Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Alas, Poor Yorick

Working from home is a very old idea, becoming new again during this Age of the Internet.

COVID made telework something of a mania. But there’s been some withdrawal of support for the arrangement from major corporations, and one of the main results of Elon Musk’s DOGE effort in government was to bring government workers back into the office.

Well, sort of. A few months later, some of the measures implemented by DOGE were halted or scaled back.

How goes the trend elsewhere? As soon as something becomes possible, someone in politics wants to make it mandatory. A Reason article by Reem Ibrahim takes a look Down Under: “Do You Have a Right To Work From Home? This Australian Politician Thinks So.”

This politician being Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan, who aims to lead Australia into a new era of labor paradise, giving “all employees, regardless of the size of the business, the right to work from home. The legislation — which will be introduced in July as a provision of the Equal Opportunity Act and go into effect in September — does not include exemptions for small businesses.

“Working from home,” Ibrahim writes, “is often a win-win for businesses and employees,” but he fails to say it often isn’t. How do you dig ditches or construct skyscrapers or fish in the deep sea from home? To handle the necessary exemptions and complexity, of course, plenty of red tape would be required, which Mr. Ibrahim does mention.

So, does Jacinta Allan advance this innovation because she is a leader of extraordinary foresight?

Doubtful. A few months ago she had to deal with a mini-scandal: Yorick Piper, her husband, was convicted of drunk driving and had his driver’s license taken away.

Gotta get hubby back to work!

Well, it was a temporary license revocation. But alas, poor Yorick: see what you’ve spawned?!?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Tags Australian, labor, regulations

Thought

Giorgio de Santillana

The working of great administrations is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self-interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.
Giorgio Diaz de Santillana (1902 – 1974), The Crime of Galileo (1958).

Today

Shaken, Sworn In

March 11, 2010 — minutes before being sworn in as President of Chile, economist and businessman Sebastián Piñera is shaken as an earthquake hits central Chile and aftershocks disturb the ceremony.

government transparency partisanship representation

#ThemToo Movement

No matter how partisan politics has become, there are a few issues that our politicians seem intent on supporting — or opposing — regardless of party.

Example? Consider how soundly the House scuttled the recent effort to bring transparency to taxpayer payoffs for representatives’ and senators’ sexual harassment, rapes, and other improprieties.

Last Wednesday, 357 members of the House of Representatives voted to refer to a committee a resolution that would have forced the release of records related to sexual harassment claims against lawmakers. While that sounds innocuous, in this case it effectively killed the measure. That’s how Representative Thomas Massie (R-Tenn.) explained it, and that’s how it was reported in the news: everyone who voted to refer the resolution to committee knew they were sending it to die.

“Both parties colluded to protect predators,” lamented Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who had introduced the resolution. “They voted to keep sexual harassment records buried, and they did it together.”

How together? Well the 357 members who protected their comrades from the ire of their constituents included 175 Republicans and 182 Democrats. Remember that there are currently 218 Republicans serving in Congress and 213 Democrats (with three vacancies and no independent representation). Nine members did not vote, while one answered as merely “present.”

The uncooperative Republicans (willing to stab members of their own party in the back!) numbered thirty-eight, while recalcitrant Democrats (cruelly eager to shine sunlight on their fellow vampires!) numbered twenty-seven.

While the House overwhelmingly voted to protect its members from transparency and their own voters, back on November 18, 2025, representatives voted 427-1 to demand the immediate release of all federal documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Even more bipartisan. But that time it was for transparency.

Just not theirs.

This is key.

And this is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Tags Congress, sex scandal, transparency

Thought

George Santayana

On fact, the whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact.
George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty (1896).

Today

The Mahatma

On March 10, 1922, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), activist and theorist of non-violent revolution, was arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released nearly two years later for an appendicitis operation.

First Amendment rights privacy regulation

The War Against Anonymity

The Mexican government wants to stop people from using cellphones anonymously.

Every mobile phone number in Mexico — some 127 million — must now be biometrically tied to the owner’s identity. Cellphone owners must register their numbers by June 30 or lose signal.

The ID card to which numbers must be linked will in turn be linked, via QR code, to a national registry of biometrically verified records.

Who needs anonymity? Just criminals?

Criminals do use throwaway “burner” phones when committing crimes. They won’t necessarily be stymied now. Would they hesitate to steal other people’s cell phones, treat them as burners, then throw them away?

Maybe victims would act fast enough to get lost and stolen phones deactivated before thieves could use them, maybe not. Criminals may have several ways to circumvent the new law.

We must remember, after all, that criminals are willing to commit crimes.

The safety of journalists, dissidents hiding from other governments, targets of abusers and stalkers, and anyone with good reason to keep his identity separate from his phone will be endangered by Mexico’s new mandate.

Some may say that Mexico’s ID database is inaccessible by all but authorized, benign, unbribable government personnel. One problem with this fairy tale is that not long ago, a cyberhacker used AI to steal 195 million taxpayer and other records from the Mexican government.

Not the first time hackers have grabbed “secure” data. And what has happened again and again and again and again, can happen again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Tags Mexico, privacy

Thought

Bertrand Russell

Common sense, do what it will, cannot avoid being surprised occasionally. The object of science is to spare it this emotion, and create mental habits which shall be in such close accord with the habits of the world as to secure that nothing shall be unexpected.
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Matter (1927), used as an epigraph by A.E. Van Vogt to The World of Null-A (1945; 1948; 1953), author cited as “B.R.”

Today

Adam Smith

On March 9, 1776, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which became the first widely accepted landmark work in the field of economics.

The Wealth of Nations (as it is usually cited) was not the first general treatise on the subject, however; that designation almost certainly belongs to banker Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général, cited by Smith in his more famous book. It is also worth noting that Étienne Bonnot de Condillac’s systematic treatise, Le Commerce et le Gouvernement, also saw publication in 1776.

Update

Blight Flight

Jacinda Adern, former prime minister of New Zealand, no longer lives in New Zealand. She and her family have been traveling. First to America, to teach, and then to Australia. Why?

Some say it’s a long story:

In 2017, Ardern became the world’s youngest-serving female leader, aged 37, and went on to make history as the second woman to give birth while holding elected office.

Over the next six years, her leadership was defined by a series of national and international crises including the Christchurch attack and Covid pandemic. At a time when major western powers were lurching to the right, Ardern’s brand of politics made her a global icon of the left.

Towards the end of her time in office, Ardern’s legacy at home became more complicated, and she faced criticism over her government’s failure to make headway on its promises to fix the housing crisis and meaningfully reduce emissions. As the pandemic wore on, a small but vocal fringe of anti-vaccine and anti-mandate groups emerged, leading to a violent protest on parliament’s lawns and threatening rhetoric directed at Ardern.
Eva Corlett, The Guardian (February 25, 2026).

But it’s not just Adern exiting Kiwi country. Many have moved westward to Australia. Why the flight? The BBC implicitly blames an inexplicably bad economy, in “Jacinda Ardern’s move to Australia renews spotlight on New Zealand’s brain drain problem” (March 2, 2026). That “brain drain” characterization seems, in relation to Adern, perhaps a bit comic.

The New York Times continues in this vein of taking note of a significant trend without considering the obvious: Ms. Adern doesn’t feel welcome in her home country any more because she messed it up so astoundingly. She abused power; acted like a tyrant.

But the Times does mention that Ms. Adern has had a book published — a common reward for stellar service against the interests of the people — called (we kid you not) A Different Kind of Power.

Ms. Adern has appeared in these pages before, usually in relation to COVID. She was a strident covidian.