Posts by Keith Ng
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Graeme said:
So you think it does that?
:-)
Quit teasing and post, damnit! 8-)
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I have got a great idea for every post i make! I'll create a straw man argument, demolish it, then use that to show how easy it is to delude myself that my bitter cynicism is cleverness.
Craig, I think he's talking about me. 8-) But thanks for taking that one for the team, anyway.
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Addressing the broader point, Craig, what were the abolitionists? Sure, in the present context, slavery and universal suffrage aren't political issues, but that's just because we have near-universal consensus on on them. Back in their day, these were political campaigns.
And that's all I'm saying - SST, FF, Brethrens, etc., they are many things, but when they step into the political arena and become electoral campaigners, they become political groups, and regulated *as* political groups. And when they want to spend $120,000-$1m on an election, they just have to register as a political party, so that they undergo the same degree of scrutiny as all the other political parties.
Most people - especially some elements who are against the EFA - agree that scrutiny of politicians is a good thing. Well, here are all these people trying to influence an election, wanting to spend as much money as the politicians, but also wanting to avoid the scrutiny by saying "woah - don't look at me, I'm not a politician, I'm just a concerned citizen".
That's what bugs me.
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(And just to nitpick)
Really, Keith? The great abolitionist movements in the United Kingdom and the United States contained all kinds of people whose common cause was regarding human slavery as an unspeakable evil despite their political views often being dramatically opposed on every other point.
Well, National has member who are dramatically opposed on a lot of social issues, too. Doesn't stop them from being a party. And if they don't like it, there's nothing to stop them from forming separate parties.
And, yes, they included some very rich people who were willing to finance magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, print books etc agitating for legislation banning slavery.
I think saying they should have fucked off and formed a political party is a pretty coarse and frankly stupid conception of what being an engaged citizen is.
What Kyle said.
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You've touched on something I wrote about in my end of year Trans Tasman column - the over inflated political language which has characterised this year.
Heh, Rob, perhaps we should get together and produce an inflation index for BS?
Back of a napkin blueprint:
Run weekly chunks of Hansard through a bot to get a wordlist (our "basket") of the top 20 non-mundane terms, score each of the words by grandiosity, then crunch a weighted index out of it with some kind of grandiosity x frequency formula. Then - graphs!
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No, you do not give any benefit of doubt. Your position is that anybody who wishes to engage the debate in an election year must be a politician. That other voices can form no legitimate platform and any outside influence is inherently wrong.
Woah - I gave the benefit of the doubt to the question of "does money influence elections". That's not the same question as "should we allow money to influence elections" at all.
I'm just trying to put down the red herring argument that we don't need to control electoral finances because money doesn't make a difference.
We are arguing about the right of us citizens to publically object to policy. The EFB says me must do it quietly, so as not to "impinge" upon whatever mindless debate our politicians are engaged in.
So making it law so there is an entire year where only political parties can effectively be current in politics, is going to help?
The whole reason why I'm engaging with this topic is not because I support the EFB. I don't. Not just because it's bad law, not just because it's electoral law made without consensus, not just because it's conceived out of the bitterness of the 2005 campaign, but because I am philosophically dubious about some of its key aims.
But it is, for the reasons outlined in my post, tragically unhelpful to make outraged claims in broad and inaccurate terms.
It's not a wholesale limitation of rights, it's a limitation of the right to spend money on a certain kind of activity during a certain period of the electoral cycle. But as long as people try to pass it off as "ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY!", "POLITICIANS VS PEOPLE!", there's little room to address the actual debate, which is whether people or groups with substantial wealth should be allowed to use it for electioneering.
Everybody knows that Wellington is full of spinning, lying, manipulative, untrustworthy, useless, wasteful, self aggrandising politico insiders playing tricks of smoke & mirrors. People who should not be trusted to frame a picture, much less a year long election debate.
If that's really the case, then aren't we just talking about influencing the outcome of an event where we will inevitably end up voting for one of the spinning, lying, manipulative, untrustworthy, useless (etc.) pricks anyway? Surely, there must be some redeemable part of the political system, or else why bother?
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I don't think Telecom has enough money to make people forget what a disaster it is as an ISP.
Um, dude, aren't they still New Zealand's largest ISP? And I've been away for a while, but do they still hold the title of New Zealand's Worst ISP? I would wager that they have the biggest advertising budget of all the ISPs in NZ.
Telecom's a slam dunk case, I'm afraid. It's Exhibit A for the argument that with enough money, all kinds of shit, regardless of smelliness, can be sold. Well friggin' done, Saatchi & Saatchi.
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You wouldn't be planning copyright infringement with that counter-culture operating system, would you, sonny?
Copy-right? See: "guns", "army".
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In the age of YouTube and partisan hit blogs, not only can a lie go around the world before the truth has its boots on, but can be cheap as chips to produce and distribute, and very hard to track back to its origins. Really want to proved wrong on this, but if you think the local political blogisphere got ugly back in '05, it's going to get worse. A lot worse.
Raising army. Buying guns. Reinstalling Linux. Will address your concerns shortly. (In January/February, probably.)
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Now if what folks are really saying is that there's some causal relationship between dollars spend on an election campaign and votes received, I'm reasonably sure ACT's caucus would be significantly larger.
ACT may have gotten even fewer votes, had it not been for its warchest. The relationship between spending and votes received might not be *independently proportional* (i.e. $5 spending = 1 vote), but it might still be a causal relationship (i.e. $5 spending = 1 vote / Kooky-Quotient).
For the maths adverse, that means that the crazier the party, the less affect the money will have, but that doesn't mean that money isn't a factor.
But that's just a hypothesis. 8-)
People still didn't really seem to 'get' it, they just wanted to vote in the opposite direction from whatever that bastard was spending dumptruckloads of money to get them to do.
We only notice big money when it fails miserably to hit the mark, when it smells like "big money trying to buy an election". But when it's subtle and successful, do we notice?
I like this quote from Wag the Dog: "Yea, it's like a plumber: do your job right and nobody should notice. But when you fuck it up, everything gets full of shit."
And the bottom line, the people who spend the money seem to think that money can influence. I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt...
(Thanks for all the love, folks!)
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