But the right to political protest is, or should be, as absolute as possible. Protest is a subset of free expression. The right to set up a shanty town is not as sacrosanct. Occupy Melbourne was both protest and shanty town construction. The occupation of City Square effectively privatised a public space. Tent construction had an element of expression but that was not its only element.

Even so, a shanty town protest would be absolutely fine if it didn’t infringe the rights of others – such as the businesses operating on the outskirts of the square, and the consumers who use them. Or if it only did so temporarily. Relocating to Treasury Gardens would have balanced those rights. Occupy Melbourne could occupy the gardens for eternity without substantially infringing the rights of the 99% they claim to represent.

I don’t think the police should have expelled the occupiers on Friday. That was hasty. And seems inspired as much as anything else by Robert Doyle’s obvious hostility – an awful look in a democratic country. But the expulsion was going to happen eventually.

So did the police use excessive force? Probably. Maybe. If so, that’s despicable. But I’m not going to dig through the claims of who did what first. That would be futile. Police can be excessively violent – opponents of the protest need to acknowledge that – but so can the agitators who flit from protest to protest, for whom police overreaction is the goal.

Still, Doyle’s Herald Sun piece doesn’t inspire confidence. One of the pieces of evidence the lord mayor uses to suggest the protesters were up for a fight is that bricks were found at the site. And bottles. How threatening. Not quite a clear and present danger to Melbourne’s social contract.

Professor Olver writes that my column in the Drum cites (and apparently misinterprets, although no grounds for that accusation is offered) one study to conclude menu labelling won’t work.

This is wrong. I cited five separate studies.

Indeed, the (single) BMJ paper from 2011 which he uses as a rebuttal was mentioned in my column too. But he appears not to have read fully even the abstract of that paper, which said that “mean calories did not change from before to after regulation”. Only three of the eleven chains showed significant reductions in calorie consumption. Yes, those chains accounted for 42% of total customers in the paper’s survey. Any fair reading would admit that the BMJ paper is ambiguous for both our cases. I acknowledged that ambiguity but Professor Olver seems to believe the paper is a slam-dunk for menu labelling.

Perhaps it might be, if he had not completely ignored the Health Affairs and American Economic Review papers, the literature review conducted by the Heart Foundation, as well as the editorial in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which provided the opening sentence for my column.

It is a shame that Professor Olver did not want to seriously engage with the evidence we have regarding this policy.

The rest of his article tackles another topic entirely: the simplification of nutrition labelling on packaged food. How this rebuts the real-world evidence of the efficacy of restaurant menu labelling we now have from New York isn’t clear. Professor Olver writes “it is clearly erroneous to argue that just because one type of label may have not had a massive impact in one instance, all labels are bound to fail” but I can’t find where I said anything of the sort. That’s his argumentative trick, not mine.

It is important that we accurately test public health interventions. But once we have done so, we must be open-minded enough to actually look at the results of those tests.

(Cross posted at The Conversation)

In 2007 I gave a presentation to the Communications Policy & Research Forum outlining in greater detail the details, purpose and necessity of a layers model of regulation, and its relationship to deregulation. That presentation is below

In his ”forgotten families” speech in May, the Opposition Leader made tougher anti-dumping laws a centrepiece of his economic policy. These laws purport to prevent foreign imports being ”dumped” so cheaply in domestic markets they threaten the existence of Australian companies. The theory suggests that the foreigners will jack up prices once local companies have gone out of business. But it’s a theory that everybody from the Productivity Commission to Nobel-winning anti-free market economist Joseph Stiglitz thinks is nonsense …

Anti-dumping laws are pure protectionism. They benefit a few companies at the expense of consumers.

What Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor said on the Sunday Age letters page yesterday (no link):

Berg wrote that anti-dumping measures depend on “a theory that . . . the Productivity Commission . . . thinks is nonsense”. This comes as a surprise to the government and probably to the Productivity Commission which, in its report, included a chapter entitled “Should Australia retain an anti-dumping system?” Its answer, in short, was “yes”.

Did Berg not read the report? Of course he read it, and then he misrepresented it. Berg guilefully picks the oldest and weakest argument for an anti-dumping policy to infer there is no convincing argument.

Berg brays that “anti-dumping laws are pure protectionism”. That is not merely untrue, it is the dead reverse of the truth.

What the Productivity Commission said:

The Australian anti-dumping system, which is based on agreed WTO rules and procedures, benefits a small number of import competing firms, but imposes greater costs on the rest of the economy.

However, this net economic cost is likely to be very small. And the ability for Australian industries, like those in most other countries, to use the system to address what are perceived by many to be ‘unfair’ trading practices, may have lessened resistance to more significant tariff reforms.

In other words: yes, anti-dumping laws are protectionist but the Productivity Commission thinks that they are a tolerable evil to secure support for other trade liberalisation.

In an Appendix, the Commission provides no support for the economic model on which anti-dumping laws are based.

