Another Oxford Union debating trick

Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP, in his Telegraph blog entry:

for much of the post-war era, German (or West German) governments have tended to fall between elections, as a result of shifting parliamentary coalitions, rather than at elections.

and the swift rebuttal from political scientist, and election specialist, Matthew Shugart:

There is one key problem with that argument: it is false. We could grant him the example of the FDP switching partners in 1982 and changingd a government from SPD-led to CDU-led before the end of a term. At least in recent decades, that is the only example we could grant him.

Yet another example of how the Oxford Union debating style grooms persuasive speakers that are mercenary about their facts. From James Fallows’ 1991 criticism of the Economist’s grip on the American political class:

The other ugly English trait promoting The Economist’s success in America is the Oxford Union argumentative style. At its epitome, it involves a stance so cocksure of its rightness and superiority that it would be a shame to freight it with mere fact.

American debate contests involve grinding, yearlong concentration on one doughy issue, like arms control. The forte of Oxford-style debate is to be able to sound certain and convincing about a topic pulled out of the air a few minutes before, such as “Resolved: That women are not the fairer sex.” (The BBC radio shows “My Word” and “My Music,” carried on National Public Radio, give a sample of the desired impromptu glibness.)

Technorati Tags: debate, elections, politics, proportional-representation

On Indonesian health reform

From the Jakarta Globe, news that a health bill, first tabulated in 2002, has finally passed. Among its provisions is an item that sounds humane in principle:

In many ways, the new health law is groundbreaking in that it cuts down to size the money-making players in the health industry. For example, hospitals — both state-run and private — are no longer allowed to reject patients who lack the financial means to seek medical care.

This is good news, but how fairly will this be implemented in practice? The cynic in me is imagining that this could be used to bankrupt certain hospitals by directing a throng of too-poor-to-pay patients at their doorsteps, while making sure that well-connected hospitals get mostly paying patients. Would anyone really prosecute the Army Hospital, or Pertamina, for example?

The part that allows for regulation of drug prices is good, to a certain point. Dictating prices by fiat is not likely to be successful — note the failure of California’s electricity liberalization during the tenure of Gov. Gray Davis: bulk prices are allowed to float, while a ceiling cap is placed on retail prices. Unscrupulous energy traders such as Enron were able to come in and artificially drive up the retail price, squeezing the state government and retail electricity providers. Would the government really be able to get pharmaceutical companies to agree on cost? Is it not better to set up a single purchasing agency that is able to coördinate generic drug purchases, and thus negotiate a lower price, than to wish the drug prices themselves to (inevitably) unrealistic numbers? The example of shortages of meat and dairy products in oil-rich Venezuela suggests the same — price decrees do not work in a market economy.

Still, some parts of the bill are unquestionably positive:

While the House deserves credit for passing the revamped health bill, which the government submitted in 2002, it is noteworthy that it took them seven years to do so. A sticky issue that prevented the bill from being passed more quickly is abortion. Not surprisingly, religion-driven political parties balked at even discussing the subject.

But the bill is designed to be accepted in its entirety, and its rejection would have meant the poor would not be able to enjoy the benefits embedded in it.

Thankfully, cooler heads ultimately prevailed, with the new law allowing for abortion in specific situations.

Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, is thus ahead of most Catholic-majority Catholic developing countries (and even some developed ones such as Ireland!) in ensuring reproductive rights. Again, one could imagine the trumped-up backlash that could be fomented to target specific abortion providers — such abhorrent acts happen in the United States, after all — but on paper, at the very least, it is a welcome development.

On “Inflection Point”

My comments for the latest I, Cringely column, Inflection Point (May 12, 2005):

Dear Bob,

I really enjoy reading your “Inflection Point” article, but I question
your interpretation about the computing powers it require.. as I understand the Google FAQ for it, it would seem that the Google servers just act as normal proxy servers, with most of the “smarts” being done by the client, running on the user’s computer. The only difference as far as the server is concerned is being able to send only the changed parts of a page instead of the full page – again, this requires processing on the client-side to update the local cache.

As for interactive formats like Flash, rendering them on the server makes no sense – the idea of a Web Accelerator is to decrease latency, not increase it. Running Flash on a Google server would be akin to, say, running a VNC or Apple Remote Desktop session. The bandwith required to transmit at 15 fps, say, the content of the Flash window, plus the computational overhead of doing the video encoding on the fly, plus the lack of responsiveness experienced by the user as any response entered has to travel to the Google server and back, makes this a non-starter.

Very intriguing analysis on the X-box 360 and Yahoo Music Engine; it is quite interesting to see how Microsoft’s OEMs are going to respond to the X-box. Not to mention Intel! There is something worrying about both Google and Yahoo’s recent software releases, though. Google Desktop and Web Accelerator, and Yahoo Music Engine are all Windows/x86 only. Granted that Google Desktop would make no sense on a Mac, but as a Mac+Linux user I am rather concerned by Yahoo’s push. Especially since Real, which according to your analysis stands to lose quite a bit from Yahoo’s push, is the most Linux-friendly of media software providers. One only hope they could avoid Netscape’s fate – the company they seem to parallel closely (both are at some point
much-criticized for bloat, and then announced open-source initiatives) – since at this point, it still takes a stable corporate presence to push video standards..

Regards,

–
Michel Salim