Posts by Sam Bradford
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I did that survey. Not a bad idea, but I suspect they'll get a lot of answers along the lines of "Yes of course I am often stressed because I have no income".
The best thing for musicians would be a UBI. Which would also be great for parents, the disabled, the mentally ill, etc. So let's simplify things and just do that.
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Polity: Labour and the Greens in a tree..., in reply to Bart Janssen,
yes, but... Labour used to put on this charade of 'we won't need the Greens', in fact they preferred pissing on them to attacking National, which strikes me as grievously counterproductive. This might, _might_ help energise Left voters a little. I agree re: policy; Labour haven't lost the centre because of policies the public don't like, they've lost it because they crumble and withdraw at the slightest criticism rather than stridently making the case for what they believe in (other than not being National). Jeez, if they committed solidly to something bold (that would be criticised!) like UBI I'd probably join the Labour Party.
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Voters should be pleased with this.
This is how it should work. You cast your vote for Labour or Greens, knowing that they'll have different priorities and your vote will affect the relative weighting of those priorities. But Labour can fuck this up, as they have in the past, by refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Green vote and sidelining them once they're in government.
Of course, the media will spin it as 'bad news for Labour! centrist voters scared off by loony Greens!' But that's because they're idiots. We already spend far too much political capital on the demographic represented by the Herald/Stuff article comments, those fake swinging voters who still burble on about Aunty Helen and lightbulbs.
I do agree that NZF will do well this election. The political moment suits them perfectly.
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OK, what if we talk about type II diabetes instead?
It's an extremely serious illness whose prevalence has risen rapidly. Costs people their eyes, limbs, quality of life.
Cheap sugary foods cause diabetes.I don't hate, judge or other type II diabetics, I'm angry at the fucked-up food supply system (and poverty, and possibly terrible advice from the medical profession) that has led to this situation.
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To get back to the meta-point for a moment: I guess I'm incapable of arguing with libertarians in good faith, because I don't believe they can take any argument seriously enough -- the winning of the argument, yes, but not the substance of it.They might say it's because I'm irrational, I'd say it's because they refuse to acknowledge that reality is important. What does it actually mean to say that freedom is impinged on by a government decision to tax sugar? It means sugar becomes more expensive, that's it. And for some reason, their slide-into-tyranny arguments are extremely bloody selective.
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I'm in favour of a sugar tax -- if a way is found to make healthier foods correspondingly more affordable. It would be punitive on the poor if that didn't happen; but poverty does breed obesity, because bad food is cheap food, and to maintain a state of affairs that leads to gross health problems does not seem like much of a kindness to the poor. It'd be interesting to see if just tackling the 'make healthy food cheaper' part of the equation shifted things much.
I do believe that sugar is addictive, because I've tried to give it up; and while I like a lot of Dr Toomath's work, I agree with the commenter above that the genetic part of the equation only takes us so far, because even those populations that now suffer massively from obesity were not obese a century ago. So yes, a predilection towards obesity may be genetic, but the problem would not exist if not for (hopefully reversible) changes in the food environment. (It seems pretty disempowering too, to tell people that their ill-health is inevitable because of genetics, when none of their grandparents suffered the same problem.) -
Sometimes I look back 10 or 15 years and marvel at the way there used to be money. I sometimes wonder who, apart from property speculators, does do well in modern New Zealand, but that's a bit silly
I don't think that's silly at all. I very, very often think the same thing. Even the people I know who have well-paid jobs have no security. Whereas if you own (freehold) property, you essentially don't have to work. Welcome to Victorian hypercapitalism!
On a more optimistic note, I agree that the mood of the public towards the media has changed. I don't know how many under-50s take the Herald at all seriously anymore, which is FANTASTIC given what it's become.
Also, the crowd here is a bit mellow for my tastes, but you do a great job of moderating. Have a good holiday. -
It's bugging me too, but athletes should be able to say what they want, same as anyone else. It's not surprising that the wealthy young men of the ABs are mostly Nats-by-default.
On the other hand, the officials would be wise to be more careful about who they let into their photo ops. If they keep going like this, many NZers will be like the South Africans who prefer the ABs to their 'own' team. I'm tempted to switch my allegiance to Australia on the basis of David Pocock alone -- an outspoken man (whose opinions I agree with), very brave given his social context, who also happens to be perhaps the best player in the world right now. Same position as Ruchie, in fact, but -- whisper it -- better... -
'bleak clipart' is perfect.
Although I've been suspicious of the whole exercise, I still want to vote for an alternative, because I don't like the current flag.
But the options we've been given... who are these people? What are they scared of?
(and yes -- with all the quite beautiful, simple Maori-referencing designs submitted, why did they choose one of the worst?) -
I really don't think the problem is Serco, despite their awfulness. The problem is a for-profit prison system.
I'd also worry about 'incentives' based on things like the recidivism rate -- they wouldn't improve recidivism the hard, expensive and uncertain way, with counselling and education etc... they'd use the easier method of ensuring the most difficult/likely recidivist prisoners stay locked up, or find ways to shuffle them into other facilities. Or perhaps by making prisons dramatically more horrible, but I don't think that's what most of us actually want.
It has all the same problems as privatised teaching; it's such a complex institution that there are no standards that won't create perverse incentives. So we rely on good faith, instead... and I have more faith in a public servant, accountable to the public, than in a company working to financial incentives.