By B.P.T., on December 19th, 2011
Thanks to Darwin Barton
Having a house is great. I love having a garage to park in, I love having separate room for my office and my husband’s “man cave.” I really love having a fenced in backyard for our dog and cat. I don’t love worrying about burglary, or fire, or flood. Life was most definitely a lot easier before I had any of these responsibilities. It’s funny that I so completely ignored my parents when they cautioned me to enjoy my “responsibility free” life when I was younger. I’m sure I’ll pass the same advice on to my future children, and I’m sure they will ignore it, just as I did. The one thing that saves my sanity is having a adt. This service allows me to worry at least a little less. I know my house is being monitored even in the event that I’m away when disaster strikes. While it obviously can’t prevent a fire, the service can ensure that the proper authorities are contacted when necessary. This is definitely another piece of advice I’ll pass on to my children—sign up for an alarm monitoring service!
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By Winton Bates, on November 17th, 2009
Prosperity. However, my initial reaction when I first looked at the index was that it was more like an index of the quality of life or well-being than of prosperity. My perception of prosperity was too narrow. One of the purposes of the index is apparently to encourage people ‘to take a holistic view of prosperity’. The authors might have a point. Dictionary definitions of prosperity don’t focus solely on economics – they suggest that prosperous is synonymous with flourishing, successful and thriving.
The index has nine components or sub-indexes:
• Economic fundamentals
• Entrepreneurship and innovation
• Democratic institutions
• Education
• Health
• Safety and security
• Governance
• Personal freedom
• Social capital.
Is this a comprehensive list of factors affecting human flourishing? One apparent omission is environmental quality. Although this is considered to some degree in the indicators used for health, I get the impression that the authors’ view of prosperity does not place much value on the enjoyment that people obtain from the natural environment. I wonder whether that view is backed up by research findings.
The main problem I have with this report is that I am not sure how much substance lies behind it. The presentation is incredibly smooth, mainly because it is completely uninterrupted by references to research papers or data sources. The preface suggests that information on data sources is available on the prosperity web site. All I could find on that site, however, apart from the acknowledgement of input from research consultancy, Oxford Analytica, is a statement that the index draws on the Gallup World Poll and other data and includes only factors for which a statistical link with material wealth or life satisfaction can be shown.
The Legatum Institute claims to be a think tank. It seems to me that no organisation claiming to be a think tank should publish research findings without making sure that the underlying research is open to public scrutiny.
However, leaving aside my doubts, this report is worth looking at just to view the chart showing that countries with high prosperity tend to have high performance on all sub-indexes and those with low prosperity have low performance on nearly all sub-indexes.
By Winton Bates, on October 22nd, 2009
In my last post, (Is there such a thing as a good society?) I suggested that a good society would have good institutions – norms and laws that are good for its members.
In thinking about the characteristics of a good society different people tend to emphasise different things that they consider to be important e.g. egalitarianism, personal freedom, moral values and spirituality. Rather than just agreeing to differ I think it might be useful to try to identify some characteristics of a good society that nearly everyone would agree to be important. Then it would be possible to consider what evidence might be available about the nature of the institutions that would foster those characteristics. This might enable us to develop a view about the nature of the institutions of a good society that would be widely accepted.
So, what are the characteristics of a good society? First, as I suggested in my last post, the most important characteristic of a good society is a set of institutions that enable its members to live together in peace. This entails an absence major threats to persons or property such as those associated with civil war, high levels of corruption and absence of rule of law. The institutions should also prevent use of the coercive powers of the state by despots or influential interest groups to enrich themselves at the expense of others or to restrict the freedom of others to choose how they will live their lives. Institutions that promote the peaceful co-existence of individuals and groups with differing interests and values are obviously a necessary condition for human flourishing.
Second, nearly everyone would agree that a good society would provide its members with opportunities to flourish – to have more of the things that are good for humans to have. This would include opportunities to live long and healthy lives, economic opportunities, opportunities for educational and cultural pursuits, opportunities to make important decisions affecting themselves and their families and opportunities to participate in political processes.
