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Reports about Hurricane Katrina make for grim reading. Not just the immediate human and physical toll, which is the worst of all. Also worrying must be the financial impact, both in terms of the likely huge insurance payouts and the rising price of oil – although high oil prices may eventually trigger a supply response, if the market works as it should.
More than 90 percent of the Gulf of Mexico oil production has been shut down and for how long, is as yet unclear. Crude oil is now over $70 a barrel and could even march higher, particularly if another hurricane takes hold, or if political and military affairs take another bad turn in the Middle East, or for that matter other places such as Nigeria and Indonesia. The black stuff is getting ever more expensive and of course, makes a mockery of the sort of anti-SUV posturing of the sort I mentioned a few days ago here. As the price rises, people will not change their motoring habits to please non-drivers like Andrew Sullivan, but because it makes plain common sense. Alternative energy sources, even those once branded too offbeat, starting to attract more venture capital and support.
Britain’s Channel 4 news had an item on the hurricane in which the general gist of the commentary went like this, to paraphrase a bit: “Is America getting the payback in weather for being the world’s largest carbon polluter?” The broadcasters may mean well but it came across as almost gloating in tone. I hope that was not the intention.
Brian recently wrote a piece about the importance and usefulness of mobile phones in poor countries, particularly in Africa. I couldn’t agree with him more, but there is another interesting story in just where the expertise and money to build these African networks are coming on, and it is an oddly positive story.
But first, a seeming digression. When mobile phones came along in the early to mid 1980s, there were generally two patterns of licensing. Firstly, there were countries (eg Australia) where the incumbent telephone monopoly was given a monopoly on the new technology. Secondly, there were countries (eg Britain) where two mobile companies were licensed. One of these was usually the incumbent telephone monopoly, and the second was usually a new company that was brought into being to provide the new service. It is worth remembering that few people at this point expected that there would be a large market for mobile phones, so often these second players were small start up companies that paid very little for the licences. (The US issued no national licences and instituted called party pays pricing, and its market thus evolved differently from the rest of the world. Discussing this is an article in its own right, and I won’t go into it further here). In both instances additional networks were licensed when second generation digital services came into being in around 1993. Even in 1993 nobody realised what a big deal mobile phones would be, and although it generally took pre-existing companies to raise the necessary capital, it was still possible for relatively small players to enter the market at this stage. In some instances the companies that took out these licenses were mobile companies that already had networks in other countries, but usually these were companies new to mobile telephony.
However, the market share of companies in various markets seems to depend very much on which choice was made in the early 1980s. In cases where the existing telecoms monopoly was given a mobile monopoly, that company is usually to this day the dominant player in that national market. In most such instances, that player has a market share of around 50%. Other players can be more profitable, have most of the premium customers, or be perceived as providing better service, but it has been difficult in such markets for the later players to gain large amounts of market share. (Australia is a good example of such a market. Telstra (formerly Telecom Australia) has a market share of around 50%, and Optus and Vodafone (which entered the market with 2G licences in around 1992) have about 30% and 15% respectively).
In markets where there were two operators licensed from the start, the incumbent was usually unable to entrench a large market share in this way. Often, although the start up competitor had much less in terms of resources, it made up for this by having a nimbleness and a better cost structure than the incumbent. When additional competitors entered the market in the early 1990s with the introduction of 2G phones, they were often able to challenge the incumbents more effectively than was the cases in markets that were previously monopolies. The classic example of this is the British market, from which Vodafone initially became the strongest player, but in which the later entrants were able to grow to similar sizes to the existing players. There are four networks in the UK, and all four presently have about 25% market share. (Although a powerful but dominant player in the UK, Vodafone was able to expand internationally to become the biggest player in Europe and the world).
In about 1999-2001, the strongest players in the various European markets went on an acquisition binge, generally buying the weaker operators in other European countries (and further afield), leading to cross-border brands in Europe. The three dominant players that came out of this were Vodafone (originally the second operator in the UK), T-Mobile (former German telecoms monopoly) and Orange (former French telecoms monopoly), all three of who own networks in many European countries, and elsewhere. Sadly, these companies have not grown into pan-European networks in a way that would be good for consumers. Although there might be a Vodafone network in Germany, it still costs a huge amount for a Vodafone customer from Britain to use it. International roaming is so expensive, and such a profit source for the mobile networks, that it is not in their interests to break it down and leave us with networks that appear international in scope to their users. This will happen eventually, but not until cellular networks face competition from vastly more operators or from other technologies. This may be happening – I have a PDA that runs the Voice over IP client Skype and from which I can make free calls whenever I can find a WiFi hotspot in a foreign country – but it is going to take a few years to really happen.