…the Commission has concluded that Australia should retain an antidumping system. However, that conclusion is based on the presence of broader political economy benefits rather than on the grounds that anti-dumping measures can more directly enhance economic efficiency. Indeed, the Commission’s assessment is that the narrow efficiency rationales are not compelling.

To address the minister’s specific concern about foreign governments subsidising their manufacturing:

…the ‘direct’ economic case for using anti-dumping measures to respond to assistance provided by overseas governments is questionable. Especially for a small country such as Australia, such an approach could be economically costly.

Nevertheless, to Brendan O’Connnor, this translates as “Its answer, in short, was ‘yes’.”

His two words, “in short”, carry a heavy burden indeed.

(I wrote about the origins and politics of anti-dumping laws at ABC’s The Drum in February.)

When I suggested in The Drum on Monday that some provisions of the commercial broadcasters’ Code of Practice were “practically defunct”, he responded that Macquarie and Fairfax radio assured him this was not the case – that they fully accepted and adhered to the code.

Well that settles it. If the radio networks say they’re fully compliant, then obviously the Code of Practice is not the toothless, near dead-letter regulation which Holmes claims it to be in practice.

Nevertheless, let’s put that aside – as well as the claim that the Code of Practice is simply a voluntary mechanism that the broadcasters eagerly signed up to on their own volition, and not one which is a) required by the state b) enforced by the state and c) an obvious attempt to hold off more heavy handed regulation. (I tackled the issue of the ‘voluntariness’ of quasi-regulation in my 2008 monograph on the regulatory state.)

That debate would only be interesting if Holmes saw the role of Media Watch as a compliance arm of ACMA – his show as the deputy dog of communications regulation.

The more interesting and more important question is how Media Watch views the Code of Practice from a free speech perspective. His response does get us closer to mutual understanding:

So Media Watch suggested they should do what the Code requires, and ensure that “reasonable efforts are made… to present significant viewpoints when dealing with controversial issues of public importance”.

Such as, just occasionally, interviewing scientists who maintain that the evidence points to dangerous, man-made global warming – scientists who represent by far the majority scientific view – as well as (not instead of) scientists who disagree.

And I said that it shouldn’t need complaints to the ACMA to make that happen.

How ‘chilling’! How restrictive! What an enemy of free speech I must be!

Well, yes. As I argued in the original piece, the right to free speech is the right to choose that speech. Suggesting that the regulatory penalty for exercising that right is minor is not a defence, it is a concession.

Nothing Holmes has written suggests he is concerned that he encouraged the Code of Practice to be as a political weapon. Nor he is concerned GetUp has chosen to do so as an obvious consequence of his show.

That Holmes does not recognise that the Code or his program’s approach to this issue is in any way problematic speaks volumes.

While I’m glad he’s now joined the chorus in support of free speech on the Andrew Bolt case, his Media Watch still wants a government regulator to intervene in one of the most important public debates in Australian history.

After all, to support free speech is to reject the idea that bad speech has a regulatory solution.

From an evolutionary perspective, a research regulator is a life form with three very interesting characteristics. First, its numbers explode in response to catastrophic events regardless of how rare that event is. Second, it has few natural predators, so its expansion goes unchecked. Third, regulators multiply like bacteria: they spawn more regulations which require more regulators, so there is a rapid increase in population over time. And these three characteristics derive, I submit, from a basic human tendency to focus on emotionally-engaging events while ignoring their probability.

This model applies as easily to economic and social regulation as much as academic research: from Gary Banks’ hypothetical skipping rope regulation to the 2007 solarium controversy in Victoria. Regulations inspired by often tragic, but low probability circumstances cascade until we end up in a situation like this:

(For a brief discussion of the implications of regulatory and legislative expansion, see this Drum column “Micromanagement in the regulatory state“, or, for a longer discussion, my 2008 book.)

To the hypothetical degree that this is truly unfair and illegal market dominance, government policy shares much of the blame. This Age piece from last year provides a small vignette of just how distorted the liquor sales market truly is, systematically favouring large outlets over small ones:

Mr Robinson indicated at State Parliament’s public accounts and estimates committee that some smaller bottle shops may be soon given relief from soaring licence fees while larger venues are likely to face stiffer regulation.

”There are further refinements that need to be made,” he said. He said while it was harder to regulate and set fee structures for bottle shops than licensed venues, he was committed to ”iron out the anomalies” and construct a system fairer to the smaller operators.

When state governments implement liquor regulations favouring big outlets over small outlets, it should hardly be a surprise when that market tends towards consolidation. If the ACCC was serious about encouraging competition in the alcohol retail market, it would focus on the regulatory barriers to entry.