Why focus on opportunities rather than outcomes? Good institutions can make it possible for humans to flourish but humans can’t be made to flourish – for much the same reasons as you can lead to water but can’t make it drink. Human flourishing is an inherently self-directed process. The best we can hope for is a set of institutions that will maximize the probability that any individual chosen at random will be a flourishing individual.
Third, I think there would be widespread agreement that a good society would provide its members with a degree of security against potential threats to individual flourishing. For example it would endeavour to maintain good foreign relations and provide national defence capability sufficient to deter foreign aggression; it would maintain safeguards against government corruption and misuse of the coercive powers of the state (e.g. processes that make it difficult for narrow interest groups to acquire or maintain disproportionate influence in policy-making processes and processes for removal of governments that do not have popular support); it would maintain appropriate machinery to prevent or deal with environmental disasters; it would prevent “the tragedy of the commons” by maintaining appropriate institutions for ownership, pricing and use of natural resources; and it would provide members with a degree of personal economic security against misfortunes such as accidents, ill-health and unemployment.
What evidence do we have about the institutions that tend to foster these characteristics of a good society? An attempt to answer that question will be left to a later post.
By Bron Suchecki, on September 8th, 2009
Question from a reader:
“I have been acquiring Perth Mint silver and gold in the depository scheme and am concerned about confiscation issues in the long term. Probably it will not happen, but again given the mindlessness of recent policy decisions there is no reason why the Australian government could not just decide to tax the gains at a punitive level – ‘because people are making unfair gains from it’ or some other vacuous reason. Seems to me the main risk is not holding bullion, but also the ‘privacy risk’ if you want to call it that, that the government knows that you’ve got it and can therefore either tax it highly or confiscate it. Are you able to make comment about how best to acquire completely private gold and silver (ie no record of the sale therefore no one knows you’ve got it and therefore can’t confiscate it), in quantities of up to 100 oz?”
The scenario you suggest is certainly probable in any country. In an environment where other assets have declined and gold is $5000, the politics of envy may come into play. Classic example of this is the Luxury Car Tax introduced in Australia in 1986. While one can expect that a populist “gold profits tax” would get support, I think it is an open question as to whether it will go down well in Western Australia considering the high profile of gold mining in this state.
As I discuss in Australian Gold Confiscation, secessionism would be “in play” in such an environment. A “gold profits tax” could be considered as an Eastern States Federalist tax grab on Western Australia’s wealth, and could provide yet another reason to secede.
As to Government knowledge of your gold, note that the law only requires Australian bullion dealers to record your identity for purchases above $5000, not report them (unless you give cause for the bullion dealer to believe it is a suspicious transaction).
Therefore for the Government to confiscate, it will first need to personally visit each bullion dealer and go through their sale records. This gives you a bit of time between announcement of confiscation and a knock on your door. It is possible that the data collection will happen in advance of an announcement, but it is likely that rumors would circulate quickly.
In any case, those looking to take possession of physical gold should always consider the privacy implications. The risk here is a thief getting hold of the records of a bullion dealer or courier company. One needs to weigh up the convenience and cost of a telephone or Internet sale (which will leave records) versus a cash and carry purchase from your local bullion dealer.
The only way to protect yourself against this risk is to establish a relationship with your local bullion dealer and buy in cash under the relevant reporting/recording limit ($5000 in Australia). There is nothing illegal about buying a little gold with each pay packet, and most bullion dealers would understand that you are a prudent saver and not a drug dealer. But doing twenty $4990 transactions twenty days in a row would be considered a suspicious transaction and reportable.
For those whose personal circumstances mean the risk of theft is greater than privacy/confiscation considerations and thus choose to store their gold in a facility, just a word of warning not to get tricky with your identification. It needs to be clear to the facility operator who is the beneficial holder of the gold, otherwise you may have trouble establishing title to it (or being impersonated) in the future.
