Hard News: Don Paul
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I'm quite fascinated by how short the leap is for some from a Marxist worldview to the far end of the ideological scale.
In extremis, "left" and "right" are arbitrary terms - both are fundamentalist, all-encompassing constructs which supposedly account for every phenomenon within the same intellectual system and whose advocates are quite incapable of dealing with uncertainty or ambiguity.
I can't be arsed looking up the reference right now, but I remember some research coming out recently purporting that "conservative" and "liberal" leanings were genetically determined. Looking at the details, what it suggested actually that some people, the "liberals", are capable of dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty and the ones labelled "conservative" are not and demand absolutes and create absolutist ideological systems. You'll find those people in either political basket, and when they become disenchanted with the contradictions and inadequacies of one, they flip over into the other without actually changing anything in their nature or cognitive processes whatsoever.
Rather in the manner of Craig's frequent comment about people who see politics as a form of religion. Funny thing is that I often find myself in agreement with him on some basic points while placing myself in an entirely different political realm.
Must get around to reading John Gray's Black Mass some time soon... I gather he classifies a number of seemingly starkly different political and ideological systems under the banner of apocalyptic religion.
Oh, and then there's one thing the usually very annoying Larry Niven once said "There is no cause so noble that you will not find damned fools following it." Or words to that effect.
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So we agree with George Bush now. If you don't like their politics shoot them. Great philosophy Dislike even hate the actions of others but don't hate them.
I thought that I said largely the opposite. I left Iraq out of the comment deliberately. I think terrible things would have happened had the United States removed Hussein and done everything else "right". But they made so many monumental f' ups in the first few years that even trying to imagine that counterfactual strains my capabilities.
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I left Iraq out of the comment deliberately. I think terrible things would have happened had the United States removed Hussein and done everything else "right". But they made so many monumental f' ups in the first few years that even trying to imagine that counterfactual strains my capabilities.
It's a really tricky counterfactual, that one. Although you could begin it with the rejection of the offer Saddam made to vacate via an intermediary. Even if they'd swallowed hard and paid him an exit fee, it could have saved a lot of blood and money.
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Even if they'd swallowed hard and paid him an exit fee, it could have saved a lot of blood and money.
<horribleirony>But at what price their moral authority?</horribleirony>
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I read the interview with Brash and thought:"The poor sod doesn't have a clue!".
Does it provide a valid insight into how policy is formed in the National Party today? The popular leader ambushes his caucus? is this why we se no policy from National? Wo does make policy in that party? Why don't grass roots members apar to have any concern at all about that? Are Tory parties really just the emotional legacy of age of absolute monarchs and the Leader is the Leader?
The interview, against the backdrop of the current policy vacuum surrounding the National Party, raises more questions than it answers.
Not about Brash......but about National and the apparantly large number of people who might vote for it having NO IDEA what it stands for......whether they are party members or not.
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I'm currently living next door to the UN Food crisis summit (which started as a climate change conference I believe but that's not as en vogue right now) in Rome. I did have that same thought, Rogerd. Mugabe was one of the 'heads of state' speeding past in motorcade while the rest of Rome is stuck in traffic as a lot of roads are blocked off for security reasons. I was trying to get my daughter to school across a pedestrian crossing dotted with carabinieri and constant helicopters overhead, a gaggle of frustrated italians on motorinos zooming around me.
A little less security for some of these people would be a blessing I thought to myself. But maybe that was just early morning Roman pedestrian road rage. -
Although if you're currently having your hands cut off in a zimbabwe village or have to bury 47 people in one week in the same village, you wouldn't just put that wish down to road rage i suppose.
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But if you want evidence that the UK is a police state, consider this story - they've confiscated 7000 safety deposit boxes and expect people to prove they've obtained the contents legally before giving them back. "Prove your innocence, citizen" or what? Or this one - police have arrested 183 children over their postings on Bebo.
Nope. Firstly there has for some time been a law allowing the seizure of assets derived from the proceeds of crime. NZ has just such a law and uses it. Or perhaps you think that sticking your ill gotten gains in a dodgy safe deposit box should be allowed? Watch old episodes of The Sweeney where they get a warrant to search a box. If you read the piece you will note that the police had to get a warrant for this, iow there was judicial oversight meaning if I am caught up it gives me a legal in for a challenge. Recourse to the law is not a police state.
