Source: The state of New Zealand Union membership in 2014, Sue Ryall and Stephen Blumenfeld.
Why hasn’t @JulieAnneGenter reintroduced @metiria’s 2009 bill on medical marijuana?
28 Apr 2017 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, health economics, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: expressive voting, marijuana decriminalisation, medical marijuana decriminalisation
The case against an immigration economics and for a population economics
28 Apr 2017 Leave a comment
in labour economics, labour supply, politics - New Zealand, population economics Tags: economics of fertility, economics of immigration
Source: The case for immigration – Vox.
#livingwage movement just can’t handle the truth @LWEmployerNZ
27 Apr 2017 Leave a comment
in industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, minimum wage, personnel economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: conjecture and refutation, critical discussion, crybaby left, living wage, Twitter left
Looks like the living wage movement will not be taking up my challenge for a public debate anytime soon.
#Maori #atheists failed by @reomaori Maori Language Commission
27 Apr 2017 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, politics - New Zealand Tags: atheism, Freedom of religion, Maori economic development, Te reo Māori
Real Time with Bill Maher: New Rule – Beige Against the Machine (HBO)
27 Apr 2017 Leave a comment
in liberalism, politics - USA, television Tags: political correctness
What victory at Gallipoli could have stopped #AnzacDay #Anzacday2017
25 Apr 2017 Leave a comment
in defence economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, war and peace Tags: Armenian genocide, crimes against humanity, Gallipoli, war crimes trials, World War I
But for victory at Gallipoli, the Anzacs would have been the first Sergeant at Arms of a war crimes trial. By marching victorious into Constantinople, the Anzacs may have been able to prevent the purging of the Ottoman archives of evidence of complicity of specific individuals.
Today is marked by Armenians worldwide as the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. vox.com/2015/4/22/8465… http://t.co/7pqqSowW3O—
Vox Maps (@VoxMaps) April 24, 2015
On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing `a crime against humanity’. The Allied Governments announce publicly that they will hold personally responsible all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in the Armenian massacres.
Ottoman military and high-ranking politicians were transferred to the Crown Colony of Malta on board of the SS Princess Ena and the SS HMS Benbow by the British forces, starting in 1919. These war criminals were eventually returned to Constantinople in 1921 in exchange for 22 British hostages held by the government in Ankara.
Australian and New Zealand participation in the invasion of the Ottoman Empire as a by-product set the legal and moral infrastructure for the Nuremberg trials: governments would hold others to account for crimes against humanity and genocide.
#AnzacDay: why did we fight?
25 Apr 2017 3 Comments
in defence economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, war and peace Tags: Anzac Day, national security policy, World War I
Australia and New Zealand were filled with first and second generation migrants happy to rally to defend their mother country:
- 12 per cent of the population of New Zealand volunteered to fight; and
- 13 per cent of the male population of Australia volunteered to fight in World War 1.
The people and governments of New Zealand and Australia of that time were British to their boot straps. The Union Jack was in their flags for a reason.
Our specific quarrel with the Ottoman Empire was it joined Germany and others to be at war with the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
Removing the Ottoman Empire from that war would have strengthened Russia. A stronger Russia would have weakened Germany and its allies and brought the war to an earlier end.
The governments of Australian and New Zealand fell over themselves to declare war and pledge troops in 1914.
World War 1 started in the middle of an Australian election campaign in 1914.
In the September 1914 election, both opposition leader Andrew Fisher and Prime Minister Joseph Cook stressed Australia’s unflinching loyalty to Britain, and Australia’s readiness to take its place with the allied countries. Labor Party leader Fisher’s campaign pledge was to:
stand beside the mother country to help and defend her to the last man and the last shilling.
Labor defeated the incumbent government to win majorities in both houses. Billy Hughes and his nationalist party won the 1917 election in a landslide.
New Zealanders had even a better chance to reflect on the war-making choices of their leaders in 1914. Our election was in December of 1914. The passions of the moment had some chance to calm, and the fighting has started for real.
The will of the people at the December 1914 Parliamentary elections was a 90 per cent vote for the war parties. New Zealanders could have voted for the Labour MPs, several of whom were later imprisoned for their anti-conscription activities or for refusing military service.
In New Zealand, after that wartime election, the Prime Minister was an Irish Protestant who formed a coalition with an Irish Catholic as his deputy.
Do you know of a superior mechanism to elections for measuring the will of the people? Are elections inadequate to the task of deciding if the people support a war and that support of the public is based on well-founded reasons?
The reasons for New Zealand and Australia fighting are the just cause of fighting militarism and territorial conquest, empire solidarity, regional security interests such as the growing number of neighbouring German colonies, and long-term national security. A victorious Germany would have imposed a harsh peace.
New Zealand and Australian national security is premised on having a great and powerful friend. That was initially Britain. When the USA arrived in 1941 as a better great and powerful friend, the British were dropped like a stone.
Australian global warming policies are well near optimal
24 Apr 2017 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: climate alarmism, global warming
The UN Climate Panel Report found that the cost of not doing something is less than 2% of GDP in about 2070. The cost of doing something will likely be higher than 6% of GDP.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments