Posts by Matthew Poole
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I’m really over having our economy managed by folks whose first assumption is people won’t be honest, decent and fair
Not only is that their first assumption, their actions are based on the same assumption. Witness the WWG, whose entire predicate is that there is nobody receiving a benefit who is in any way deserving of the State's unqualified support but, rather, that they're all shirking, malingering bludgers who need a good kicking to get them onto the workforce where they belong.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
Isn’t anyone thinking of the boy-racers? Where will they drive now?
"Anywhere they like, but the more broken glass, pot holes and sink holes there are, the better," would be the response from many residents of CHC, I suspect.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
at their AGM over the weekend.
That's just totally awesome. City's devastated, hundreds are dead, but they still hold their AGM. Yay for the triumph of the human spirit over adversity!
And I'm being totally serious here, before anyone rants about inappropriate sarcasm.
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Emma Hart,
I don’t think anyone here is pushing that ‘everything is nails’ point of view.
Sure about that? I reckon there are some chippies who're busy hunting for a hammer :P
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Raffe Smith,
Surely the question to be asked about the cathedral is whether it should remain a functioning church or not?
Yeah, good luck with that one.
It's a question that can only really be asked by the congregation, both of the Cathedral Church and of the Canterbury Diocese, and the decision either way will likely not come quickly. Abandoning a site damaged in anger and hatred (Nazi Germany was not bombed out of love) comes much easier than abandoning a site damaged by an act that many within the Church will call a random act of nature that carries no particular Godly message. -
Relevant but divergent question, anyone considered what impact the de-democratisation of ECan will have in the post-quake environment? Ignoring talk of Darth Brownlee, there's actually no elected body in place for the region at this stage and the regional "council" was appointed with a fairly specific remit around streamlined resource consenting.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Megan Wegan,
church isn’t a building, it’s a community, and the people involved in it.
"Where three or more are gathered in My name",etc. One need only look at how church communities respond to arson attacks on the building to know that it is the shared faith and connection that truly makes the Church. Look at the concept of a global Church as espoused by most denominations of Christianity, which by definition transcends any physical building.
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Keith Ng,
Economists should and do think about issues like fairness, morality and being a fricking human being. Some give it more consideration than others.
Sadly, the economists whose thinking has shaped much of the developed world's functioning for the last couple of decades have, it seems, considered "fairness, morality, and being a fricking human being" to be irrelevant concepts that are subordinated to the mythical "perfectly rational actor" or whatever the precise theoretical term-of-art happens to be.
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
They're not selling goods/services under crisis conditions, though. A key requirement for a functional market is rational behaviour by all players, and the aftermath of a lethal earthquake destroys that premise. Noone suggests that not getting a ticket to the RWC final, or a particular flight, or winning that auction will be the literal difference between life or death - unless you're an emo who just missed out on the last seat and ticket to the last concert of your favourite band, I guess. That's not true in Christchurch.
Context is key. In an ordinary market, you have the choice to walk away and not risk death. That's not true in Christchurch - psychologically, at least, if not literally - which is where gouging happens. If you can only take the price offered, with no alternative except death or serious harm, you cannot make a rational decision. Same reason that free-market healthcare is such an abominable concept.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Stephen Judd,
whether now is the right time to weaken building and zoning regulations
I read a comment from someone, I think an engineering prof at UoA, who said that the acceleration experienced by CHC on Tuesday exceeded current design standards. So not only is weakening them a really bad idea, so is even leaving standards where they are.