But as a writer, there’s a different challenge in writing for a specific audience or in a particular format. This is part of the reason I’ve become an official  blogger at Telstra Exchange (TEX). Writing for TEX means pushing ones self to write to someone else’s requirements.

For example,  whilst conciseness is something I strive for , my more analytical posts tend to be around a thousand words, or even longer. By contrast, the recommended word count for TEX is about half that. Sticking to the suggested limits requires careful selection of both the blog topic and the key points to be covered.  It’s a challenge, but being able to work within the guidelines and still produce a post I’m happy with is quite rewarding.

The other reason for blogging at TEX is exposure.  My first post at TEX was a review of Kindle for Android, and in one afternoon it’s generated more comments, likes and shares than anything posted on MinimalState. TEX  looks like being a good platform for building a personal blogging brand, which can hopefully be leveraged to boost the profile of MinimalState.

So whilst there will still be new and original posts appearing here at MinimalSate, I’ll also be directing readers to posts on TEX.  And if you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to see covered here or at TEX, please  let me know.

Some time ago, I was going to post on the ‘Population Crisis’ as it had been reported at the time (months ago) and why I though, generally speaking, it was rubbish. I held off, as accurate statistics were tricky to get hold of, and I’m generally pretty easy to distract. I blame Twitter.

Julie has gone and put our population, and the illegal immigrant portion thereof, back in the spotlight. (A great speech, I recommend you read in its entirety. It is somewhat lengthy, feel free to finish this before you do.)

The real population crisis, is much, much worse.

Here’s the thing about population. There’s a lot of it. Not just here, but globally. We breed like rabbits. No – scratch that – like humans, and it seems the fruits of ‘keeping warm’ during the long, cold winter months have led to a somewhat unbalanced ecosystem. The best digestible write up on this I’ve seen to date comes from Greenpeace co-founder and Captain of the Sea Shepard, Paul Watson. (Who, being an ecological activist since 1968, is somewhat ahead of the game as far as I’m concerned)

Here’s the other thing. Check out a population density map.

See how nice and low density Australia’s population is? Now look up, and to the left a little – and you find yourself espying the Globe’s most densely populated areas.

Of course, we know that that 80% of our population is huddled against the shoreline, afraid of the hot, arid, spidery death that awaits us all inland, but it’s not brain surgery people – the world is running out of room.

And conveniently for the folks that currently have the least room – there’s a big, open (looking) space not so far away – surely, being the kind, generous, diplomatic and friendly nation they promote themselves as being, that place could take in some of the overflow. Even if they do eat such strange and universally despised ‘foods’ like Vegemite.

I’m not suggesting we’ll be overwhelmed by the ‘Mongolian Menace‘ so feared by our predecessors and the Federal Council of Australasia anytime soon – but at some point in the future, assuming we don’t all suddenly realize that China might be on to something with the whole One Child thing, the population waters will rise, and they’ll all need to go somewhere. In 40, 60, even 100 years time, we will need to learn how to accept each other’s culture, language, behaviours and skin colour – and learn how to truly share this planet. All of us.

So yes, detractors – there is a population problem, but realistically, immigration policy doesn’t have a lot to do with it. Pragmatically, it’s good to see that JG has this at the (near) top of her agenda as PM, and now she’s opened the can, let’s see how quickly, and in how many ways our underlying national racism can worm its way out.

It’s not the outspokenly prejudiced that I’m concerned about though – it’s the rest of us. You know, the one’s who “aren’t” racist.

I’ll wait a minute while your defensiveness dies back down as you detect the sarcasm. Good. Moving on then.

I’ve always thought that the way we use words and how a question is posed can give a valuable insight into it’s answer, and this one has always been a favourite of mine.

We seem to be asking a lot the question “Are we racist?”. To that I respond with another question. Who, exactly, is ‘we’?

I don’t suppose it’s our immigrant population. Obviously ‘they’ can’t be racist about themselves. You know, the ones who populate ‘our’ call centres and taxi ranks, causing no end of strife because they can’t speak ‘our’ language. I mean, ‘they’ only account for what, a mere 24% of our total population? (ABS, 2006) And you know, the very Federation of our Great Nation was established on the fear of this mob taking over.

‘We’ is probably not our indigenous population either. (Pause for seeming gross misuse of grammatical structure. In context, it makes sense, but it is painful to write I assure you.)

After all, ‘We’ apologised to ‘Them’ in 2008 about the whole ‘Stolen Generation‘ thing.  And you know, they probably migrated here over land bridges from Southern Asia anyway.

And definitely not visiting foreigners. We all know Sol Trujillo was just a Mexican after ‘our’ money, and his opinion didn’t really mean much anyway, so it was OK for him to go home. To Wyoming. In the USA. And don’t even get me started on Harry Connick Jr. He’s an American southerner of all things – what could he possibly know about racial prejudice?

So next time you ask yourself, or hear the question asked “Are we racist?”, try and make sure you answer with the understanding that when we say “we”, apparently, we’re asking about the attitude of those true-blue, first fleet, 7th generation Aussie whitefolk.

In which case, if you ask me – the original question kind of answers itself.

A father of 3, husband (of 1, just to clarify), IT Lead at a Telstra call centre and serial facebook application blocker, CollinsVU is a communication, technology and science buff with an  evangelistic appreciation of social media.

