Were the Greenpeace runabouts observing maritime safety rules such as avoiding collisions and giving way? Any protester that behaved like that in a car would be immediately arrested and charged.
Why it is tolerated in the high seas is beyond me when it would never be tolerated on the road. No one would pretend reckless driving was peaceful protest. Is it okay to behave recklessly in a boat? No one would accept that in a car on land.
Activists dangling. Police removed support people on bridge. Huge law enforcement presence in water plus kayactivists pic.twitter.com/vqYGdNH67y
Central to the notion of peaceful protest is fidelity to democracy and the rule of law. The idea is not to impose your will upon others, but to persuade the majority to reconsider their position by showing the passionate extent to which you disagree with them and honestly believe they are mistaken.
The civil disobedient is attempting to appeal to the “sense of justice” of the majority and a willingness to accept arrest is proof of the integrity of the act says Rawls:
…any interference with the civil liberties of others tends to obscure the civilly disobedient quality of one’s act.
Rawls argues that the use or threat of violence is incompatible with a reasoned appeal to fellow citizens to move them to change a law. The actions are not a means of coercing or frightening others into conforming to one’s wishes. That is a breach of the principles of a just society.
No doubt you’ve heard about Walter Palmer, the American dentist who shot the lion, “Cecil,” in Zimbabwe, pushing aside Sir Tim Hunt as the Internet’s Most Hated Person. (Aside from calling Palmer cruel and depraved — even wishing his death by bow and arrow — some are labeling him a sociopath, which makes me wonder, are lions now considered members of society? Orgheads?)
I don’t hunt and have no particular emotional attachment to lions, so I find the outrage level bewildering. However, I think this can be a teachable moment. Specifically, there are lessons here about trophy hunting and endangered species. Not surprisingly to anyone who has studied property-rights economics, there is evidence that allowing trophy hunting is a good means of protecting endangered species. This is a version of the general argument that defining and enforcing property rights in scarce resources, including wildlife, provides incentives…
Jane Kelsey in a television interview said she opposes the reductions in sovereignty in trade agreements that result from investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions because they limit the democratic choices of future governments.
If so, she must oppose environmental and labour standards in trade agreements and, more importantly, binding the hands of future governments with climate treaties. All international treaties are about restrictions on sovereignty.
Environmental and labour clauses in trade agreements and climate treaties all limit the powers of governments to legislate on environmental and employment law in accordance with the will of the people as expressed in the most recent election and change of government. Power to the people.
Jane Kelsey would do better focusing on those parts of the TPPA deal that lowers the net value of the deal such as those extending the term of patents over the drugs. All international treaties are about trade-offs.
The most important reason for focusing on intellectual property law in trade agreements is Kelsey is likely to actually win people over that are not on the far left, including many on the right of politics over to her cause. Kelsey is too busy rounding up the usual suspects.
Regulatory harmonisation is advisable only when there are compelling reasons such as the prevention of hazards or technical compatibility of products – do the plugs fit into each other? As Sykes argues:
as a normative matter, harmonization is inferior to a legal system that tolerates regulatory differences subject to legal constraints, and that relies on mutual recognition where appropriate (the exception to this claim being matters of technical compatibility between products).
Related, as a positive manner, harmonization will often lack any political constituency and thus instances of true harmonization will be rare.
Figure 1: who won the electorate vote of New Zealand First party voters, 2014 New Zealand election
Source: Electoral Commission.
New Zealand First vote splitting data in Figure 1 suggests many more Labour voters vote New Zealand First than for the National Party with their electorate votes.
1/3rd of voters who gave their party vote to New Zealand First voted Labour with their electorate vote. This compares to one in five New Zealand First voters who gave their electorate vote to the National Party.
The Labour Party can win back some traditional Labour voters by borrowing populist policies from New Zealand First and its ageing leader such as prohibiting foreigners from buying New Zealand land.
Who mentioned Shane Jones?
In politics we don't pull our punches, unless you've got one of the world's best in town! http://t.co/Xiz2l36btg— Winston Peters (@winstonpeters) August 08, 2013
I have no idea why you have to pledge one third of German per capita income to start a business in Germany. It takes about a week and a half a dozen procedures to start a business in the other countries.
In New Zealand, you can start a business within the hour by registering for GST and registering your company online.
It’s easier to do business in the USA and Canada because of the difficulties with construction permits and getting electricity and few more problems with enforcing contracts and registering property. It is easy to open a business in Canada.