So that is where we are. We have brands that are international, and it is a truly miraculous thing that I can turn my mobile phone on almost anywhere in the world and it will just work, but pricing mechanisms and a regulatory environment that is are sadly far too subject to national borders.
But what does this have to do with Africa? → Continue reading: Some more thoughts on African (and other) mobile phone networks
Today’s Guardian is as ever full of fascinations, but this, from a TV review by Mark Lawson struck me as gloriously, perplexingly weird:
The notable balance of the film is shown by the fact that both liberals and conservatives are offered a harrumph-moment: the former when we note that the Guildford Four were locked up for these bombings rather than the people who actually did it, the latter when we learn that those who actually did it were freed from jail as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
It beats me why conservatives should not care about false convictions, nor liberals about murderers being released as part of a dodgy political deal. But then, I do not see liberalism and conservatism as irreconcilable opposites, which is probably why I still have trouble predicting what the PC attitude among media folk will be, even after 20 years of working on the fringe of the media.
Elsewhere in the same issue, the reliably barking John Sutherland takes a story about a US alternative medicine quack, and manages to find it is proof, not of human wickedness and human credulousness, but of the evils of capitalism:
But the runaway success of Natural Cures also bears witness to genuinely troubling aspects of the American healthcare system. It has been estimated that some 50 million citizens have no health insurance. For these desperate people, who fall sick like everybody else, “natural cures” are all they can afford. “Socialised medicine”, as the Clintons learned the hardway, has no place in America. Capitalistic medicine does. What John le Carré calls “Big Pharma” has made America the most drugged nation in history.
Which “explanation”, unfortunately fails to account for some important facts: (1) the purportedly natural non-cures offered by quacks are not generally cheaper than the products of Big Pharma, even at US prices; (2) the most drugged nation in history, is on average (i.e., including all those without health insurance) rather healthier than Britain if you look at survival/recovery patterns for pretty much any disease; (3) The European quack industry is also fabulously successful, and expensive, despite the subsidised competition from socialised medicine.
What is particularly enjoyable about this lunacy is it appears in the same issue of the paper as a nice clear feature by the impeccably rational Dr Ben Goldacre explaining why alternative medicine offers comforts not available from a scientific physician.
On Saturday evening I checked into a hotel in Odense in Denmark. The Danes are fairly relaxed, and I was not asked to produce my passport as I might be in some European countries. They did ask me for “something with my name on it”. I handed them my “Barclaycard Premiership Mastercard” (ie a credit card with English soccer logos on it) and my English driver’s licence. I did not show them my passport (it was in the car) and I did not mention my nationality.
However, the next day I got my receipt and it had “Michael John Jennings. Australia”. written on the top.
I am intrigued as to how they figured this out. It is true that my licence does have the endorsement “70AUS” amongst the fine print on the back, indicating that I did not ever have an English driving test, but was issued an English licence on the basis of having an Australian one already. However, I did not see the hotel clerk study the fine print on the back of my licence, and I would have been impressed had he known what that endorsement means.
Perhaps it was my accent? However, I have lived in England for nine of the last thirteen years, and English and Australians often cannot figure out my accent. (Often they can, too, but mistakes are often made). The Danes are excellent linguists, but I didn’t realise they were that good.
Or perhaps Australians just give off some vibe. Perhaps it is one that annoys British immigration officials, makes the French like us, and is instantly visible to Danish hotel clerks. Who knows?
Yesterday I expressed the hope that England would beat Australia at Trent Bridge, and today they did.
But England fans like me were once more put through the ringer. England should have had no difficulty knocking off the 129 runs they needed in their final innings. But the Australians fought like hell to claw their way back into the contest at exactly the moment when they should have been accepting the inevitable, and once again they nearly succeeded, England scrambling home by a mere three wickets. Warne and Lee are such ignorant fellows. They never seem to know when they are beaten.
