Don’t worry, Paul Graham, Australians aren’t all stupid
delimiter.com.au
delimiter.com.au
He made no friends with this one: http://delimiter.com.au/2010/07/15/how-long-can-atlassian-st...
(link to comment from Mike Cannon-Brooks, Atlassian cofounder)
Why is it that 90% of the stories we hear involving
Australia and technology are about stupid moves by the
government? Is there something unique about Australia?
So, for example, the retarded-policy bandwagon got rolling when Senator Harradine from Tasmania held the balance of power. He was able to block bills in the Senate and he used that power to get a lot of what he wanted, including bulk pork for Tasmania and some stupid internet policies.
In the current Senate one of the cross-benchers (who can sometimes affect the outcome of votes, depending on what the Greens and other cross-benchers do) is Senator Fielding, a member of a speaking-in-tongues, happy-clappy christian party. One of their pet peeves is pornography, they think it makes god most displeased. Hence the government has been dangling the filtering stuff for years to help secure his vote.
Technology-wise the current big argument is about a "National Broadband Network" a AU$50 billion (or $35 billion, depending on how you count) project to tear up Australia's copper network and replace it with fibre. To every home in the country. In US terms that's approximately like a $630 billion project (ie ~4.3% of GDP).
This deserves front billing. It will make us the envy of the western world when it comes to IT infrastructure and will hopefully drive a lot of innovation. We are doing this at a time when the rest of the world bar China (and thanks to China) is dealing with a crippling budget problem.
It isn't controversial so it doesn't hit the front page of (and I don't say this to be inflammatory) American centric sites/blogs/media. There are many sexy IT stories that appear in local media all the time, but don't get covered simply because of where the mainstream blogs focus themselves.
I have read similar complaints from non-silicon valley types.
It is highly controversial. I run a blog network including the "Terrible Trio" of Ozblog politics -- http://catallaxyfiles.com/, http://clubtroppo.com.au/ and http://larvatusprodeo.net/ -- and they spend a lot of time arguing the pros and cons. The posters on Larvatus Prodeo are generally bullish on the NBN, the posters on Catallaxy Files are quite anti-NBN.
While I personally don't think that there can be any sensible technical argument made about the supremacy of FTTH for performance, the technical argument is not the key issue. It's about the cost-benefit tradeoffs, which aren't being seriously explored.
Remember, this is the single largest infrastructure project in Australian history -- bigger in adjusted dollars than the Snowy Mountains Scheme -- it deserves some serious scrutiny on principle.
It's worrying that they are avoiding releasing any type of business plan or cost benefit analysis. Also it was strange that the plan was out for a long time before they mentioned anything about the fact that the network would be able to deliver far more than 100mbps over time to the home. Makes me think many in the government didn't really understand what they are actually rolling out.
Why would it be controversial on the world stage? It largely only affects us, it's too small an amount to place our government bonds under serious pressure and Australia's economy is only 1/50th of the world economy.
While it is very important for Australians to debate the issue, I don't see why anyone else would need to care. To be honest, arguments about port development in the Pilbara region are far more important to the world economy than FTTH.
> It isn't controversial so it doesn't hit the front page of American centric sites/blogs/media.
This is the context in which I said it was not controversial to which you said it was. I never said it WAS controversial on the world stage, in fact that was my original point.
You can't argue that every home with fiber isn't a beautiful idea. But then every highway should be 4 lanes, every school airconditioned and every hospital should have more beds than patients to fill them.
It's not a technological argument - it's an argument on (a) whether the cash spent is worth it and (b) should we be paying a private company (Telstra) to remove infrastructure to replace with a public monopoly. Or should we just organically grow the network and expand with fibre in new areas and spend the money where it is needed.
I for one are scared about the abuse and waste that will happen with a public project of this size and the one-size-fits-all mentality that goes with it. The monopoly will be protected by law to make it pay, and that's a bad thing for all involved. It matters not that it is a wholesale network, the pricing power (and power to keep the monopoly) will remain with a government official.
The Coalition policy was flawed in parts but I liked their approach a lot better.
Tell me how to run home Internet TV in the lounge, computer gaming in the bedroom, web browsing elsewhere in the house, all over a wireless broadband connection shared with every other house in range of the local telephone tower.
The idea that wireless has what it takes for the next 20 years of broadband innovation for every home in Australia is silly.
I am genuinely excited about the idea 1 one gigabit broadband to the home over fibre. The applications of this sort of power arent yet dreamed of, and the person who does the dreaming and executing stands to do very well for themselves.
What sort of person is it that reads Hacker News but is not excited by 1 gigabit fibre to the home?
One who believes in free markets, low taxes and private enterprise. One who believes that technological solutions arise to real needs, not imagined ones. One who pays taxes and hopes that one day they'll get spent wisely. One who believes that genuine wireless apps are more important to the future than home based services. One who is sick of government waste and spending, deficits and rorts.
You haven't read the coalition broadband policy, but that's not surprising, virtually nobody did. Not all services were to be delivered by wireless. Wireless was to be used in areas where running other types of network. You can already get fast speeds in capital cities, but the takeup is low because of cost and most people have no reason for it.
You fall into the trap of arguing that the benefits of fast broadband can't yet be known, but argue that wireless internet cannot possibly innovate beyond the current state of technology. This is having it both ways, and I see a lot of these types of arguments around.
I don't blame you for getting excited. Just realise you are seeking your own personal enrichment at the expense of others. I've got a lot of pet projects I wish the government would subsidise, but none of those are going to happen because I haven't got any lobbyists on my side.
Unfortunately many people are unable to see beyond the needs of today - they can only imagine that tomorrow's Internet will be largely the same as todays.
If all Australian homes had 1 gigabit Internet then this would form a platform - a framework upon which new ideas can be built.
It's like the iPhone - a lowest common denominator of power enables developers to exploit that computing power, safe in the assumption that end users will be able to use what they build.
Tomorrow's Internet is not just the same stuff as todays but faster, it's something different.
Consider this: every night, 2 million Australian households go home and watch TV. Effectively commerce has stopped for the day.
Imagine if instead that audience of 2 million homes was interacting. Think about hundreds of thousands of people watching Masterchef, and being able to stop when they see a recipe they like, bring up coles online, order the ingredients for the recipe and return to Masterchef. Coles Online pays a referrer fee to Channel 10 and to the producer of Masterchef.
Think about TV holiday programs like Getaway showing destinations around the world. The viewer stops the TV program, books a flight with Qantas, books some hotels and returns to watching Getway. Referrers fees from Qantas and the hotels go to the Getaway producers and the TV station.
Every night miilions of people would not be passively watching but would be interacting in a vibrant online community.
This sort of stuff only becomes possible when everyone in the country has a predictable high speed broadband connection - the NBN offers this. A hotchpotch of ADSL, fibre backhauls and wireless does not.
We should be garetful and thankful that we have a government with enough foresight to build such critical infrastructure.
If you are not the entrepreneur to take advantage of these incredible opportunities then someone else here might be.
This is a common argument, but such new applications have yet to emerge in Japan and South Korea, who've had these sorts of speeds for around a decade now.
This is the long haul and frankly the private sector has had 10 years to prove themselves in Australia and they have faltered at every turn. This is the kind of projects governments should take on, long term and perhaps a little visionary.
Oh and don't ignore the reliability it could/should. I know we've dealt with some pretty unreliable internet connections both a home and at the office due to oooold copper and you really do pay through the nose for good connections.
Don't underestimate what reliable infrastructure brings to the table especially for business confidence.
A major part of the problem is that rural/country Australia is so vast that it is not economically viable for profit driven companies to support.
Telecommunications in Australia a disgrace. Frankly I think that massive government expenditure in this area is well overdue.
Water infrastructure is a state owned monopoly. Telecoms is not, even though Telstra dominate residential connections.
A friend of mine wanted to connect water to his house down a short laneway (about 100 metres) in a rural area. The water authorities wanted $15,000 and 6 months to do it.
He asked Telstra to connect the phoneline. It was done for free within two weeks.
That is the difference between a government monopoly and private enterprise. If Telstra was still Telecom Australia, I have no doubt that the line would have taken twice as long and probably cost something as well.
You might scoff and say that couldn't possibly happen with the NBN, but in all seroiusness, anyone who thinks setting up a massive government beauracracy will result in anything but this type of behaviour hasn't had much experience with governments. The role of Government should be to design the laws in such a way as to encourage investment, and to leave that investment to the private sector where the private sector is willing to invest. Where they are not because of low population density, government subsidies can be provided to private companies to do that investment.
Of course I don't. But:
1. Others have had this level of service for a decade and not seen any breakthrough applications, and
2. You can't predict the future either. "Perhaps it will be useful" is not a business case worthy of $40 billion.
> This is the long haul and frankly the private sector has had 10 years to prove themselves in Australia and they have faltered at every turn.
In the last 10 years my internet connection has gone from dialup 56k to ADSL2+. Thousands of kilometres of private fibre has been laid in the CBDs, between the capitals and across the Pacific ocean. Prices per-byte have steadily fallen the entire time, in spite of Telstra's dominance in last-mile infrastructure.
I can argue that if the Government borrowed $40 billion and built a series of science labs, that research would take off. That if they built $40 billion worth of roads, that businesses based on transport would take off. That if they built $40 billion worth of factories that manufacturing might get a new start.
My point is not that new business opportunities can't be created with money, but is wealth being created or destroyed? Sinking public funds into money losing projects destroys wealth, it doesn't create it, no matter how many new business models are created. And that's what I'm against.
John Howard as Prime Minister had gargantuan excesses of money and spent little of it on anything except debt reduction and then when there was no more debt to reduce, he just put it in the bank and refused to invest it back in the future of Australia by actually doing something with it. Instead he just put the money into the bank (the "future fund").
Government has a wider obligation than obsessively not spending money. Australia is doing extremely well financially.
It would be irresponsible not to convert some of those mining tax dollars into a national broadband network that will create unknown future opportunity.
Obsessively not spending money is not government, it's accounting.
As a Prime Minister, John Howard's instinct was to spend the living daylights out of every cent. Mostly in flat out cash transfers to pensioners and middle class families. He set up a churn-based middle-class welfare system that costs nearly $100 billion per year at this point, which is unnecessarily wasteful.
The Future Fund's ostensible purpose is to sock away some money for future liabilities that the Commonwealth will face over the coming decades. Superannuation for public servants, mostly. In reality it was a handy place to dump a bunch of Telstra shares and a way for Peter Costello to prevent Howard from introducing ever more harebrained recurrent expenditures.
The unusual aspect of Australia's voting system causing such bad policy is compulsory voting, rather than proportional representation. The people who wouldn't bother voting in other democracies need to toddle down to the booth in Australia to avoid a fine, resulting in a higher percentage of those unclued in tech matters being voted in. (Also explains why such things don't happen in NZ:)
I disagree. Compulsory voting is a net benefit, because it drives the parties to focus on the median voter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotellings_law).
In voluntary systems, only motivated electors will turn out. How do you motivate people to vote? Not with discussion, but with emotion.
Consider: US politics is marked by a startling mix of soaring rhetoric and ruthless negativity. Why? Because the goal is to get your own voters to turn out and to make the other guy's voters say "We give up, they all suck!"
Australian politics might be a bit country-bumpkin in its tone and content, but it tends to focus on boring service-delivery issues rather than Grand Visions. Reform in stages is the general paradigm of Australian politics -- you have to carry that median voter with you.
We do have the key advantage that bills to do with appropriation must deal only with appropriation (s 54). This makes it much harder for horse-trading to occur. Likewise, Australian-style party discipline is the strongest in the world and pretty much precludes sideline deal-making (for good and ill).
As Murray Rothbard observed, minor technical details of process can have surprising practical consequences.
We had a government with a huge majority plan to install a mandatory internet filter and everyone met it with huge opposition, it was quite clearly voted against in a number of areas, and as such the parliament is setup so that it is impossible for them to pass it.The reason that you had seen articles on the internet filter is because Australians were outraged by it all.
Not only that, but we're pushing ahead with a national fiber network, which will provide brilliant opportunities for startups, 100 mbit or higher to the majority of citizens is the goal. Pretty impressive for a country with such a spread out population.
I'm not saying our government isn't dumb, but aren't they all? What I'm saying (and I guess what the author of this horrible article is saying) is that Australia isn't a black hole for technical innovation, and it would be unwise to ignore the opportunities that can arise from having fast internet across the nation - especially given we are doing it in rural areas as well, plenty of opportunities for startups in e-health, agriculture and mining.