Hard News: The Near Future
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Yeah, me too. Is it a certification problem?
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Re: Mike Moore's use of code words.
No Right Turn picked up another:
Exactly what does the "consort" Judith Tizard and the legion of Ministers outside Cabinet actually do?
The dykeocracy again ... and Moore has previous here. You'd think the commentators would point out his own history of personal abuse, but really, the NZ media are a pushover for any politician who wants to pretend the past never happened. Do they throw out all files that predate the internet or something?
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"Code word"? Is he accusing Peters of anti-semitism? Is there the slightest bit of evidence of this?
Steven: Can't speak for Mike Moore, but I wouldn't call Peters an anti-Semite. I don't even think he really believes half the immigrant-bashing, 'Fortress New Zealand' economic nationalism that comes out of his mouth, He just panders to bigots for votes - which makes him worse than the likes of Kyle Chapman, in my book.
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Hi Don,
Ditto the other two above. As someone who has defended fair trade elsewhere I would love to know what is wrong with it.
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Aren't we all a bit precious regarding sniffing out a potentially anti-semitic comment?
Going on form, Winston's main objection with banks is that they are all foreign-owned?
BTW, anti-semitism is not worse than racism just because of Hitler.
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If my memory serves Peters has been quite pro-Israel in the past, and friendly to the local Jewish community. It's Moore who's making the insinuation here. When anti-semitism became unfashionable in the Social Credit movement they switched to saying "international bankers", but it does not follow that every reference to international bankers (or money lenders) is secret code for Jews.
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PS: if anyone wants to sign up, here you go. Still haven't got my cheque though.
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But the thing that bugs me is: where's his authority?
He's a statistician, which isn't totally irrelevant to the issue.
Take energy, for example. I don't think one can understand the concept of energy without an understanding of statistics. And energy is mostly what global warming issue is about.
But beyound statistical physics there's still that problematic region of political decision making - which is about making choices and ranking priorities.
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That's where the Pol Sci comes in handy
Bjørn Lomborg, born January 6 1965.
M.A. in political science (Cand.scient.pol.) 1991.
Ph.D. at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. 1994. -
WH,
The morality of Copenhagen consensus style cost-benefit analysis is utilitarian - it argues that we would be doing more good if we spent the money we are using to fight climate change on other problems humanity faces. If that was true, the rest of Lomborg's argument might be right.
The problem is that cost-benefit analysis relies on contestable projections and parameters. Goodstein's review points out that other economists believe Lomborg might be lowballing the economic costs of climate change and exaggerating the economic costs of addressing it (in comparison to, say, Stern or Stiglitz).
By focusing exclusively on a single moderate warming scenario, "Cool It" fails to grapple with the real economic rationale for cutting carbon now: to buy insurance against the possibility of catastrophic outcomes.
Harvard's Weitzman puts the current concerns of many economists clearly. Based on the findings of the U.N. climate panel, he notes that with roughly 3 percent probability, "we will [live in] a terra incognita biosphere within a hundred years whose mass species extinctions, radical alterations of natural environments, and other extreme outdoor consequences of a different planet will have been triggered by a geologically-instantaneous temperature change that is significantly larger than what separates us now from past ice ages." Facing uncomfortably high probabilities for these kind of catastrophic consequences, leading economists like Weitzman are advocating a "gradualist climate-policy ramp of ever-tighter greenhouse gas reductions" that will give our kids options: options for deep cuts if needed, and options emerging from the new technologies that will be driven by steadily tightening pollution caps.
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It's Moore who's making the insinuation here.
Sorry, Stephen, still not seeing it I think there's plenty to criticise in Moore's piece - and, to be honest, a lot of the reaction just goes to show Moore isn't the only one who has a little problem with re-writing history to suit present needs.
When anti-semitism became unfashionable in the Social Credit movement they switched to saying "international bankers", but it does not follow that every reference to international bankers (or money lenders) is secret code for Jews.
You're right. But, to play devil's advocate for a moment, I don't exactly fine Peters essays in facile economic nationalism and anti-immigrant racism all that endearing either. There's always going to be a constituency for blaming everything wrong in the world on 'dirty forreigners' - from the traffic to interest rates. Guess I just don't find xenophobia any more attractive.
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wait...Social Credit was anti-semitic? Where is the margin in that?
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Craig, what else could Moore have meant by "promoting speculation and money-lenders (__code word__)" (my italics, his words)? I honestly don't see what else that's supposed to mean.
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Ben, I should stress that was a LONG time ago - Major Douglas days, long before the heyday of Beetham and Knapp. And it wasn't an explicit position of the movement, it just provided a home for some bad people. I shouldn't have glossed over those details. In NZ the diehard international Jewish Conspiracy nuts ended up in the League of Rights and other such outfits.
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Right Stephen, I know we've had our moments re anti Semitism, I had just assumed it had become marginal around say WW2, not Social Credit times.