For example, even if there were no account identification requirements for bullion, the Perth Mint Depository would still want photo identification as an additional security measure. It is really the only way we can ensure that the person standing at our doors to collect your metal is you.
By way of example, a couple of years ago we had a call from a person who gave us an account number and account name and wanted to sell. However, he did not have the password, nor was he a signatory, so we could not take his instruction or reveal any details of the account. He gave us details, like purchase dates and amounts, that did correlate exactly with the account, but we couldn’t confirm or deny any of that – because he was not identified on the account. He became extremely agitated, but to no avail.
It turned out that he had the account opened in the name of a company by a broker/agent of his and they were the nominee directors and signatories. This privacy mechanism may have sounded good at the time, and maybe he had some other agreement with the broker to ensure they could not abscond with his metal. However, whatever structure he put in place, he had not considered the scenario where his broker was arrested and put in jail!
Not being keen contact his broker in jail, there was no way for him to get the broker to give us an instruction. He therefore had to wait, unsure if the broker had cleaned out his account. There is a happy ending to the story, as the broker did eventually get out of jail (but it was some months) and put in the sale instruction for him. In some cases, privacy may be too much of a good thing. 
By Mary Nichols, on July 23rd, 2008
With soaring fuel prices adversely affecting consumers and businesses throughout the world, this might be a good time for employers to explore or reexamine the possible benefits of teleworking. Also often referred to as telecommuting, a name which reflects the idea of technological communications replacing the traditional commute to work, telework involves regularly working at home or in another location remote from one’s employer at least some of the time.
The current situation is reminiscent of the oil crises of the 1970s, when the pressures of rising transportation costs and the promises of new technology first sparked off interest in teleworking. Futurist authors such as Alvin Toffler were soon predicting that traditional working patterns would be dramatically changed by telework which would, it was often argued, bring about additional benefits such as improved productivity and reduced costs for employers as well as an improved work-home life balance for their staff.
The pace and nature of technological change since then has far exceeded the expectations of many 1970s futurists, with the Internet and the widespread use of portable computers and handheld devices making it theoretically possible for people to work almost anywhere. Yet on the surface, at least, there is little evidence that these technologies have been used to transform working practices to the extent expected.
International Comparisons
From the available data, it appears that teleworking has been taken up at a faster pace and to a greater degree in the U.S. than in other countries. In the U.S., the growth in telework has been boosted by the championing effects of the government’s own telework initiative as well as the perceived wisdom following the September 11 terrorist attacks of having dispersed, less vulnerable workforces. An IDC survey reported that 2.44 million employees were working at home full-time in 2007, a 30% increase since 2005, while a WorldatWork survey estimated that 12.4 million employees were being allowed to work from home at least one day each month in 2006, an increase of 63% since 2004. According to an Office of Personnel Management survey, the number of federal employees who regularly telework increased by 37% between 2003 and 2004, reaching 140,694.
Directly comparable recent data on teleworking among employees in European countries is not readily available, but it was estimated in 2001 that there were a total of 2.2 million teleworkers in the UK, including both employees and the self-employed, an increase of up to 70% since 1997, and with the fastest growth among employees teleworking. The percentage of employees teleworking in the UK at this time was reported to be slightly above average when compared with nine other European countries: Finland had the highest percentage of employees teleworking and Germany and France the lowest.
Recently, there have been reports that some major U.S. employers who have traditionally been heavy users of teleworking, including the federal government, have been bringing teleworkers back into office environments. One of the main reasons for their apparent reversal in policy, despite claims that they still support teleworking, is a reported concern about data security; another is the view that teams work better when co-located. Anecdotally, these decisions are reported to be unpopular with many of the employees affected, some of whom have opted to leave their companies rather than revert to more traditional working arrangements. Decisions to reduce rather than increase opportunities for teleworking may prove to somewhat short-sighted in the face of impending recruitment pressures relating to demographic changes, let alone the rising fuel costs which may lead people to seek jobs closer to home if teleworking is not an option.
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