Posts by Idiot Savant
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Russell Brown,
Just to reiterate the key point of the message from Arie’s lawyer on the previous page: it looks like an assault by police officers on Arie will be acknowledged and investigated.
Good. I expect the NZ police to have zero tolerance for this sort of shit. I am glad they are meeting that expectation.
But they were NOT New Zealand police officers.
Also good. But its going to mean a more dificult investigation, and the need for extradition if a case can be made.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But it's also possible that the officer in question is a good decent person who had just spent the last couple of days dealing with dead bodies, horrible injuries, panicked members of the public. Someone who had his/her house destroyed, had spent hours worrying about whether their partner and children were OK while dealing with the worst disaster scene imaginable. Had just had a few hours disrupted sleep after working ridiculously hard and then seen what looked like someone taking advantage of someone else's loss for their own benefit and reacted by striking out.
That's not acceptable out of uniform, and its even less acceptable in uniform. I expect police officers, of all people, to be able to control themselves. If they can't, they have no business in law enforcement.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Assuming that the officer(s) responsible can even be identified. Or do you want every officer who came into contact with Arie prosecuted, just because?
I expect the police to investigate this properly and identify those responsible. If they can't or won't do that, then I expect the IPCA and the Ombudsmen (in their role as NPM for the Convention Against Torture) to do it for them, as well as a political investigation into the police heirarchy to identify the obvious failures to do their fucking job properly (either in the investigation, or in establishing a police culture where this sort of shit is absolutely unacceptable and people do not look the other way or cover for their mates when it happens).
Beating suspects is a crime. Covering up for it is a crime. I expect our police to not be criminals, and I want any officer engaging in such behaviour to be prosecuted and sacked. Is that simple enough, or have I left further room for your deliberate misinterpretation?
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Nikki Wysman,
His foster sister spoke to Arie and Arie confirmed that it was the police that Beat him
I want prosecutions. Anything less is the police covering for their own - again.
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Do you have any evidence it was the police who beat this young man, Russell?
No. I'm simply at a loss for any other explanation.
More importantly, the police arrested him and he was in their custody. They have a duty of care, and the onus is on them to prove that they discharged it properly.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Raymond A Francis,
I rather hope someone does some decent , dear I say it, detective work and finds out just how this boy got beaten
Ditto. Police beatings are not meant to happen in this country. Nor are beatings in prison. Someone needs to look into this.
FWIW, our National Preventative Mechanism under the Convention Against Torture is the Ombudsmen's office. Might be worth letting them know about your concerns.
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The people supporting price gouging in Christchurch are not evil.
Actually, I'd take issue with this. To the extent that they are predicated on unstated assumptions of ethical egoism - that people should do whatever is in their best interests, and screw everyone else - then that is exactly what they are.
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Sacha,
They are asking a vital question: If there's a fixed amount of resources, how do we distribute it?
Which is a *political* question.
In practice. But its also a moral one. Regardless of efficiency or otherwise, we can always ask "is this fair"? "Is this right"? And ATM, the answers of economists seem to be falling down even more than they do in ordinary circumstances.
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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.
I think the problem with many economists (and the reason why they are so publicly disparaged, despite being engaged in a vital inquiry) is precisely that they don't think about those things, dismissing them as "value-laden" - while all the time pretending that the unstated moral assumptions in their theories are not similarly "value-laden". Its spectacularly hypocritical, and it does the entire discipline an enormous disservice.
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Keith Ng,
I'd emphasis again that the price of price gouging is NOT lynchmobs, at least not in our society.
Not yet. But they raise the risk, and if price gouging for essentials becomes common, then non-market resource allocation solutions (AKA "stealing") and non-State justice solutions (AKA "lynching") start to look like a reasonable reaction to the circumstances.
And yes, as you point out, it creates a climate of everyone for themselves (and Shoggoths eat the hindmost), which in the short-term hampers recovery efforts. In the long-term, well, that's the mindset which defines the State of Nature. Its not fear of the (not really) all-powerful Leviathan which keeps us in civil society; its our mutual desire to cooperate which price gouging and an ideology of selfishness undermine.