The Government admits that its proposed insulation and smoke alarm standards for rental properties could push up rents by more than $3 a week. Under legislation to be introduced in October, social housing would have to be retrofitted with ceiling and underfloor insulation by next July, and all other rental homes by July 2019.
An important driver of lower quality housing in New Zealand is the restrictions on land supply. The costs of those restrictions, land makes up 60% of the cost of new houses rather than 40%. Land prices have doubled and tripled in a number of cities. As the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has said:
The median price of sections has increased from $94,000 in 2003 to over $190,000 today (compared with $NZ 100,000 per section in the US), ranging from Southland ($82,000) to Auckland ($308,000)…
Section costs in Auckland account for around 60% of the cost of a new dwelling, compared with 40% in the rest of New Zealand.
The RMA is the Resource Management Act and was passed just before New Zealand housing prices started to rise rapidly.
Source: Dallas Fed; Housing prices deflated by personal consumption expenditure (PCE) deflator.
Higher land prices for new houses spill into the prices of existing houses, which are now much more expensive than they need to be but for the RMA inspired land supply restrictions in Auckland and elsewhere in New Zealand.
One way in which homeowners and landlords can keep costs down when buying a house either for their own use or as an investment property is not to invest in insulation and smoke alarms. Deposits are less, mortgages are less and rents are less. It all adds up.
#nzqt today. John Key insists tht hungry kids in schools don't exist. Schools, teachers, parents insist tht they do. http://t.co/n1M3hTe5oh— Green Party NZ (@NZGreens) December 03, 2014
Put simply, you cannot argue that a few dollars is a lot of money to people on low incomes but ignore the consequences for their welfare of a $3 per week increase in their rents.
New QV figures show Auckland house prices are up a massive 16.1% on last year, now estimated to reach $1m by Aug '16. http://t.co/DwAU79ozCy— New Zealand Labour (@nzlabour) June 09, 2015
If tenants were willing to pay for insulation, landlords would provide well-insulated rental properties to service that demand. Walter Block wrote an excellent defence of slumlords in his 1971 book Defending the Undefendable:
The owner of ghetto housing differs little from any other purveyor of low-cost merchandise. In fact, he is no different from any purveyor of any kind of merchandise. They all charge as much as they can.
First consider the purveyors of cheap, inferior, and second-hand merchandise as a class. One thing above all else stands out about merchandise they buy and sell: it is cheaply built, inferior in quality, or second-hand.
A rational person would not expect high quality, exquisite workmanship, or superior new merchandise at bargain rate prices; he would not feel outraged and cheated if bargain rate merchandise proved to have only bargain rate qualities.
Our expectations from margarine are not those of butter. We are satisfied with lesser qualities from a used car than from a new car.
However, when it comes to housing, especially in the urban setting, people expect, even insist upon, quality housing at bargain prices.
Richard Posner discussed housing habitability laws in his Economic Analysis of the Law. The subsection was titled wealth distribution through liability rules. Posner concluded that habitability laws will lead to abandonment of rental property by landlords and increased rents for poor tenants.
What do-gooder would want to know that a warranty of habitability for rental housing will lead to scarcer, more expensive housing for the poor! Surprisingly few interventions in the housing market work to the advantage of the poor.
Will the Govt intervene in Auckland's housing crisis? Or will home ownership become a preserve of the wealthy? http://t.co/CK2AnCeuYB— Green Party NZ (@NZGreens) February 05, 2015
Certainly, there will be less rental housing of a habitability standard below that demanded by do-gooders in the new New Zealand legislation. In the Encyclopaedia of Law and Economics entry on renting, Werner Hirsch said:
It would be a mistake, however, to look upon a decline in substandard rental housing as an unmitigated gain.
In fact, in the absence of substandard housing, options for indigent tenants are reduced. Some tenants are likely to end up in over-crowded standard units, or even homeless.
The straightforward way to increase the quality of housing in New Zealand without increasing poverty is to increase the supply of land.
Govt advised even with best financial mgmt, not 1 treat, a family with 2 kids could still be down by $72 each week. http://t.co/VDLmdO8gz9— leah haines (@writeonleah) July 09, 2015
As land prices fall, both homebuyers and tenants will be able to pay for better quality fixtures and fittings because less of their limited income is paying for buying or renting the land.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
No doubt you’ve heard about Walter Palmer, the American dentist who shot the lion, “Cecil,” in Zimbabwe, pushing aside Sir Tim Hunt as the 
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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