Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Generally, tariffs are considered to be a left-wing action because they're about job protection. The right-wing action would be to remove the tariffs and say "Let the market sort it out." Obviously the benefit accrues across class boundaries, but the rationales involved do fit roughly into the left-right paradigm.
I think left wing needs needs a second half beyond "more government intervention". The intervention needs to be about redistributing income and opportunities from the top to the bottom.
NZ's system of subsidies and tariffs on trade didn't really do that, at least not consistently, so I'd tend to define it as government intervention on nationalistic grounds.
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On another note, Russell confirms my growing feeling that he's superbly liberal on what might be called 'moral' or 'identity' issues, but tends toward the slightly Right of Centre on Economics. Or is that too simplistic, Russell ?
I haven't checked in with any political economic theories on the matter, but I'd struggle to call tarriffs left-wing these days. In NZ tarriffs protected farmers and working class manufacturing employees (and their bosses).
The last 30 years has shown that farmers didn't even need the protection, it was just supporting their inefficiencies. Not exactly working class either.
Working class employees sure, but at the expense of even poorer employees overseas? That's just nationalism dressed up as being left wing. We'd be better to devote our activism to enforcing decent labour and environmental standards for where ever our consumer goods come from.
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Replace prostitute with gay, if you want to test your tolerance. How would you react if somebody said here, okay, you might be fine with your child being gay, but would you brag about it with your friends? Or, yes, it might be okay to have gay relations, but should people be required to?
I'm not sure if that is a useful equivalence. We are talking about people choosing to take up sex work, which is a bit different from being something - such as gay.
I think your challenge stands by itself. We as a society are uncomfortable with sex-work as anything that has status or is desirable. Rightly or wrongly, even many of the most liberal amongst us wouldn't be putting that down as occupations for ourselves or those we care about. I wonder if any research has been done as to whether the law reforms have caused that to change over the past decade or so?
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Alright, and if I were to purchase sex how do I go about ascertaining that the person I'm buying from is one of these free-choice prostitutes.
They're the ones offering their services outside Trade Aid.
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Word! That is just wrong.
I couldn't get past this sentence:
His wife, Stephanie, who has a daughter from a previous relationship, was appalled by the attack.
What does the daughter have to do with the story? Was she dropped in a bin as well?
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Sorry folks not much sleep last night and this non-science shit pisses me off.
Nitrous Oxide?
(it's the comment that keeps on giving...)
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No Nitrogen is required in this process.
Nitrous Oxide?
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To be fair, Steve, how many beneficiaries, pensioners and others would have been fucked fifty ways to Sunday if Bolger had been a real "neo-liberal" purist and let the BNZ fall over?
I think that one is a plague on both your houses deal.
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I didn't have a problem with us getting out of those in favour of paying down our debts.
Like most things about the 4th Labour govt it's a story of "yes, but no, on the other hand, if....".
I'm also in favour of some of the things we got out of being sold.
But I wish they'd been sold to the highest bidder, and in some cases some sensible conditions had been included in the sale. Rather than selling to someone's mates for a quick buck to screw us all over.
I feel that nationalistic type tarriffs, like we had here have had their day, particularly since their major impact these days is shutting out poor third world farmers who could do with a bit more of a break. I'd like to see a sensible system of environmental tarriffs (if that's possible), to encourage people to buy things that haven't screwed up the environment in their production however.
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Maybe, maybe not. You have to admit, though, he does fill the "flag-waving National member" niche for us with great panache.
He's broken ranks sufficiently for me to be confident he has his own mind and isn't afraid to use it. A failure as a flag-waver I'm afraid.
James fills the flag-waving niche for me, though I don't want to know which flag.