offers employers far more incentives than the government ever could not to discriminate against different groups in the community. Efforts by the government that have the stated goal of reducing discrimination usually have the perverse consequence that they actually increase levels of discrimination (or at the very best shift that same level of discrimination into other practices).