The general opinion is that this is one of the greatest Ashes series ever. And this England win is good for that series in the sense that if England had lost this game, Australia would have retained the Ashes, no matter what happened at the Oval. As it is, the Oval game is winner take all.
The closeness of this Trent Bridge game makes it all the more regrettable that this otherwise fabulous contest was disfigured by yet another important and hideously mistaken umpiring decision. Australian batsmen Simon Katich was given out leg before wicket, at a time when he was batting very well and might have gone on to help set England a lot more than 129 to win. We all make mistakes. Umpires cannot be infallible. But on this occasion, technologically generated evidence made it clear to everyone before the unfortunate Katich had even walked off the pitch that the ball (a) pitched outside the leg stump, and (b) would have gone over the top of the stumps, and that the umpire was accordingly wrong on both counts to give him out.
Some erroneous decisions by cricket umpires take many minutes to deconstruct fully, but this Katich decision was immediately revealed to be wrong. So, if the umpires had had the same technology in their hands as the commentators now have, not only would a correct decision have been given at a crucial juncture in this very close match; it would have been given with almost no delay.
The current circumstances, in which umpires are made public fools of within seconds of giving their verdicts, cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely.
The LBW decision that did for Gilchrist also looked dodgy, but, assuming that I understand the finer points of the LBW law, the technology was able to show that this decision was almost certainly right. But that just means that the umpire guessed right, this time. He should not have had to guess. He should have known.
Cameras are already used to settle run outs, to the general satisfaction of all involved. Today, cameras were used to show that a possible run out was not, because England’s wicketkeeper had knocked the bails off before the ball arrived, and again to establish that the catch which later on dismissed Andrew Strauss was properly held and had not hit the ground first. There was a bit of a delay, but not an excessive one given the importance of such decisions.
I understand how this situation has arisen. This clever LBW technology could not immediately be given to the umpires. It had to be refined and proved to be satisfactory. But now it has proved itself. We all – fans and players alike – now trust its verdicts more than we trust the umpires. Had the umpires had it in their hands today, who knows how the result might have gone? Who knows how many runs England might have had to chase in their final innings?
All of which made the characteristically sporting manner in which the Aussies took their defeat today all the more impressive. Considering how little practice they have had at it during the last fifteen years, they are good losers.
Perfect 10, an adult website, sued Google last November for infringing upon its copyrighted material, its trademarks and, to get bang for their bucks, unfair competition. The original complaint was covered by Wendy Seltzer.
Now, Perfect 10 has requested that Google is prevented from showing any of their copyrighted images. Their argument is that, through advertisements accompanying these images, Google profits from their display even though it is perceived to be a free search engine:
Perfect 10 sued Google in November of 2004. It says that Google is displaying hundreds of thousands of adult images, “from the most tame to the most exceedingly explicit, to draw massive traffic to its website, which it is converting into hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising revenue.”
Perfect 10 claims that under the guise of being a search engine, Google is displaying, free of charge, thousands of copies of the best images from Perfect 10, Playboy, nude scenes from major movies, nude images of supermodels, as well as extremely explicit images of all kinds.
Dr. Norm Zada, the founder of Perfect 10, argues that the business model of Google, whereby images can be displayed and downloaded for free without accessing the original website, reduces the profitability of pay-per-view pornographic websites. Furthermore, as the majority of searches are for pornographic images, this represents a misappropriation of intellectual property, since Google depends upon lust for its profits, at the expense of companies like Perfect 10.
Overture’s Key Selector Tool indicates that most searches on the internet are sex-related,” says Zada. “Google’s extraordinary gain in market cap from nothing a few years ago to close to eighty billion dollars, is more due to their massive misappropriation of intellectual property than anything else,” says Zada.
This court case represents an attack upon the business model of Google. It also demonstrates the unresolved tensions between the perceptions of intellectual property that pervade new and old media. Zada explains why his injunction is beneficial to other traditional media outlets:
Any website publisher can sign up for Google AdSense. It’s an easy way for publishers to display Google ads – those being paid for by its AdWords customers – on their content pages. AdWords customers pay Google and Google pays a commission to AdSense publishers. So Google can maximise its revenues by maximising the traffic that it sends to AdSense affiliates. Perfect 10 does not suggest that Google is weighting its search results in favour of AdSense-supported sites; but it does argue that Google profits directly from the popularity of porn, and its particular concern is that it profits from Perfect 10’s porn that has been stolen by others.
