September 2005 – Chris Berg

Can we remove the ban on mobiles in planes without killing each other?

Police in Warwick, Rhode Island, earlier this year reported that a driver, fed up with being stuck behind another driver who was chatting away on his mobile phone, got out of his car, called the other driver a punk, and promptly punched him in the face.

It’s now undeniably a cliché to proclaim that you can’t stand people using their mobile phones on public transport, or, for that matter, in any public place previously reserved for awkward silence. Mobile phones have inherited the same social baggage that smoking once held — perfectly legal and many people do it, but accompanied with disapproving looks from passers-by. As with smoking, it is greeted with the heavy-handed social regulation and legislation which is increasingly deﬁnitive of our relationships with government and each other. Bans on mobile phone use in cars are the most obvious example — the assumption being that making a phone call while driving is more dangerous than Mr Bean getting dressed on the way to work.

Is communication anti-social?

This is how most people approach the vexed question of mobile phone use on aircraft. It is easy to bristle at the possibility of having to sit through a nine-hour ﬂight listening to a one-sided conversation in what seems to be Portuguese. For that matter, any electronic device can be potentially maddening — in the rare moments I take my iPod buds out of my ears, I’m sometimes shocked at how loudly I was listening to the music, and wonder how audible it was to people around me.

But there is a clear demand to use these devices. The ﬂight between Melbourne and Sydney would be a decidedly diﬀerent experience if the regular commuters were permitted to continue their business, rather than having that 51-minute quiet time. And as ﬂying entails the diminution of a number of personal freedoms — food, sleep, even bathroom breaks are regulated — being able to communicate with family, friends or colleagues would be a reassertion of personal liberty.

And why shouldn’t they be allowed to?

Just as there are more dangerous activities to do while driving, there are more annoying things on airplane travel than a fellow traveller phoning home. If you don’t believe this, then you can’t remember John Candy in Trains, Planes and Automobiles, or Brad Pitt explaining to a bemused Edward Norton how to turn soap into explosives in Fight Club. But the quickest way to put the lie to the argument that mobile phones cause ‘air-rage’ (road-rage for the jet-lagged class), and should therefore be banned, is the mere existence of the expensive, back-of-seat telephones.

A recent survey of 702 air travellers showed that 63 per cent of ﬂyers wanted to keep existing mobile phone restrictions on aircraft; only 23 per cent wanted to lift the ban. But as economist Bryan Caplan notes,

current opinion probably suﬀers from a large status quo bias. It wouldn’t take long before people started to enjoy the freedom to use their phones, and quit fretting so much about other people using theirs.

Would planes fall out of the sky?

Contrary to the impression created by the regular and hyperbolic instructions to turn oﬀ anything more powerful than a clockwork Happy Meal toy, it is not clear that electronic devices and mobile phones do interfere with aircraft electronics.

The history of regulation of personal electronic devices (PEDs) on aircraft, whether 2-way (‘intentional transmitters’) such as mobile phones, pagers and radios, or ‘non-intentional’ such as iPods, laptops and Game-Boys, has been one of apprehension. The initial ban on electronic devices on aircraft came after a 1963 study by the American Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA), which looked at reports that PEDs had possibly interfered with aircrafts’ onboard electronic equipment. Further studies by the RTCA, one in the mid-1980s, and another ten years later, found that such a risk was extremely low, but was highest at critical phases during the ﬂight, particularly take-oﬀ and landing.

In addition to these three studies, the British Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) looked speciﬁcally at mobile phone devices which showed that, theoretically, they could interfere with avionics, in particular with systems which had been certiﬁed to pre-1984 standards. Following these ﬁndings, the CAA recommended that the ban be upheld.

NASA keeps a record of nearly 70,000 anonymously reported aviation incidents and ﬂight problems. But in only 52 of these — in other words, 0.08 per cent — did the crew suspect that the interference was caused by any personal electronic device. (As a side-note, 23 cases of ‘air rage’ were listed as caused by the use of PEDs.)

Looking at a number of examples contained in the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting Systems database is instructive.

In May of 1995, the electric compass indicators of the ﬁrst oﬃcer of a Boeing 737 gave erratic readings. After a sweep of the cabin was made for portable electronic devices, which resulted in ﬂight attendants asking a passenger to turn oﬀ a compact disc player, the ﬁrst oﬃcer’s instruments returned to normal working order.
In March of 1997, a Cessna 340/A pilot experienced erroneous readings when attempting to determine his location because of a passenger using a cellular phone. After the passenger turned oﬀ the phone, the pilot was able to locate his position and continue on with no problems.

But, as a 2000 US Congressional Hearing made clear, ‘neither the RTCA nor the CAA were able to duplicate under controlled conditions the interference from a PED that their studies indicate[d] could theoretically occur’. As shown above, the only examples of interference have been anecdotal — no ﬁrm link has been established between PED use and disruption to avionic systems. No incident has been able to be replicated. In one case, Boeing, struggling with the PED question, purchased a passenger’s laptop that a pilot claimed had triggered an autopilot error. Flying the same route, with the same laptop in the same seat, Boeing was unable to duplicate the incident.

In the absence of any corroborating examples, it is highly possible that in many of the 52 cases in the NASA database, the existence of a PED onboard was used as a convenient explanation for an otherwise undiagnosed incident. And how likely is it that only 52 illicit PEDs have been used on aircraft since the NASA reporting system began?

Regardless of the uncertain eﬀects of PEDs on avionics, aviation regulators around the world have resolutely banned mobile telephones on aircraft, and placed heavy restrictions on nonintentional transmitters. These regulations are backed up by airline-speciﬁc rules about what can be used when.

But as well as being illustrative of the natural timidity of government regulators on safety issues, these regulations help airlines restrict any onboard communications to the expensive back-of-seat phones. If the regulation were lifted — the lack of replicable evidence suggests it could be — airlines may well err on the side of caution and retain their restrictions. But if one airline then decided that the safety regulations had been historically over-cautious, it could oﬀer its customers the comfort of their own personal communications devices.

The decision about what PEDs to allow in the cabin could be ﬁrmly left in the care of the markets — there is no ﬁrm reason to require extra government regulation.

Airlines have recognized that communication can be a selling point. Late last year, progress was made by the FCC towards allocating spectrum for wireless broadband in aircraft. Lufthansa has already started oﬀering unlimited Internet access on international ﬂights for just under US$30. All that is needed is a laptop with a standard wireless card common to newly purchased machines.

Debate over the validity of regulations restricting PED use in aircraft have to face these developments. There is a growing demand for communications in the air, and with the upsurge in voice-over-IP services (even Google is getting into the market) wireless broadband will allow passengers to make calls online.

Not only this, but it is also likely that within the next twelve to eighteen months combination mobile phones, which use both the traditional GSM or CDMA network and the wi-ﬁ 802.11 standard will come on the market. Will a wi-ﬁ enabled mobile phone be used on aircraft while the regulations stand (assuming that the GSM or CDMA connection can be disabled)?

If wi-ﬁ voice communication is allowed, be it on a laptop or oﬀ a standalone phone, the argument that mobile phones cause unnecessary ‘air-rage’ will be irrelevant. As is the norm in the communications and technology ﬁeld, innovation threatens the already fragile justiﬁcation for government regulation of personal electronic devices.

Dancing on the grave of employment

A Review of Independence and the Death of Employment By Ken Phillips. (Voltan, 2005, 207 pages)

William is a 24-year-old shearer from Queensland.

I’ve worked on shearing teams which are staunch in their observance of the [industrial] Award. They have the 3 minute bell which is a warning to all the shearers that the end of the run will happen in 3 minutes and they have to ﬁnish up their last sheep … They do not do any weekend work or extra hours during the week or any hours outside the exact allocated hours in the Award …

However, this is too restricted for me. I would rather have the choice whether I wanted to work weekends. I believe it is up to the individual … I believe that if I want to work weekends then that should be okay.

This attitude is repeated in dozens of industries all around the country. Independent contractor status is, as Ken Phillips’s new book Independence and the Death of Employment makes clear, increasingly seen as a more ﬂexible alternative to traditional, heavily regulated employment structures.

And independent contracting status, while the most obvious manifestation of this new attitude to work, is by no means the only one. Phillips notes the existence of ‘independent employees’ — workers who work in ﬁrms, and are nominally under the command-and-control contract and structures of employment, but in their ‘actions, desires, thoughts and ambitions’ are independent none the less. These workers can be a ﬁrm’s greatest asset but also its greatest weakness: endlessly creative and innovative if the incentives are right, but resistant and often resentful at having their actions controlled.

Phillips’s book is a comprehensive, paradigm-shifting overview of these and a countless range of other issues, essentially trying to answer the basic question, ‘what is employment?’

Most economists tend to think of employment as a work-for-pay relationship. But Phillips suggests that this is incorrect. He alleges that employment is a relationship of legal and behavioural control — precisely the argument that the labour Left have been pounding away at for centuries. The evolution of legal precedent and the formalization of industrial relations in dedicated bodies has rigidly deﬁned employment in this way.

Employment law distorts many of the objectives of work regulation. In the context of the law, employees are considered witless and lacking in control. The employer is supposed to be responsible for their witless employees. Independence and the Death of Employment controversially argues that employment degrades human beings and removes responsibility.

Employers take the blame for employees’ actions – discrimination or for breaking work safety instructions. But this is merely the framework with which the legal system approaches employment. Phillips’s argument is that the experience of employment is quite the opposite. Independent contractors and the phenomenon of ‘independent employees’ belie the fact that a job is more than mere servitude.

Career desires, power urges, ego trips and personal self-interest are the dominant motivations in the ﬁrm. Individuals in the ﬁrm will be ambivalent toward the ﬁrm’s making losses if the individual is unaﬀected.

Economists have long recognized this as an agency problem—managers, for example, don’t always operate in the interests of shareholders. But the solution is not more highly regulated employees but allowing greater independence, which workers are already striving for, to create the appropriate incentives for mutual beneﬁt. And the legal framework and regulatory impulses of government which surround employment must catch up.

These are changes that are being made already — sometimes against great resistance. The Queensland shearers’ desire to practise as independent contractors formed the backdrop to an eighteen-month legal case between the Australian Workers Union and the State of Queensland.

Independence and the Death of Employment is a combination of manifesto, self-help book, and rigorous analysis. It represents a massive shift in thought on labour regulation and employment, and will be heavily scrutinized and criticized by analysts from across the political spectrum. But whatever change it represents in intellectual thought, it is dwarfed by the massive change in how Australians work today.

IPA Review Editorial, September 2005

The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi was not merely a list of laws and their applicable punishments; it also dictated a wide variety of labour market regulations and price controls.

‘If a man hire a field-labourer, he shall give him eight gur of corn per annum’. Herdsmen were less valued, only receiving six gur of corn per annum. To hire a 60-ton boat for a day, a ‘sixth part of a shekel of silver’. These measures so weakened the Babylonian economy that they helped bring down the empire.

Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls by Robert Schuettinger and Eamon Butler was published in 1979 by the Heritage Foundation, in part to illustrate the folly of the policies that were being enacted in the political and economic turmoil of the Nixon–Carter years.

Perhaps this is too harsh on Hammurabi. After all, he does look a touch like Father Christmas. And it is hard to blame the ancient world for not possessing the wisdom of Adam Smith, although Nixon and Carter should have. Hammurabi instituted his political economy in an era when there were no political economists — governing the first civilization was governing in a world bereft of theoretical and ideological justifications for policy.

By comparison, the twenty-first century is rich with both political theories, and historical examples to hang them by. There are a raft of scholarly justifications for any policy preference, no matter how clearly devoid of logic. For a good illustration of this, Mike Nahan’s investigation of public service spending under the Carr Government (p7) shows the folly of governments adopting radical academic theories. (This IPA Review revives the ‘Around the States’ series, which will look at the issues facing the States, five years after the introduction of the GST.)

Even thousands of years after it was clear that the economic controls detailed in the Code of Hammurabi were self-destructive, governments practise the same flawed policies around the world. In this issue of the IPA Review, Erik Gartzke looks at the often-repeated claims of ‘democratic peace’, and finds them wanting (p12). He concludes that, instead, economic freedom is correlated much more closely with peace. This makes sense. Economic freedom, with its immeasurable benefits for the work and leisure of citizens, eases political pressure on governments — pressure which so often manifests itself as internal or external violence.

Looking at Africa in this context is instructive. In the pre-colonial era, free trade and free enterprise flourished — price and wage controls had no place in the continent – wide trade routes that characterised inter-tribal relations. Socialism and government regulation don’t exist in the African tradition. But nonetheless the continent has been cursed for more than a century with archaic price and wage controls. ‘Trade not aid’ is a slogan often bandied about, but it is clear that economic freedom — policies enacted in the countries themselves—is the only solution to the African ‘problem’. The path to economic freedom is rocky. Thankfully, as Nicholas McGowen details in this issue, there is an optimistic case for Africa.

This December issue is full of provocative articles. Looking at the recent revival of Bill of Rights advocacy, Rohan D’Souza asks whether more laws make more freedom. David Tribe takes a long view of biotechnology in agriculture—taking the great transition slowly just isn’t an option, let alone trying to reverse it, as much government policy seems to desire. Alan Moran reminds us why football is an interna-tional game, and the AFL is stuck in Australia. Federalism continues to be a focus, as Gerard Boyce examines the distorted and dangerous workplace safety regimes around the country. And Daniel Mandel uncovers what Trafalgar means to the Anglosphere today.

I hope you enjoy the issue, and your holidays.