You really are still fighting the 1990 New Zealand general election if Max Rashbrooke makes more sense than you on the good old days before the virus of neoliberalism beset New Zealand from 1984 onwards.
Maybe 65% of the population of those good old days before the virus of neoliberalism. were missing out on that broadly egalitarian society championed by Bryan Bruce.
As is typical for the embittered left, the reactionary left, gender analysis and the sociology of race is not for their memories of their good old days. New Zealand has the smallest gender wage gap of any of the industrialised countries.
The 20 years of wage stagnation that proceeded the passage of the Employment Contracts Act and the wages boom also goes down the reactionary left memory hole.
That wage stagnation in New Zealand in the 1970s and early 80s coincided with a decline in the incomes of the top 10%. When their income share started growing again, so did the wages of everybody after 20 years of stagnation. The top 10% in New Zealand managed to restore their income share of the early 1970s and indeed the 1960s. That it is hardly the rich getting richer.
In a letter to the editor today in the Dominion Post defending a climate change protest that closed a branch of the ANZ bank, one of the participants Jimmy Green said
Of course our intention wasn’t to intimidate individuals – our intention was to intimidate ANZ into shifting its investments after the bank ignored us asking.
This honesty about the willingness to intimidate to advance a political agenda shows that climate protesters are engaging in plain thuggery. Peaceful protest has its role in any democracy.
What these thuggish protesters forgot about is how we resolve our differences in a democracy. That is by trying to persuade each other and elections. Let the people decide.
These protesters are keen to pass laws to save the environment but they’re more than happy to break laws they disagree with. I wonder if they extend that same courtesy to others they regard as less enlightened than them? They expect others to obey the laws for which they successfully lobbied.
Why do these climate action protesters think they can break laws that others secured through lawful, peaceful democratic action? Is some direct action more equal than others? Why do these climate action protesters think their vote counts more than mine?
John Rawls makes the point that the purpose of civil disobedience is not to impose your will upon others but through your protest to implore others to reconsider their position and change the law or policy you are disputing.
Rawls argues that civil disobedience is never covert or secretive; it is only ever committed in public, openly, and with fair notice to legal authorities. Openness and publicity, even at the cost of having one’s protest frustrated, offers ways for the protesters to show their willingness to deal fairly with authorities.
Rawls argues: for a public, non-violent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law being done (usually) with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government; that appeals to the sense of justice of the majority; which may be direct or indirect; within the bounds of fidelity to the law; whose protesters are willing to accept punishment; and although civil disobedience involves breaking the law, it is for moral rather than selfish reasons, and the willingness to accept arrest is proof of the integrity of the act of peaceful protest.
Rawls argues, and too many forget, that civil disobedience and dissent more generally contribute to the democratic exchange of ideas by forcing the dominant opinion to defend their views.
The civil disobedient is attempting to appeal to the “sense of justice” of the majority and their willingness to accept arrest is proof of the integrity of the act as a contribution to democratic persuasion not intimidation 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 protest actions are not a means of coercing or frightening others into conforming to one’s wishes.
As long as ANZ continues to profit from climate change, they can expect more of this https://t.co/Y7K0ogGOrG
The intimidation by the protesters at the ANZ bank and their promise to do it again as shown in the adjacent tweet is a breach of the principles of a just society. These climate change protesters blockading an ANZ bank branch were attempting to coerce and frighten others into conforming with their political views. That ‘might does not make right’ is fundamental to democracy and the rule of law. As United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said
The virtue of a democratic system [with a constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech] is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so and to change their laws accordingly.
When the climate protesters lose at the ballot box, they always claim it is rigged by the corporate interests. This is just sore losers.
The great strength of democracy is a small group of concerned and thoughtful citizens can band together and change things by mounting single issue campaigns or joining a political party and running for office and winning elections or influencing who wins.
Yesterday’s majority of the vote sooner or later and often sooner than they expect will break off into different minorities on the next big issue of the day. These newly formed minorities will use that same ability to band together as a minority to block vote to protect what they think is important and advance agendas they think are to be wider benefit despite the opinion of the current majority to the contrary. All reforms start as a minority viewpoint.
Indeed, it is a strength of democracy – small groups of concerned citizens banding together – is what is holding up legislating in many areas. It is not that minorities are powerless and individuals are voiceless. It is exactly the opposite.
Parliaments elected by proportional representation such as in New Zealand, and in Australian upper houses reinforces the ability of small groups of citizens to band together to win a seat.