Secondly, the 183 were not arrested. Read the bloody article, or is misrepresenting the facts your aim? they arrested 70, they *interviewed* 183, in their homes, in the presence of their parents. Quite a different picture from 183 kids in interview rooms down the knick doesn't it? Again what is your basis for the misrepresentation? Once incompetence can be forgiven but twice, no dice.
Note I am not saying that there are not worrying developments here in the UK, though more down south than up here where for eg you get your dna profile removed if found not guilty or not charged. Not so down south of the border. But detail like that also weakens your case doesn't it? facts eh, bloody inconvenient for a good polemic.
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Christopher Worthington,
Just quickly, as I'm keen to head off on an after dinner walk:
I haven't had a chance to read Mankiw's paper yet and if he has some good empirics behind those numbers that will sway my view somewhat. Nevertheless:
1. As Gareth and the blogger at Stumbling and Mumbling suggest, while one can devise all sorts of plausible cases as to why a progressive taxation system may discourage effort and therefor slow growth it's also equally easy to come up with counterpoints: people may, for example, actually work harder in order to meet their financial aspirations; or, unless marginal tax rates are more than 100%, everyone still ends up better off as they earn more and this may be all the incentive that is needed; or, few people work in jobs where effort is exactly correlated with income; or, people may be motivated by desires other than money (status, belief etc); and so on.
2. Cross country regressions on tax and growth (like cross country regressions on almost anything) are indeed problematic but the weak relationship between tax system progressivity and low growth is also visible when we cast our gaze over the history over individual countries. Once again, maybe other effects mask the influence of tax. However, given that the flat tax high growth belief is taken as axiomatic in some quarters, you'd like to think that <i>something</i> would leap from the data somewhere. It doesn't
3. The other point always worth remembering is that public policy, including tax policy, is all about increasing wellbeing. Not GDP. In a country with low levels of GDP growth is crucial. Yet, as I've written elsewhere, in a country like New Zealand it is, while still important, not everything.
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Why don't grass roots members apar to have any concern at all about that?
The grass roots members feel a National government, even an imperfect one, will make them happier than 12 years of Labour government? Just a wild guess.
I mean, I don't have a very high opinion of many of the people around Auntie Helen, not least for their roles in the fourth Labour government, but after Ruth and Jenny I was well and truly pleased to see them on the government benches.
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Of course, and committed quite rigidly to the ideas he believes are right, not equivocating like the rest of us. I'm quite fascinated by how short the leap is for some from a Marxist worldview to the far end of the ideological scale.
The link you are looking for is rigidly comitted. It is iow all about cleaving to an ideology. The further out you go in the political spectrum the more dogmatic the ideology gets and the more you are expected to prove your cojones by cleaving to it.
Yoof get attracted to the apparent certainties of Marxism (and it appals their parents to boot). Disillusionment with it results in a journey through the wishy-washy, compromising, talk to the opponents central grounds. The traveller gropes around for the old certainties and finds them on the far right where they show the zeal of the convert anxious that their past be put firmly to bed so they become the most shrill of all.
The centre is populated by those who see the world in shades of grey and that nobody has all the answers. The fringes by those who wish to see the world in a starker contrast and for whom compromise is perhaps the dirtiest word of all.
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"wet impulses" (and you get serious icky point for that, Russell
wot, after you've just raised the spectre of a possible Brash -- and I quote --
fucking feature
!?
*shudder* -
However, given that the flat tax high growth belief is taken as axiomatic in some quarters, you'd like to think that <i>something</i> would leap from the data somewhere. It doesn't
This is exactly what prompted my initial question (and serious thanks to both of you for linking me into the various acadamic debates on it, have been looking for a while). I could see the arguments, but could also see some significant restraints on the potential benefits.
I'm a little surprised at how little empirical support there is for it (given it's widely held belief - it is in fact the underpinning of National's productivity policy), even if there are some well constructed economic theories. Although it seems that even neo-classically based theories that have multiple variables built in don't do a great job of representing the no-handy-assumptions real world. -
The grass roots members feel a National government, even an imperfect one, will make them happier than 12 years of Labour government? Just a wild guess.
And without presuming to speak for the rest of the gullible Tory-Borg, could it also be within the realm of possibility that one can actually be ever so slightly 'right-wing' or 'conservative' without the clinging perfume of sulphur about one's person? Just saying...
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The thing I enjoyed about the concept behind the Tube booze flash-mobbing was that in their eyes Boris had somehow *compelled* everyone to launch forth onto the Underground and get completely munted. National pride demanded it, apparently.
