Posts by Stephen Judd
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Polity: In defence of the centre, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Public Address' default branding is slate blue. Hard News is a Nazi brown. I'm not sure this is a fruitful line of criticism.
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Polity: In defence of the centre, in reply to Sam Bradford,
it assumes the sole reason for the existence of the Labour party is to be elected
That is unkind. I would have said it assumes that change can only be made from the government benches, so that winning on a compromise platform of being a bit nicer is better than principled losing.
That's not an assumption everyone shares. For example, the Greens have rubbed along always being out of government, but undoubtedly using their platform in parliament to advance their ideas and get them into the public debate. And the fact that National keeps spiking left parties' guns by offering weak versions of their policies, or policies that superficially address their concerns, shows that just keeping oppositional ideas alive can be effective if all you care about is moving the policy needle a bit.
What I keep coming back to is this. Yes, in normal times, appeals to the centre, whatever the fuck that might be, probably prevail. On the other hand, we can think of times -- our first Labour govt, the 84 Labour govt, the Thatcher government -- where radical, long-lived changes could be made, and people accepted them, because the former consensus politics had been made a fool of by conditions. Some of us are always going to want to get elected now, on a platform of incremental change, managing the status quo better than the other crew. Others are always going to want to prepare the ground for the political opportunity that will let us make lasting change, which could be any minute now. And we're always going to argue about what is more likely to help. Personally, I favour the latter angle, partly because I think principled leadership from Opposition is a thing, but I acknowledge that other people think small amounts of jam today are better than pie in the sky.
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What Alex said. Centre is a really poor and unhelpful expression.
Also, if it's so hard to move the centre against whatever objective yardstick we choose, what enabled the right to do it in the last 30 years?
In fact I don't like this metaphor of "pulling people toward you" either. We don't have to tell people they're wrong and bad. We know that New Zealanders like actual social democratic policies, so how about showing them how they already agree with us?
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Clearly BATNA is easier to say and shorter than WBOTWA :D
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Polity: New Zealand and the TPP: “Or…, in reply to BenWilson,
And addendum: of course there is the issue that there are non-trade factors in play, like staying sweet with the Anglosphere -- not everything that's driving this is actually on the table. Which makes principled negotiation hard.
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Polity: New Zealand and the TPP: “Or…, in reply to Don Christie,
Also, the style of negotiation you describe [BATNA] is shit.
It is perfectly reasonable for both sides to bear in mind their BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement for people who haven't heard this before). BATNA is part of the same principled negotiation strategy outlined in books like Getting To Yes, just as much as finding solutions that benefit all parties rather than compromises. Quite often one side's BATNA is better than anything on offer.
To me the issue isn't that we don't have anything we want to compromise on. It's that we won't recognise that our BATNA is better than any of the offers on the table.
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Legal Beagle: Cameron Slater: computer hacker?, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Thanks for that link! MOST interesting.
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Legal Beagle: Cameron Slater: computer hacker?, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Some have argued that maybe, if you tell them and report the hole, they shouldn't shop you. Not saying I would argue that, mind, but that's the grey area of "security research" for you.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
And I will give a brief address on behalf of the NZ Council for Civil Liberties. Should be an interesting event.