Newsletter: Week 14, 2023
Newsletter: Week 14, 2023
Melbourne's embarrassing airport infrastructure, and the philosophy of punctuality.
The Pains Of Getting to Melbourne’s Airport
This week I had to visit the Swedish embassy in Canberra to apply for a new residence permit. This involved a pretty hectic day getting up to Canberra for a morning appointment, and then back to the airport for a 2pm flight (when, for some reason, the budget airlines stop flying from Canberra to Melbourne). This also included having to catch Melbourne’s notoriously terrible Skybus, the only direct way to get to Tullamarine via public transport.
For a city of Melbourne’s size and significance, its airport-related infrastructure is an embarrassment. The bus leaves from the poorly conceived – and utterly dire – bus terminal at Southern Cross Station and immediately becomes trapped in traffic as it struggles to make its way to the Tullamarine freeway. If you are trying to get to the airport in peak hour, you’ll need to factor an extra half an hour to an hour to actually get there. The bus itself doesn’t have a large capacity, so if you arrive at the bus terminal and there is a decent sized queue it is likely you’ll have to wait for the next bus. Due to having a captured market, the cost of this terrible service is $17 each way ($22 if you just purchase a one-way ticket).
For those arriving in Melbourne to visit, as a first impression of the city the Skybus is an incredibly poor one. It is something that for far too long the Victorian government should have been embarrassed about, but for some unknown reason wasn’t.
However, there is now hope on the way with the new airport rail link from the airport to the suburban Sunbury Line. While work has started on this new rail link, given that infrastructure in Australia is built at a snail’s pace, and done at costs far higher than its OECD peers, this train line isn’t expected to open until 2029. And I suspect when it is complete a journey to and from the airport will be considerably more than a standard suburban fare (which, again, will leave an incredibly bad taste in the mouths of both residents and visitors).
The airport link is designed to form part of the Suburban Rail Loop, which should, eventually, solve two of Melbourne’s serious problems – the current inability to travel across suburbs by train, and the need to decentralise opportunity from the city centre. All train lines currently point to central Melbourne, and as a result most opportunities follow these lines. Yet the entire Suburban Rail Loop isn’t expected to be complete until 2050. Although, alongside the airport link, the section from Cheltenham to Box Hill is scheduled to be running by 2035 (although I wouldn’t hold your breath).
One other major advantage of the new train line to the airport will be that as the train will enter into the city via the new State Library and Town Hall stations it will allow for the demolition of the Southern Cross bus terminal. Which would not only help better integrate the CBD and the Docklands – Melburnians would be well aware of this abysmal piece of planning along Spencer St – but would also be a cathartic way to see the demise of the Skybus.
Punctuality’s Purpose
Aside from my distaste for the Skybus, what made my trip to Canberra more hectic was a delayed flight out of Melbourne. I was already operating on a tight schedule, and with my flight being delayed 45 minutes I was late for my appointment at the Swedish embassy. Which, to me, is the height of rudeness, a grave sin, and grounds to have my permit application denied (fortunately the Swedes were understanding about the delay).
I’m a punctuality obsessive. If I can’t be at least 10-15 minutes early for everything I start to panic. Organising things with people who aren’t as time obsessed as I am is incredibly stressful. I lack the personality to take the lead or ask people to hurry along, so I instead just internally churn. When being late is completely out of my control, like with delayed flight, this can be particularly difficult for me.
So with an extra 45 minutes sitting around Tullamarine, and the need to occupy my mind, I got thinking about the nature of punctuality, what it means, and why I find being late particularly distressing.
Despite not being religious, punctuality is a recognised cultural trait of Protestants, and clearly something that was instilled into me via my own family’s ethos. As Max Weber observed, these theological shifts beginning in the 16th Century fed into an economic shift with the Industrial Revolution, and the new modes of human organisation this created – something that was particularly strong in Northern Europe. Time became money, and being on time became essential to material well-being.
While, to some, this may negate the ethical value of punctuality, this would be misguided, as punctuality’s economic element is only one aspect. Primarily, being aware of time is about respect for other people. It signals that you value others and consider their own time to be important. Punctuality gives the person you intend to meet the highest value in any scenario, rather than yourself. While absent-mindedness may be a more subtle form of selfishness, intentionally being late is about exerting your power over others, it is a brute demonstration of self-regard.
Punctuality is also the responsibility of freedom. It is inherently social – a recognition that when you leave your home you are in an environment with others and each of these people needs your consideration in order for societies to function smoothly and with grace. While it is essential that our political and legal structures be liberal and focused on the individual, our personal demeanours should be social and focused on each other.
Yet, there are obviously situations where being late cannot be avoided. A problem with air-traffic control is an unforeseen event and a normal part of the highly complex organisation of airports, often having to do with things beyond human control like the weather. However, in terms of my own psychology I’m yet to distinguish between controlled and uncontrolled delays. My reactions are built on a deeply embedded and unwavering belief that being late is the height of rudeness, and would be a poor reflection on myself. Which, come to think of it, may also be a form of self-regard.
This Week’s Reading:
Aaron J. Hahn Tapper – The Atlantic
“For Australia and its first peoples, Rudd’s historic apology was a long-awaited turning point. Widely embraced by Australians as an extraordinary act of contrition, it shifted the country’s discourse around Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in important ways. For the United States, it epitomized the power of an honest accounting of the past. Fifteen years later, though, it remains an example that no American leader has dared emulate. And though Australia’s approach provides a model for other nations, it is also a reminder that words—no matter how deserving or well received—are only the first step toward lasting justice.
Rudd’s apology was a necessary start, but not a solution to these problems. “For a lot of people the apology was viewed as a finalisation of something,” Ian Hamm, a member of the Stolen Generations, said to The Guardian, “whereas for people in the Aboriginal community, particularly for stolen children, it was a beginning.” Rudd himself shares that view. Earlier this year, on the 15th anniversary of his apology, he rated it both a success and a failure. “Let us have the honesty,” he said, “and the courage to acknowledge both.”
Has Modi Pushed Indian Democracy Past Its Breaking Point?
Isaac Chotiner interview with Christophe Jaffrelot - The New Yorker
“First, we saw an attack on the judiciary. [The B.J.P.] tried to change the procedure for appointing judges. They failed. In fact, they failed the way that Benjamin Netanyahu is failing—not so much because of popular demonstrations but because the judges themselves, the Supreme Court, said, no, we don’t want to change the way people are appointed. But, in retaliation, the Modi government refused to appoint the judges that the judiciary itself had selected for the job. And therefore in 2017, 2018, and 2019, you had an amazing number of vacancies. And now the judiciary was on the defensive. They finally internalised this, and they stopped nominating judges that they knew the government would not accept. They also started to become very complacent. So either they validated any law that the government was passing or they refused to take a stand.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act is illegal, but the judges are sitting on it and don’t want to give any verdict. Abolition of Article 370 was illegal, too. There are a great number of laws that are in contradiction to the constitution and which the judges should invalidate. That’s one symptom of authoritarianism.
There is another very interesting symptom, which is the way that the media has been treated. The media in India used to be vibrant, like the judiciary. That’s over. [The B.J.P.] used the leverage they had on the owners. The people who own the media in India are all businessmen. And these businessmen have other businesses. They need the support of the government for the other businesses, and if the government is not happy with some of the journalists they ask the businessmen to ease out the journalists.”
Why India Downplays China’s Border Threat
Happymon Jacob - Foreign Policy
“The issue of political will within the BJP complicates India’s response to China. The ruling party is concerned about the cost of acknowledging the threat without standing up to Beijing. Given Modi’s overwhelming approval ratings in India and his ability to sell a master narrative, this may seem to make little sense. But Modi’s statement in the wake of the 2020 standoff that “no one has intruded into our territory” has created a commitment trap; it could harm him politically to go back on his words. Moreover, ignoring China’s actions on the border is less costly for the BJP government than acknowledging and not doing much about it. If the Modi government mentions the China threat, it will have to act against it.
Monocausal arguments attempting to unravel the puzzle of India’s underbalancing behaviour toward China provide only imperfect explanations. It’s possible to understand New Delhi’s rationale from a policy perspective, but not openly calling out the Chinese threat ultimately ends up playing into Beijing’s hands. Unless India can break out of its overcautious self-restraint and tactical loop with China, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army forces will keep chipping away at Indian territory.”
Andrei Kolesnikov - Foreign Affairs
“For both active Putin supporters and passive conformists, the war is no longer just a part of everyday existence. It is a way of life. And instead of rationalising it as a prolonged disruption, they have begun to see it as something more permanent. Sure, everyone understands that victory is the goal. But that goal has been pushed so far into the future that it has become as symbolic and distant as the final stage of communism was for several generations of Soviet people. To enter a permanent state of war, many Russians have had to come to terms with the twisted logic of the person who initiated the conflict and dragged the nation into it. In other words, they have sought psychological comfort in the regime and the idea of national unity it embodies, no matter how damaging that might be to their own lives and the country’s future. Either you are with us, supporters of Putin have learned to think, or you are a national traitor.
How has it been possible for so many Russians to accommodate this extreme situation so readily? First, many feel the compulsion to stay in the social mainstream and go with the flow: this is what twentieth-century psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, writing about the social conditions that contributed to fascism, famously called “escape from freedom.” No one wants to be branded an outcast or enemy of the people. But second and equally important is the ability of ordinary people to accept radically changed circumstances—as long as some elements of normal life can be maintained. Thus, everything about the war has been done only part way: there has been a partial mobilisation, a partial wartime economy, a partial mass repression, a partial erosion of living standards. In this form of partial totalitarianism, people have had time to adjust and experience each step in the decline from their previous way of life as a new normal.”
How 1970s California Created The Modern World
Francis J. Gavin - Engelsberg Ideas
“What happened in California in the 1970s played an outsized role in creating the world we live in today – both in the United States and in large parts of the globe – for better or worse. It is not an exaggeration to say this was a historical shift on a par with the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth through to the nineteenth centuries. The means of producing wealth moved from a domestically based, mass industrialised economy to a more decentralised system focused on ‘just in time manufacturing’, sensitive and integrated global supply chains, complex finance, and, especially, revolutionary information and communication technology. Personal identify shifted away from fixed characteristics and affiliation with large, inflexible histories and organisations – ethnic origin, political parties, churches and synagogues, unions, corporations, communities – to curated, flexible, often autonomous conceptions of the self, based on individual preferences and tastes. Demographics were upended: where and how people lived, and with whom they cohabited, transformed, as the structure and composition of both family units and communities evolved dramatically. Politics became more micro-targeted and focused as much on cultural issues as on the socio-economic concerns that dominated the first three quarters of the twentieth century. Everything from markets to culture to identity to politics became fluid, disaggregated and disintermediated from legacy institutions, shaped by historically unprecedented choice and impermanence.”
Ireland Will Always Be Divided
Tom McTague - Unherd
“Northern Ireland is one of the most constitutionally uncertain places on earth — by design. The Good Friday Agreement is ambiguous on how a future border poll will come about, for example, or even what Irish unity looks like. All that is said about a future referendum is that one must be called by the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland “if it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be a part of the United Kingdom”. But how this might be determined is not stipulated. Nor what it would mean, should it happen. The Irish government believes all that is required for a referendum to be called is a majority in the Northern Ireland assembly. The British Government has not made its position clear. Adding further uncertainty is the fact that, once a first referendum takes place, subsequent polls can then be called every seven years: a recipe for permanent instability. No nation on earth could create any meaningful unity of purpose should its very existence be put to a public vote every seven years. The stakes to avoid a first one are therefore extraordinarily high for unionism.”
We’re Still Living In Margaret Thatcher’s World
George Eaton - The New Statesman
“Few prime ministers have so yearned to return to government after being evicted (Powell believed that she never had another happy day). But holding office – as Thatcher’s successor John Major learned – is not the same as holding power. The struggle for intellectual and political supremacy is waged over decades, not years. Truly great leaders govern in exile by forcing their successors to retain their reforms.
It is this distinction that Thatcher achieved: not one of her privatisations has been overturned by subsequent governments: British Telecom, British Gas, British Airways and British Steel – such assets left the state, never to return. Asked at a dinner in Hampshire in 2002 what she considered to be her greatest achievement, Thatcher replied: “Tony Blair and New Labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds.”
Gender Bias In The Courts: Women Are Not Believed
Patricia Fersch – Forbes
“Thirty years ago, legal scholars and social scientists noted the legal system’s skepticism of women in general and victims of gender-based violence in particular. Deborah Tuerkheimer coined the term “credibility discount” to describe how the criminal legal system responds to women’s reports of sexual violence by discounting their credibility at every step of the process, from initial reports to law enforcement and prosecutorial discretion through judicial and jury decisions. This credibility discount impacts women in general in all aspects of the criminal justice and family court systems.
No matter the content of her story, women are considered unreliable narrators of their own experiences. The assessment of women’s personal trustworthiness suffers from skepticism rooted in (1) uneducated expectations regarding a survivor’s “appropriate” demeanour; (2) prejudicial stereotypes regarding the false motives of women seeking material assistance; and (3) the long-standing cultural tendency to disbelieve women simply because they are women.”
Alice Evans - Substack
“Ensuing disappointment depresses trust and commitment. As the share of single ladies grows ever larger, men enjoy even more opportunities for infidelity. Romance comes to resemble a Prisoner’s Dilemma, in which one or both choose to defect.
There is a second reason why the decline of marriage begets a negative feedback loop. If a man expects his dating pool to remain large, he may rather keep his options open. Why settle, when the grass could always be greener?
By contrast, where mates are scarce, men tend to avow monogamy. For example, a college-educated US male whose peers have all tied the knot might anticipate sudden drought and thus eagerly demonstrate commitment.
Men make their own choices, but - to paraphrase Marx - ‘they do not make [these choices] under circumstances chosen by themselves’. Skewed ratios and high shares of singles yield myriad temptations.”