Posts by WH
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Translation: the majority of New Zealanders are vicious xenophobes who do not give a rat's arse about human rights.
I think they would disagree with your conception of what respecting human rights requires.
Speaking only for myself, I would rather give $10 to helping a third world country develop (you know, to people who can't afford air fares) than give $1 to a refugee. That's at least in part because I don't respect the decision making processes of our refugee tribunals.
Without wanting to be patronising, I admire your compassion, I/S.
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This issue is about generousity and simple human decency. Unfortunately, the public rhetoric is dominated by the ungenerous and indecent competing to be increasingly vicious in an effort not be a "soft touch" (i.e. decent human beings). And their xenophobia and hatred shames all of us.
I disagree. The problem is that people don't have a great deal of confidence in the integrity (or even the intrinsic value) of the refugee system, populated as it is by people who do not share their views.
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Moore's efforts have been quixotic and unfocussed in the sense that they invited the needless distraction of controversy. Given his status as an ex-Labour PM, it is strange that he chose to attack the party he still claims to support. He must have known that the reaction he would get.
Still, Moore is channelling a swing voter zeitgeist of dissatisfaction. No amount of on-message attacks are going to change that. Labour needs to find something else to talk about, because Moore is only an instantiation of the general problem the party faces.
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I went to see Mike Moore and Dr Peter Watson speak at Auckland University earlier this year about their work to promote free trade. Moore spoke passionately, and obviously believes that freer trade structures have a lot of promise.
The unintuitive concepts and jargon of economics alienates a lot of people, but the work of people like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman help the centre and centre left develop a better understanding of how economic policy can be used to help people more effectively.
I've been meaning to get around to reading this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization_and_Its_DiscontentsBehind the free market ideology there is a model, often attributed to Adam Smith, which argues that market forces--the profit motive--drive the economy to efficient outcomes as if by an invisible hand. One of the great achievements of modern economics is to show the sense in which, and the conditions under which, Smith's conclusion is correct. It turns out that these conditions are highly restrictive. Indeed, more recent advances in economic theory --ironically occurring precisely during the period of the most relentless pursuit of the Washington Consensus policies--have shown that whenever information is imperfect and markets incomplete, which is to say always, and especially in developing countries, then the invisible hand works most imperfectly. Significantly, there are desirable government interventions which, in principle, can improve upon the efficiency of the market. These restrictions on the conditions under which markets result in efficiency are important--many of the key activities of government can be understood as responses to the resulting market failures.
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and I think Moore is wrong, just like you
Fine, you're not going to change my mind, and I'm not going to change yours
It took me a little while to figure out what happened there, but I think Stephen meant that he agreed with Craig, and not that he thought that Craig was wrong like Moore is.
Wick, it's one hour to beer o'clock.
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The morality of Copenhagen consensus style cost-benefit analysis is utilitarian - it argues that we would be doing more good if we spent the money we are using to fight climate change on other problems humanity faces. If that was true, the rest of Lomborg's argument might be right.
The problem is that cost-benefit analysis relies on contestable projections and parameters. Goodstein's review points out that other economists believe Lomborg might be lowballing the economic costs of climate change and exaggerating the economic costs of addressing it (in comparison to, say, Stern or Stiglitz).
By focusing exclusively on a single moderate warming scenario, "Cool It" fails to grapple with the real economic rationale for cutting carbon now: to buy insurance against the possibility of catastrophic outcomes.
Harvard's Weitzman puts the current concerns of many economists clearly. Based on the findings of the U.N. climate panel, he notes that with roughly 3 percent probability, "we will [live in] a terra incognita biosphere within a hundred years whose mass species extinctions, radical alterations of natural environments, and other extreme outdoor consequences of a different planet will have been triggered by a geologically-instantaneous temperature change that is significantly larger than what separates us now from past ice ages." Facing uncomfortably high probabilities for these kind of catastrophic consequences, leading economists like Weitzman are advocating a "gradualist climate-policy ramp of ever-tighter greenhouse gas reductions" that will give our kids options: options for deep cuts if needed, and options emerging from the new technologies that will be driven by steadily tightening pollution caps.
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Often presented by grey people in cheap suits - politicians and worthies. Not only did they rarely have anything particularly interesting to say but they also said it in a dull way.
politicians, worthies, university lecturers...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto:_Vice_City_soundtrack#Perception_and_positive_thinking
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Perhaps so, but I don't think politicians are those particular experts.
No, generally not. A lot of work is done by the bureaucracy, but certainly some politicians are more famous for policy wonkery than others. Ideally ministers should know enough to be able to exercise some independent judgment on the technical issues that arise within their portfolio.
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I'd suggest that any 'values' which Labour or National claim to stand for are deliberately ambiguous.
That's at least partially because statements of benign intent become even less controversial at higher levels of abstraction. I believe that families are important and that everyone should be given a fair chance...
The traditional idea of joining a political party in order to make a difference has been superseded by the professionalisation of politics.
I tend to think that knowledge is important in politics. Although experts don't have intrinsically superior values, they can offer more effective solutions to the problems that society confronts. I suppose one of the problems lies in the fact that expertise cannot be easily separated from pre-existing normative outlook. A related problem is that you can find an expert to say just about anything.
Whether Key intends in government to preside over a 'broad church' [...] remains to be seen.
Yeah. I hope English and Key do a good job when given their chance.
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Seems that those who can mouth that kind of fundamentalist nonsense with a straight face are the only ones left who join political parties.
Part of developing a coherent worldview is linking political intuitions to empirical outcomes. Unfortunately, "values" are a vague proxy for statements of what people are actually trying to achieve.
I think its better to clearly articulate our political objectives and the means we propose to use to achieve them than to blandly equivocate that politics implicates values, that everyone has values, and that therefore all political views are equally meritorious.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2157197,00.html