Nothing stirs up the impassioned (and most other people as well) more than depriving them of their right to support or oppose what is important to them through political campaigns and at an election. The losing side, we all end up on the losing side at one time or another, are much more likely to accept an outcome if they had their say and simply lost the vote at the election or in Parliament. Scalia warned of, for example, the risks of the courts moving in advance of the popular will, and thereby poisoning the democratic process
We might have let the People decide. But that the majority will not do. Some will rejoice in today’s decision, and some will despair at it; that is the nature of a controversy that matters so much to so many. But the Court has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat. We owed both of them better. I dissent.
These climate change protesters want to rob the winners of their honest democratic victory over the balance between oil and coal exploration and other energy options. They are also robbing themselves of a fair defeat.
A fair defeat flows from laws and policies secured through normal democratic means knowing that one day you may be in a majority. Only by respecting the will of the majority when you are in the minority do you have any right to expect future minorities to respect your honest democratic victories as the majority of some future day. Democratic majorities of patched together through give-and-take and the reality that even the most important policies may be reversed in the future.
Climate change protesters should respect the political process because democracy alone can produce compromises satisfying a sufficient mass of the electorate on deeply felt issues so as to not poison the remainder of the democratic process. The losing side, we all end up on the losing side at one time or another, are much more likely to accept an outcome if they had their say and simply lost the vote at the election or in Parliament.
I hope none in this clip protesting against tax havens as short changing everybody else were fresh from protesting how international economic agreements such as the TPPA infringe on the sovereignty of countries.
If you standing up for national sovereignty that includes standing up for the right of other countries doing things that you do not like within their own country.
If countries have the right to set taxes and tariffs as high as they like, they have just the same right to set them as low as they like.
All that plucky rhetoric of TPPA no way and how international economic agreements violate the sovereignty of countries and developing countries in particular is forgotten in a flash by Oxfam.
Oxfam manages the blinding hypocrisy of opposing the Transpacific Partnership on national sovereignty grounds and at the same time call for international treaties to bully small countries about their tax policies, which overrides their economic sovereignty.
The sovereign rights of developing countries to find their own way does not extend to undermining the tax bases of the rich countries struggling to finance their welfare states.
The Pacific Islands, the once were heroes of the recent Paris climate talks, turn into pariahs once they start looking out for themselves and setting up offshore financial centres and tax havens.
Developing countries are free to impoverish themselves by embracing socialism, but if they decide to attract investment and jobs through low tax rates and offshore financial centres, a new form of colonialism is embraced by the reactionary left as embodied by Oxfam.
When my father was born, 7 in 10 people lived in absolute poverty.
Chinese tax residents bought 321 Auckland properties (29.5 per cent of the total); Australian tax residents purchased 312 Auckland properties (28.6 per cent).
Running around saying that Universal Basic Income will make work optional leaves open the question of who will be the suckers who actually do the work and pay enormous taxes to fund the idyllic lifestyle of the bohemian rest.
Opposition Leader Andrew Little accepts that mandating insulation and heat pumps into rental properties will increase their value. But he denies that this will affect rents!
An upgrade increases the value of a rental property if the improvements that increase its rental value. You cannot have the increase in the value of the asset without the increase in rent.
For an application of economics to a different part of the law, consider the nonwaivable warranty of habitability, a legal doctrine under which some courts hold that apartments must meet court-defined standards with regard to features such as heating, hot water, sometimes even air conditioning, whether or not such terms are provided in the lease—indeed, even if the lease specifically denies that it includes them.
The immediate effect is that certain tenants get services that their landlords might not otherwise have provided. Some landlords are worse off as a result; some tenants are better off. It seems as though supporting or opposing the rule should depend mainly on whose side you are on.
In the longer run, the effect is quite different. Every lease now automatically includes a quality guarantee. This makes rentals more attractive to tenants and more costly to landlords. The supply curve, the demand curve, and the price, the rent on an apartment, all shift up. The question, from the standpoint of a tenant, is not whether the features mandated by the court are worth anything but whether they are worth what they will cost.
The answer may well be no. If those features were worth more to the tenants than they cost landlords to provide, landlords should already be including them in their leases—and charging for them. If they cost the landlord more than they are worth to the tenant, then requiring them and letting rents adjust accordingly is likely to make both landlord and tenant worse off. It is particularly likely to make poorer tenants worse off, since they are the ones least likely to value the additional features at more than their cost.
A cynical observer might conclude that the real function of the doctrine is to squeeze poor people out of jurisdictions that adopt it by making it illegal, in those jurisdictions, to provide housing of the quality they can afford to rent.
If my analysis of the effect of this legal doctrine seems implausible, consider the analogous case of a law requiring that all cars be equipped with sunroofs and CD changers. Some customers—those who would have purchased those features anyway—are unaffected. Others find that they are getting features worth less to them than they cost and paying for them in the increased price of the car.
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.
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