More information about CollinsVU can be found on the authors page or on his blog,  Prometheous Ink.

CollinsVU’s disclosures and disclaimer information can be found on the disclaimer page.

Arguably, banning certain forms of racist speech is merely sweeping the problem under the carpet. Racist attitudes will still exist, but will either be expressed in different ways or be hidden from general view. Both of these have undesirable outcomes.

Banning racists bumper stickers creates the risk that other language or symbols will be co-opted to the cause of racism. This is already happening to some extent with the Southern Cross. Writing in ‘The Punch’, Monique Ross laments how her once loved Southern Cross tatoo has become a magnet for rednecks and racists.

“Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am the owner of a Southern Cross tattoo. When I was sitting in the chair pretending it didn’t hurt, way back before the Cronulla riots and ‘F**k off we’re full’ shirts swept the nation, nobody else had the tattoo. Well, almost nobody else.

But my first ink was destined to join a league of Asian symbols, dolphins and hip-adorning butterflies. Everyone has it. And now I hang my head low, because (according to everyone who doesn’t sport a tattoo of the Australian icon) it may as well be a swastika. My patriotism has been mistaken for nationalism.

…

I wish my neck was big enough to add a little disclaimer – something that spells out exactly why I love my country enough to ink those stars on my neck. Something that tells the world that I love my country because it is multicultural, and not in spite of it. Something that slams racism with an iron fist, and then spits on the crushed remains. Something that tells everyone that yes, I can locate the Southern Cross formation in the sky and no, I have never draped an Australian flag around my back and hooned around drinking beer at music festivals.” (The Punch, 04/02/2010)

The W.A. governments proposed law therefore risks causing racism to branch out and absorb other symbols and language, muddying the waters when it comes to determining what and who, is and isn’t “racisist”.

The other problem with banning racist speech (including bumper stickers) is that it risks driving these attitudes out of public view without actually addressing the underlying problem. Banning bumper stickers is a bit like sticking a band-aid over a wound without treating the actual infection. Being openly forced to confront racism ought to remind everyone that there is still work to be done in changing the attitudes of certain elements of society.

As embarrassing, awkward and uncomfortable as it may make people feel, racist speech which is not an imminent incitement to violence should not be banned. Rather than covering up the racism in our midst by gagging racists, those who value Australia’s diverse and multicultural society need to respond by exercising their own speech. To paraphase from a great post at Skepticlawyer, the best response to racists is not drive them underground and pretend everything is ok, but to expose their ideas to “the disinfecting light of day“.

The US Republican party is taking that bet, having decided to not merely vote no on almost everything, but to slow or prevent executive appointments, and most recently, to reduce Federal agencies capacity to undertake hearings:

The Senate Commerce Committee postponed its oversight hearing of the Federal Communications Commission’s national broadband plan… There is a little-known rule in the Senate stating that hearings can’t happen after 2:00 p.m. each day without unanimous consent. However, every day… the Senate generally agrees… to waive this rule and continue with the necessary business of holding hearings. Republicans, however, are now refusing to give unanimous consent and are blocking the hearings. Benton Newsletter

An opposition party has a certain freedom. It can raise its voice in ways unconstrained by the reality of governing. This is a good thing, even if it leads to voter cynicism on finding that the previous opposition is not quite as high minded as it seemed.

Opposition also can be frustrating. Constructive engagement allows the government to take good ideas and claim them as their own, but most often there are few other avenues for influencing policy. Thus, there is a tendency for polarization, which is perhaps not ideal, but vocal criticism is valuable.

In the US, the Republican Party has taken the role of opposition to an extreme. The consequences for the American people as well as their political parties may be interesting, if not necessarily happy.

Our paper provides evidence for what we consider a surprising outcome: in the case of the new prescription drug program for Medicare enrollees, moving consumers from cash-paying status to membership in an insured group lowers optimal prices for branded prescription drugs below what they otherwise would be. This is surprising because the standard effect of insurance is to create inelastic demand and therefore elicit higher prices from a seller with market power (Duggan and Scott Morton 2006). However, the insurers that we study bundle insurance with a formulary and other mechanisms to create elastic demand. An individual consumer typically does not know which drugs are acceptable therapeutic substitutes; the consumer’s physician typically has poor knowledge of prices, especially negotiated prices; and any one consumer is too small a share of demand to negotiate with a pharmaceutical company. A prescription drug plan can potentially surmount all three hurdles.

Our evidence leads us to conclude that the formulary and other mechanisms perform the special role of allowing buyers to move market share among drugs with patent protection, thereby raising cross-price elasticities and lowering purchase prices (or reducing price increases) for branded drugs. This result contrasts with the common intuition that an uninsured consumer, paying at the margin for her own purchases, is the best tool with which to create competition in the market and impose pricing discipline on sellers. Certainly, this reasoning is at least part of the rationale behind many current policies in health care such as tax-free health care savings accounts (R. Glenn Hubbard, John F. Cogan, and Daniel P. Kessler 2005). Our evidence suggests that this picture is incomplete; for maximum effect, the consumer also needs to be part of a group that can substitute one provider for another.

Mark Duggan and Fiona Scott Morton, 2010, The Effect of Medicare Part D on Pharmaceutical Prices and Utilization, American Economic Review, 100(1) 590 – 607.