(Note to Alice and others like her: While this may initially seem to be a post about politics and the internet, I promise that if you keep reading you’ll see I’m actually making a wider, hopefully less boring point).
Recently I’ve been reading up on Labor’s broadband proposal. My gut feeling was that any half-decent proposal to roll out ‘true’ broadband infrastructure is better than doing nothing (the Libs), while doing nothing is way better than handing it all to an evil, evil monopoly (Telstra). But, not knowing much of the detail of Labor’s plan, I’ve been doing the rounds on the internet (which is, rather ironically, shaped to 64kb at our work at the moment) to try and find out more.
One of my first ports of call was Joshua Gans’ blog. He’s an economist for the people, and has written some very sensible stuff about the economic impact of copyright reform, as well as creating the iTunes index. You could say I highly respect his opinion or, put another way, I think he is a ‘dude’ while concurrently he could lay claim to being ‘the shit’.
So I was somewhat perplexed to see that he’s… not really all that enthused about Labor’s plan. In fact, he doesn’t seem convinced that Australia needs better broadband at all. The limbs of Gans’ argument with which I most violently disagree are:
1) We’re so far behind most other economically developed nations in terms of broadband speed that it’s futile to even attempt to catch up.
2) Australians don’t need faster broadband to be economically competitive. Fast broadband is a luxury, used only by the rich for entertainment, so the Government shouldn’t subsidise its establishment.
On a personal level, this makes me feel extremely uneasy. What’s happening here is that Joshua Gans, someone whose opinion I respect, who ‘gets it’, and who has a great deal more knowledge and insight into the relevant subject than I do, has put forward an opinion I think is rubbish. Clearly, we can’t both be right. Either I’m wrong or he is.
On the one hand, I tend to believe that the opinion I hold is the correct one – otherwise it wouldn’t be my opinion. But objectively, I know that all other things being equal, in matters of economics Joshua Gans’ opinion is more likely to be valid than mine. Cause, y’know, it’s what he’s trained to do, it’s what he does, and I think he’s pretty good at it.
The immediate effect of all this is that I’ve come to doubt my judgement about the issue. I keep asking myself, what am I not understanding about this? But what really sucks is that no matter the outcome, I’ve made an error of judgement. Either I’m wrong about the need for fast broadband, or I was wrong in thinking that Joshua Gans was a switched on guy.
Have you guys ever had a similar experience? Has someone whose opinion you really respected ever come out with a view you totally opposed?
PS: Apparently the humble blog is dying. Perhaps that’s why no one’s been contributing lately…
6 comments:
How did this have any other content then the internet and politics?
I was really intrigued by this post. It is not the ordinary thing that pops up on my Wordpress dashboard (which alerts us when other blogs link to us).
First of all, I think that it is perfectly reasonable to (a) agree with someone most of the time and (b) not agree with them on something you feel strongly about. It happens to me all of the time.
Second, there is another factor here: the broadband issue is clouded by uncertainty. We only have to look back ten years and remember what we did not know then about the Internet, let alone broadband. At that time, only academics and journalists -- whom it impacted on greatly -- were enthusiastic. Most households didn't even have a computer and a modem was something you bought separately. That clearly is no longer the case. But many people -- especially the government -- did not know that. But somehow we got a roll-out and adoption anyway.
What that uncertainty means is that reasonable people will get it wrong. So on high speed broadband (and I stress that high speed), I am unconvinced that everyone in Australia needs it and needs it so badly that it requires a government handout. Let's face it, this is convincing whereas the majority of the Australian population are not convinced we all need tertiary education. Seems surprising to me.
But we can see the future: it is already there in Japan and South Korea. No one would like more than me to see that all the social benefits -- education, health, etc, were flowing to those countries from getting their first. How easy would that make all this. It would be a no-brainer.
But when I was asked for CEDA to look at this last year -- and before then I was a believer that high speed broadband was a must right now -- all of the use was for downloading existing videos and movies, a bit of video conferencing and a vast amount of multi-player gaming. This was not the list of things that I would put on the government expenditure bill. And, yes, that looks like a luxury to me.
Nonetheless, I agree with you that doing nothing is worse than leaving it to Telstra (and I have said that). But my response has been whether we need the whole lot. How about spending $1 billion on areas that really need broadband upgrades (outlying areas that could benefit from education and health being at reasonable speeds and clusters that small businesses who really need it can move to). Is that really so controversial?
Anyhow, back to the point of your post, I was wrong in my presumptions about broadband before I was asked to study it more closely. And I have had to face the ire of alot of people I like by stating my current views on this.
But nonetheless, I throw enough loopy ideas out there (why just this week I argued we should make daylight savings adjustments continuous and daily!) that if reasonable people don't sometimes think I am wrong then they could hardly be viewed as reasonable.
Wow Andrew, I think a blog that was originally only meant for a certain few is going to get a lot more traffic over the next few days now ;)
I don't think your blog is going to die so easily now. Well, give it another couple of weeks anyway. Or a day or two.
Well, that was unexpected! Such is the power of the internet (basic broadband infrastructure notwithstanding)...
I've made a short reply to Joshua's comment and subsequent post over at his blog. I'd link to the post, but for some reason the very thought of doing so gives me the heebie jeebies :)
Hi Andrew
As a co-author of Joshua's can I simply say that he is often wrong but fortunately has his colleagues to correct him!
Thanks...
Caltel
COMPUTERS
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