A friend said she saw a gaggle of drinking buddies staggering along the platform at Liverpool Street all dressed as man-sized beer bottles. This was certainly an improvement over the chap behind them who had disrobed entirely and spent several lively minutes doing laps of the platforms whilst being chased by frankly unimpressed rozzers.
I like to think that after Saturday night's bacchanalian orgy things will settle down. If people want to have a sly drink on the Tube here and there no-one will probably care, as long as they keep it to themselves. Eventually they'll get it out of their system and late night journeys home on public transport won't be made worse by eedjits continuing to swill and getting even more tanked than they were before they boarded.
Coming from the comparatively prim and proper NZ public transport environment - Wellington schoolkids even stand up voluntarily to give their seats to full-fare passengers! - it was something of a shock to see suited City businessmen board the train at Waterloo, place their briefcase carefully in the storage rack above, and then crack an extra-big can of Heineken to keep them company on the long journey back to Surbiton or Strawberry Hill. Sacrilege!
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And without presuming to speak for the rest of the gullible Tory-Borg, could it also be within the realm of possibility that one can actually be ever so slightly 'right-wing' or 'conservative' without the clinging perfume of sulphur about one's person? Just saying...
God, I love you, Craig. If it was you standing up there to be PM instead of slimy yukky Keys, I might even vote National for once in my life. Did I say that? Anyway, for your turn of phrase, I salute you, sir.
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ever so slightly 'right-wing' or 'conservative' without the clinging perfume of sulphur about one's person? Just saying...
Dirty sulphurer! Take it outside!
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A friend said she saw a gaggle of drinking buddies staggering along the platform at Liverpool Street all dressed as man-sized beer bottles. This was certainly an improvement over the chap behind them who had disrobed entirely and spent several lively minutes doing laps of the platforms whilst being chased by frankly unimpressed rozzers.
Fabulous.
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God, I love you, Craig. If it was you standing up there to be PM instead of slimy yukky Keys, I might even vote National for once in my life.
I'm not so sure you'd appreciate the influence of Mr Pointy on a Ranapia Administration. Seriously, I was one of those kids who school reports were endless variations on the theme "does not play well with others". The whole non-existent brain/mouth filter thing isn't a good fit with modern retail politics either. :)
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Some dreadful people are former Marxists -- Great Global Warming Swindle producer Martin Durkin, revisionist historian Keith Windschuttle.
What they do all seem to have in common (the above, Brash and other neo-con converts such as Franks) is an appreciation of the power of propaganda to sway the "ignorant masses" (aka "punters").
That, to me, was the message of The Hollow Men and I wonder what political roots Crosby Textor have?
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What they do all seem to have in common (the above, Brash and other neo-con converts such as Franks) is an appreciation of the power of propaganda to sway the "ignorant masses" (aka "punters").
and let's not to forget their able application of that great leveller of complex ideas, "the wedge".
"iwi - kiwi" was particularly despicable.
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If it was you standing up there to be PM instead of slimy yukky Keys, I might even vote National for once in my life. Did I say that? Anyway, for your turn of phrase, I salute you, sir.
The whole non-existent brain/mouth filter thing isn't a good fit with modern retail politics either. :)
Oh I dunno, I could be a first time nat voter too..oh take it back, what was I thinking:-)
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The link you are looking for is rigidly comitted. It is iow all about cleaving to an ideology. The further out you go in the political spectrum the more dogmatic the ideology gets and the more you are expected to prove your cojones by cleaving to it.
The centre is populated by those who see the world in shades of grey and that nobody has all the answers. The fringes by those who wish to see the world in a starker contrast and for whom compromise is perhaps the dirtiest word of all.
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity." -
it was something of a shock to see suited City businessmen board the train at Waterloo, place their briefcase carefully in the storage rack above, and then crack an extra-big can of Heineken to keep them company on the long journey back to Surbiton or Strawberry Hill
And why should they not? They've paid large amounts of money (my season ticket was GBP300 a month at one stage) to travel on the railway - why can't they have a bit of refreshment on the journey home.
Air NZ will sell you a beer on the plane home from Auckland, which is some peoples commute (and gives out free beer in the Koru lounge, without too much drunken rioting from the frequent flying classes). Also, the Waiheke ferry sells beer and relatively few, if any, drunks fall into the harbour each year.
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The Citylink train between Palmerston Nth & Wellington has a bar & cafe, as do, I believe, the trains that run between Welly & the wairarapa.
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