Posts by Samuel Buckman
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Public policy isn’t [objective] though.
Driver behaviour is a lot less predictable [than physics]. Will people obey the law? Will drivers slow down where they expect enforcement and drive badly elsewhere? Or take less care generally?
These are all objective questions, that can certainly be answered by experiment and can probably be answered already by examining previous cases.
Then there are other, unintended, effects. How much does resentment at social control measures like zealous road traffic enforcement lead to a general lack of societal compliance?
This is technically an objective question, but I agree that it is a difficult one to answer.
And finally, there’s the question of what the populace wants. How much benefit do people see in being safer versus being allowed to drive faster? That’s an entirely subjective question.
Each person’s opinion is developed subjectively. But finding out what the opinion is, and the proportions of each opinion that are held in the population, is another objective question.
Public policy can, and should, be evidence based.
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there is no contradiction here...
Sorry, you're right. The contradiction only arises when I insert my implicit premise 'neoliberals are not completely evil'.
I think for the most part that premise is true. The closest look into neoliberal minds that I've seen is in The Hollow Men, and I got the impression that Don Brash and his entourage genuinely believed that they were doing the right thing for the country. They were just wrong.
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Envirologue: Too Big to Fail – Why…, in reply to Dave Hansford,
I listed at length...
Sorry, my quoting the conclusion only may have been confusing. But I was asking for sources, not examples. As a young person trying to get into politics, it's frustrating when people construct arguments based on history I'm not familiar with. Especially when I find it hard to believe that the world would look the way it does today if everyone subscribed to that version of history.
The zeal is evidenced by the fact that you now live under a neoliberal system, as does most of the western world and much of the east.
Umm..the result would only be evidence of zeal in creating the result if I knew that there was strong opposition to it. And I don't know that.
You might like to ask the people of Kiribati, or Tuvalu, or the Inuit why any measures to address climate change must protect and enshrine the interests of those most disadvantaged by it.
All I mean is that there is a difference between 'not making things worse' and 'making things better', and this seems to be a case of the former. If this is not the case, I'm happy to learn, if only you would explain it in greater detail.
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Because climate change will only worsen the global inequality neoliberalism created, combatting it necessarily entails the redistribution of wealth and the reinstatement of a more equitable society.
No, because climate change will only worsen the global inequality neoliberalism created, combatting it necessarily entails removing one factor that will worsen global inequality.
It may also entail the redistribution of wealth and the reinstatement of a more equitable society, but I'm not really sure why it would.
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It’s clear then, that an awful lot of time, money and zeal went into the annexation of the global economy
No its not, you’ve just asserted that this is the case. Would you mind providing some sources for those very dramatic claims? Not everyone lived through that period, nor, I suspect, did everyone who did experience it the same way.
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Not only do conservatives believe in climate change; they understand it – or at least its consequences – far better than many liberals. All this time, we’ve slated them for being behind the eight ball when in fact, they’re way ahead of us.
You go on to argue that conservatives are unwilling to allow any solution to climate change that would interfere with their political ideology, and have no other solution. That's the complete opposite of the statement above.
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Um..what the hell does this mean?
It also seeks to have the warming effect of methane – one of New Zealand’s most voluminous pollutants – redefined so as to lessen our total emissions.
Surely that is something that is determined with science, not by the UN?
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we’re the largest global trader in dairy, but not the biggest producer by some margin
I’m afraid I’m ignorent of why there is a big difference. Would someone mind explaining?
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I mean, currently, if a party wants to push policy that is simply bad, that simply could not get popular support in a well informed electorate, all they have to do is lie and distract and generally muddy the waters so that insufficiently dogged people have no idea what the truth is, and therefore give up on politics altogether.
There shouldn't be a way for that sort of policy to win, and if those tactics would simply cause the election to be reset, there wouldn't be.
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If we have a compulsory voting system, isn't the main difference that that we have a mechanism for making the decision not to vote powerful?
Currently, if you express no confidence by not voting, you might feel good, but so do the parties you dislike, because you have just surrendered your ability to affect them. They don't give a damn about the effect on their 'legitimacy'.
But with compulsory voting, we could have a system whereby if the 'no confidence' votes reach a certain threshold, the election has to be reset. Then those votes do have power, and so the incentives change so that parties have to care.
So when you argue that we need to actually engage voters rather than forcing them, I would argue that that the former will naturally follow from the later.