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Stephen:
First, let me make it crystal clear that I'm no way implying that your reading is offered in bad faith. I just didn't interpret it the same way. Moore is, for want to a better way to put it, pro-globalisation. And while I think there are any number of intellectually honest and reasonable arguments to the contrary, I think it's fair comment to say Peters doesn't make them. Like it or not (and a certainly don't), there's always going to be a political constituency - both on the rabid right and loony left - for racists and xenophobes to use immigration and economics as a 'wedge' to scratch racist itches. And Winston Peters is a master of that particular game. Do I think Winston Peters is a Jew-hater? No. I don't even think he's really a racist. He's something worse, IMO - he's a pure opportunist who's willing to pander to bigots if there's a poll point in it, and he keeps getting away with it. Which is a pretty nasty indictment on the media and the rest of us, isn't it?
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The problem is that cost-benefit analysis relies on contestable projections and parameters. Goodstein's review points out that other economists believe Lomborg might be lowballing the economic costs of climate change and exaggerating the economic costs of addressing it (in comparison to, say, Stern or Stiglitz).
Economics is an inexact science, there's bound to be lots of disagreement. A utilitarian cost-benefit analysis is just one way of looking at things. I don't have an opinion one way or the other on this approach but it does foreground the fact that we have choices to make and that those choices may entail trade-offs.
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Craig, I'm sure one of us has got the wrong end of the stick, and that we actually agree. MOORE is the one making insinuations -- he's the guy who says Peters is talking in code -- and I think Moore is wrong, just like you.
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I don't have an opinion one way or the other on this approach but it does foreground the fact that we have choices to make and that those choices may entail trade-offs.
Not being a dismal scientist (and questioning whether economics is a 'science' at all, in any meaningful sense of the word), I thought it was a fundamental that all economic activity involves 'trade-offs'. If I take a bolt of cloth and make pants, then I'm trading off the opportunity to make trousers. I spend $20 on a DVD, then I obviously can't spend it on anything else (or save it, or invest it).
To be honest, I really think the (for lack of a better term) the evangelical fundamentalists on both sides of climate change policy debate aren't doing their own causes any good, let alone adding much to quality policy debate that might just result in some worthwhile outcomes.
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Stephen:
Fine, you're not going to change my mind, and I'm not going to change yours so it's time to agree to disagree and move on. But I don't see any reason to change my view that Peters is a shameless, habitual and pathological liar who has built a (disgracefully long and successful) career out of pandering to bigots and xenophobic fucktards. The guy doesn't only 'speak in code' (though often it's not very hard to crack), he's applauded for it and enabled by people who just should know better.
And for the record, that wasn't an 'insinuation' that anyone is anti-Semitic. That's an explicit and in your face statement of opinion that Peters is a opportunistic racist and a liar, and the media and politicians who enable him are despicable.
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Economics is an inexact science, there's bound to be lots of disagreement. A utilitarian cost-benefit analysis is just one way of looking at things. I don't have an opinion one way or the other on this approach but it does foreground the fact that we have choices to make and that those choices may entail trade-offs.
This is the heart of an issue that's been bugging me recently. The Liberal party commissioned an economic analysis of different IR policies. The study was undertaken by Econotech, who are modellers in their own right, and compared the Liberal's IR policies with a counter-factual which assumed no changes to IR laws since 1993 (and excluding Keating's 1996 reforms).
In the end, the report concluded that some 300,000 jobs would not have been created if they'd been no reform. On the basis of this then, the Libs are saying voting for Labor jeopardises these jobs but that's simply untrue as the counter-factual scenarios in no way approximates Labor's policies.
The value of general equilibrium modeling is conditional upon the robustness of the underlying assumptions (and obviously the credibility of the model itself). That said, input-output analysis - which does not include 'trade-offs' or second round impacts is incredibly limited. Auckland University did an IO analysis a few years back to show that Auckland Uni contributed a couple of hundred million to the local economy but this measured just the multiplier effects of wages etc but did not even attempt to estimate the unique value of research or a well skilled workforce - contrast this with the Allen Consulting Group GE analysis of the value of TAFE NSW which actually gives policy makers, Treasuries and the like some real insight into the contribution education makes to an economy (including the value of some alternatives).
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I didn't read the Moore comment re: "money lenders" as suggesting Peters was anti-Semetic, mostly because the rest of the piece was so unsubtle that if Moore had been making such a suggestion he would have egged it up a bit more.
I don't think Peters is a racist either. He's an opportunist who knows how to appeal to racists.
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Moore is sunning himself in JKT right now. All he did was fart & leave the room.
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As we are on about character assasination, this is a bit snide : "a former Prime Minister, however brief and unelected"
We don't have a presidential system. All PM's are 'unelected' by the public, even HC. The only people to elect PMs are party caucuses. Moore's tenure or method of gaining power makes him no less a PM than any other person to hold that office.
Also, HC might not have used SIS files but did make unprecedented use of an MFAT file note pn Brash's meeting with US senators.
Do I also need to mention haters and wreckers, cancerous, speaking of affairs....
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All PM's are 'unelected' by the public, even HC. The only people to elect PMs are party caucuses.
True, but the common usage is to say that the PM was 'elected' if they were the leader of the party at the time of the election. So it's not really snide - it's a distinction that's not less important because it is less formal. Voting for the Prime Minister is actually one of the few things we feel like we're doing during our tri-annual "act like we're a democracy" festivities.
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