Zada believes that the outcome of Perfect 10’s motion for preliminary injunction should have a major impact not only on Perfect 10, but also on traditional media outlets which are losing the ad revenue war to search engines, in part because of all the nude and semi-nude images search engines offer for free.
Right now, he says, consumers who want to view a nude scene involving Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, or other Hollywood beauties, can view that scene for free by visiting a search engine without purchasing the DVD. “If all an infringer needs to avoid liability is to provide some sort of a ‘search function,’ that will be the end of intellectual property in this country,” says Zada.
Is this a principled defence of intellectual property or an opportunistic front in the war against the new media?
“Organic farming has been put forward as one of the major pillars of a new, more-sustainable human society that would be “kinder to the earth”. Unfortunately, organic farming cannot deliver on that promise. In fact, organic farming is an imminent danger to the world’s wildlife and hazard to the health of its own consumers.”
Dennis Avery, quoted in Fearing Food, (page 3) by Roger Bate and Julian Morris.
Something for George Moonbat to ponder, I reckon.
I do not really believe this, but it makes a good story:
The man who sparked the flat tax revolution is former Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar. He governed his country from 1992 to 1995 and from 1999 to 2002. When the historian became Prime Minister in 1992 at the age of 32 he knew nothing about economy. Laar’s area of expertise were Europe’s 19th-century national movements. “It is very fortunate that I was not an economist,” he says. “I had read only one book on economics – Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose.” I was so ignorant at the time that I thought that what Friedman wrote about the benefits of privatisation, the flat tax and the abolition of all customs rights, was the result of economic reforms that had been put into practice in the West. It seemed common sense to me and, as I thought it had already been done everywhere, I simply introduced it in Estonia, despite warnings from Estonian economists that it could not be done. They said it was as impossible as walking on water. We did it: we just walked on the water because we did not know that it was impossible.”
Shrewd politicians often pretend to be dumber than they are, if only so that they can look well-meaningly sheepish instead of thoroughly ridiculous when things go wrong. So, I take Laar’s claim to ignorance of economics and of economic policy outside Estonia with a pinch of salt. But what does not seem to be in doubt is the importance that a good book can have, and good ideas in general. If only the same did not apply to bad books and bad ideas.
I visited Estonia briefly in 1991, for a Libertarian International gathering in Tallin. I am not surprised that the Estonians are now doing well. They struck me as very level-headed and efficient people. They of course have a long mercantile tradition as a result of their proximity to and seaborne trade with Scandinavia. Those places are not called the “Baltic” states for nothing.
I like to interrupt TV coverage of test cricket with CEEFAX news of about other cricket matches, and this afternoon the news trickled through that England were (probably) winning – and then that they had finally won – the Ashes!
The ladies of Australia have had the same armlock on the Female Ashes as their menfolk have had on the Male Ashes in recent years, only more so. But today the English ladies beat the Australian ladies by 6 wickets to clinch a series win. With luck, England will get the Male Ashes back this summer as well. The men of Australia followed on today at Trent Bridge, and the men of England are well placed to get a win tomorrow and go one up with one to play in their series. Here’s to us limeys making it a double.
I wonder if a lady will ever play international cricket for her men’s team, so to speak. Cricket is not a game that is wholly conditional on brawn, although you do have to be fit, of course. Some of the greatest ever batsmen, like Bradman, Gavaskar and Tendulkar to name but three, have been quite small men. And bowlers, even quick ones, do not have to be giants either. And great slow bowlers can be quite small, and even physically handicapped. So, even if a female physique may be a handicap, it may one day be overcome.
Meanwhile the usual low-level politico-sporting storm rumbles and bumbles along about whether Civilisation ought, still, to be playing cricket games against Zimbabwe. At one time I was in the habit of making a bit of a fuss about such games here, because it was a way to make a fuss about Zimbabwe. But all the world that cares now knows that Robert Mugabe is ruining that unhappy country and the only question is whether someone can end his life and/or despotic reign before natural causes finally oblige. Other African rulers do not want anything done, because this might set a dangerous precedent. I mean, what kind of place would Africa become if merely being a thieving and destructive monster meant that you lost your job as tyrant? Very different, that is for damn sure. And since the rest of the world is disinclined to revive White Imperialism and barge in and rearrange matters without lots of local consent – the only new imperialists in Africa these days are the Chinese, and they are there for the minerals, not to take up the Yellow Man’s Burden – it really does not matter what the cricketers do about Zimbabwe. Playing against the current politically deranged Zimbabwe team and thrashing it probably does just as much good (and just as little) as refusing to play against it.
The fact that the leaders of the Sunni minority oppose a federal structure for Iraq, and have the ability to torpedo the new constitution, does not change the reality on the ground that Iraq is already in effect three nations.
The Kurds in particular have both an effective local administration and by far the best militias to call on if needed. The Kurdish situation is also helped by the fact that it was really the Peshmerga who moved into the vacuum and liberated the Kurdish region whilst US and British forces smashed Saddam’s armies in the south.
Eventually if the Kurds do not get the autonomy they desire, it is just a matter of time before they simply secede and I rather doubt the US had either the stomach or the inclination to use force to prevent what is a purely internal matter for the Iraqis and Kurds. Any in any case, so what if Iraq breaks up? The obsession with ‘stability’ and countering Iran is what lead the West to unwisely back Saddam Hussain for so many years and look where that got everyone in the end.
An independent Kurdish Northern Iraq may give the Turks cause to fret (unfortunate but them’s the breaks) and give Iran acute dyspepsia (which has to be a good thing) because Kurdish success in Iraq will no doubt give the Kurdish minorities elsewhere ideas above their station. However I fail to see how thwarting long standing Kurdish aspirations is in the interests of the US and UK, particularly as the Kurds have been quite amenable to US interests as of late and have shown themselves to be the sharpest operators.
Of course the prospect of a Shi’ite Islamic Republic of Southern Iraq is not very agreeable but it at least has the virtue of allowing more tailored pressures to be put on the three constituent parts of ‘Iraq’ rather than a probably futile one-size-fits-all constitution which in any case may fall apart as soon as western forces pull out.
An Iraq of highly autonomous cantons is probably the best that Iraq’s Sunni politicos have any right to expect because the alternative is never going to be a return to the ‘good old days’ of Sunni dominance and centralised rule from Baghdad, it is going to be splitting the county in three independent parts. And there is something to be said for that anyway. To hell with ‘nation building’… sometimes the cause of liberty (and probably long term stability too) may be served by a bit of ‘nation wrecking’.
There is an article in The Spectator which perfectly sums up the expression “The state is not your friend” that described the nightmarish encounter someone had with the officious little shits that are employed to police our borders and protect us from middle class Australian women.
It should be only under the most extraordinary circumstances in which an agent of the state should be able to legally refuse to give you their name and thereby avoid personal responsibility for their actions. Read the article and then ponder the thesis that the reason many people take jobs in places like the Immigration service is to satisfy a psychological need to exert arbitrary power over others. This is your tax money at work.
Is there anything, anything, now going on in what used to be called, either with delicate euphemism or with a sneer, the “developing world”, but which now really is the developing world, that is more encouraging than the rapid spread throughout said world of portable telephones?
I have just done a piece for the ASI blog about this process in Africa, linking to this New York Times article. And the Private Sector Development blog (whom I have just added to my personal blogroll here), in addition to supplying the same link today, have also linked to of a recent Economist piece on the same subject. Pablo Halkyard also links to this Wall Street Journal piece.
It is not all good news. It never is. Governments all over the place are now demanding extortionate connection taxes, to the point where the tax bill is starting seriously to outweigh what would have been the regular cost. Sounds like those cheap European air tickets that I sometimes buy on the internet for peanuts, where the government then charges me peanuts times four. Nevertheless, even there the news is partly good, because at least some governments are learning that if they cut connection taxes down to something more in line with the extreme cheapness of the service itself, people are more ready to pay such taxes. That is because illegal phones are more likely to go wrong and harder to get mended if they do go wrong. Is the unwillingness of people to pay big taxes good news or is their willingness to pay small taxes bad news? You decide.
The portable phone quote that made me smile the most this morning was this, from the Economist piece:
(Oh, and the “digital divide” vanishes, too.)
I especially like the brackets.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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