…there are always unintended consequences of military activity—some that may take years to unravel. Ironically, the story of the EP-3E aircraft that was downed off the coast of China provides an example. The account, as relayed to me by a fully informed retired American diplomat, begins with the contested Presidential election between Vice-President Al Gore and George W. Bush the previous November. That fall, a routine military review concluded that certain reconnaissance flights off the eastern coast of the former Soviet Union—daily Air Force and Navy sorties flying out of bases in the Aleutian Islands—were redundant, and recommended that they be cut back.

“Finally, on the eve of the 2000 election, the flights were released,” the former diplomat related. “But there was nobody around with any authority to make changes, and everyone was looking for a job.” The reality is that no military commander would unilaterally give up any mission. “So the system defaulted to the next target, which was China, and the surveillance flights there went from one every two weeks or so to something like one a day,” the former diplomat continued. By early December, “the Chinese were acting aggressively toward our now increased reconnaissance flights, and we complained to our military about their complaints. But there was no one with political authority in Washington to respond, or explain.” The Chinese would not have been told that the increase in American reconnaissance had little to do with anything other than the fact that inertia was driving day-to-day policy. There was no leadership in the Defense Department, as both Democrats and Republicans waited for the Supreme Court to decide the fate of the Presidency.

The predictable result was an increase in provocative behavior by Chinese fighter pilots who were assigned to monitor and shadow the reconnaissance flights. This evolved into a pattern of harassment in which a Chinese jet would maneuver a few dozen yards in front of the slow, plodding EP-3E, and suddenly blast on its afterburners, soaring away and leaving behind a shock wave that severely rocked the American aircraft. On April 1, 2001, the Chinese pilot miscalculated the distance between his plane and the American aircraft.

Is it right to “support” a Government, supposing a Government to be worthy of support? We put this question because we believe that very opposite opinions prevail on the subject. To promise to give “support” to a Government is looked upon as a betrayal of the people’s cause. “Support a Government,” – we hear some one ask, – “How can an independent representative support a Government? Are not all public officers made to be opposed; and can that man hold up his head before his constituents, or look his country in the face, who refused, when he had a chance, to kick a Ministry?”

Support a Government! How is it possible? Governments always were wrong, always are wrong, always will be wrong; and those who would be right should take care ever to vote in opposition to Ministers. Are not Ministers in office? Are they not in “power?” Are they not servants of the public? Do they not receive pay ? Where, then, is the man of sterling principle who could, under any circumstances, support a Government ? It is absurd on the face of it. By so doing you actually sanction the holding of office, support the exercise of administrative power, identify yourself with acts of Executive policy, and, worst of all, run the risk of appearing to be contented with the men whom you pay for the fulfilment of their duties. Nothing can be more preposterous.

Much has been said about Responsible Administration, Popular Government, &c., but the attempt to realise these ideas is akin to that of the man who chased his own shadow. A Tory Administration might be consistently supported by Tories; a Protectionist Administration by Protectionists ; an ultra-Protestant or ultra-Catholic Administration by ultra-Protestants or ultra-Catholics; but a Liberal Administration CANNOT be supported by Liberals, because “Liberalism” means “Opposition;” and the triumphant Opposition of to-day becomes, on taking office, the hypocritical, time-serving, contemptible turn-coats of to-morrow. It is, therefore, clear to demonstration that – no matter who are in power no matter what their policy – the simple fact that they are in power condemns their every act and word. As long as Liberalism exhibits to the world its glorious and unchangeable attribute of “Opposition,” so long will it be a political crime for Liberals to support Governments, even though of their own creation. The true ideal of a Liberal is Resistance; the summit of his ambition is Expectation. His proper attribute is to stand with foot on the step and thumb on the latch; but on no account to cross the threshold, nor open the door.

Perhaps some of our readers may think we are joking, and others that we are serious. Well, all we can say is – if they have paid for their paper they are entitled to their choice, and we leave them to its free exercise

The intuition is that patriots’ “patriotic rent” increases their cost of emigration. They might thus refrain from moving abroad under conditions where they would have done so in the absence of their patriotism. Countries can “exploit” this by implementing higher taxes in the equilibrium.

The paper finds a clear relationship between high rates of tax and love of country.

The authors find that patriotism reduces discontent about high taxation. Of course, the causation could run the other way: higher taxes might buy better services, and those better services could inspire patriotic feelings. So the authors attempt to control for this possibility by testing their findings against the number of neighbours a country has – the assumption being that having more neighbours is likely to stir national passions – and find their results are still statistically significant.

As they write:

Treasury’s inherent interest in having patriotic subjects as taxpayers may make the political push for patriotism in a country stronger than it would bewithout this fiscal effect. That is, there might exist an ‘unholy alliance’ between the “Chauvinists” in a country and those who would like to stabilize tax revenue in a world of growing mobility (and tax competition).

…current increases in international mobility, downward pressures on government revenues, and governments’ greater needs for funding of the welfare state in a globalized world (or simply revenues needed to service increased government debt) make the fiscal motivation to invest in patriotism more important. This suggests that we might well observe a further strengthening of patriotism/nationalism.

This would, of course, not be unheard of: