Davos Newbies

If you want to keep up with the results of Germany’s inconclusive election, have a look at Davids Medienkritik. Via Marginal Revolution.

I have an uninformed hunch (the best/worst kind) that Hurricane Katrina could have had an impact on the German election. After all, for undecided voters in the last couple of weeks, Angela Merkel was offering a shift to a more Anglo-Saxon approach to economics and social issues. (I saw one German newspaper comment that the voters had rejected “Manchester economics”, shades of Friedrich Engels.) Well, the most visible example of the Anglo-Saxon approach in the run-up to the election was the woeful response of the US government to Katrina.

I think blaming the system is a mistake (see Philip Klinker’s excellent rebuttal of that approach), but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how a lot of undecided German voters saw it — encouraged by Gerhard Schroder’s trumpeting of the superior Rhineland system.

Bruce Bartlett via Daniel Drezner:

My point is a plea to news bookers and producers: Please let me make my point. Have the reporter or anchor ask what they please. But don’t force me to engage in an artificial debate just to create “fireworks.” And if I must debate someone, please make it someone of equal stature to myself. I was once forced to debate the minimum wage with an actual, honest-to-God homeless person. I refused to ever appear on that cable channel again, despite many requests. Thankfully, this channel no longer exists.

Although I haven’t discussed this matter with friends in the Washington policy community, I am sure most — if not all — would agree with me. I suspect that it is why it is less and less common to see widely respected policy people on cable news programs and why one more and more often sees total nobodies labeled as “consultantsâ€? to one party or the other. Such people know absolutely nothing except how to memorize talking points and disagree vigorously with their opponent, regardless of the facts or logic of the case. I don’t see how this does anything to enhance public discourse or even attract viewers.

The fact is — and everyone knows this — that few issues are black-and-white. There are always nuances that are impossible to discuss in a debate format. But the debate format creates the illusion that there is always a simple answer to every complex problem and encourages average television viewers to assume that those of us in the Washington policymaking community are all idiots totally beholden to our party, without a lick of common sense or integrity.

Of course putting Paul Krugman behind a subscription firewall is dumb. But Laura Rozen provides chapter and verse on how badly executed the move to Times Select has been.

I, too, am a subscriber to the Times print edition, but when I tried to register on the NYT site it consistently returned “A system error occurred while processing your request”.

Update Felix Salmon writes in the comments to note that he has covered this extensively, and provided answers to some of the annoying questions about NYT Select. Here and here.

Further update Kieran Healy sums it up: “We won’t have David Brooks or Airmiles Friedman to kick around any more. But is that bad for us, or for them? NYT columnists are the pinatas of the conscience collective. If not so many people are reading them, you have to wonder whether it’s worth signing up yourself just for the content. I think we benefit at CT. The Times makes you pay to read Paul Krugman, but his substitutability with our own John Quiggin is pretty high, and as of this evening we’re therefore a better deal than ever.”

There are certainly plenty of still-clueless companies around when it comes to using the Internet.

I rented a U-Haul van today to transfer some boxes from our storage in my sister’s basement to our house. The online reservation system seemed to work well enough on Friday. But I encountered a strange glitch today.

“Why,” I asked the woman in the Berkeley U-Haul office, “does it say ‘Only $19.95′ on the outside of my van, but I’m being charged $29.95?” “Oh,” she replied, “that’s because you booked it on the Internet. They have different prices. And if you phone us we don’t charge you the $5 reservation fee either.”

She looked at me uncomprehendingly when I suggested that an online booking saved them money, so it should cost less. I won’t be going back there in a hurry.