Posts by Angus Robertson
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The person with the power to bring the whole thing to a screaming halt, whose needs supercede the other party’s, is the sub.
Its a voluntary coupling where no one has power over the other, either of them can walk away and end the thing. If the dom(me) is not having fun then that is the end, just as much as if the sub is unhappy.
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As for the Afghani & Opium. It's a crime that Afghanistan isn't the world supplier of legal Opium to the worlds pharmacies.
Blame Tasmania for that.
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Excellent post. We want a competent and professional government. Cutting back on its employees renumeration is not what we are looking for. The Chartist argument stands up today.
If we shout too loudly about the expenses National may conduct a review that does something about it. Where will we be then? By enforcing some austerity amoung politicians they could achieve two things: "fix" a legacy problem from the past 9 years of Labour and promote themselves moral when tackling expenses in a "bloated, expansionist" civil service.
And there is no possible payout for Labour. National ministers take flack for recently detailed expenses; Labour did not detail expenses. National ministers exposed as maximising benefit payouts under Labour government rules; Labour minister demands bribes be paid for undertaking duties.
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Good news - we are troughing at the right time. Lets use this opportunity to get our senior players out of the All Blacks and over to Europe on mega buck contracts. Then come 2011 we'll be able to field a team of some new blood mixed with whoever of the Dan Carter/Richie McCaw/Andrew Hore/Ma'a Nonu lot is performing best over there. We'll have the best of both worlds - depth in all positions and senior players who actually know how to play under northern hemisphere refs.
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Increase taxes during a recession?
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Kyle,
But the same thing could be said for your "if we make it expensive here it will go elsewhere so ETS will increase emissions" theory. There's a lot of ifs in that line of reasoning.
Outsourcing of industrial production from highcost to lowcost economies is an observable phenomenon, not a theory. True up until now it has existed on the basis of primarily labour costs, but the base practicalities are equivalent. It is closely associated with free market capitalism. Increasing the costs of emitting carbon in rich (ETS participation) countries will lead to a growth of carbon emitting industires in poor (non-ETS participation) countries.You are committed to having NZ maximise its involvement in a global free market ETS, I am against it. I presume to acknowledge the fact that free markets favour those with the most capital, you say these are subject to many ifs and probaly won't occur. I advocate the richest consumer nations in the world being hit with punitive taxation, you advocate a market solution. Our views are fundamentally opposed.
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What's NZ to do if it was on the receiving end of the above?
We would gain incentive to demonstrably improve our carbon efficiency, because we will be losing market share based on how polluting our industries are. It is the sort of thing the world should be doing more of.
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Yeah, they are going to bring in a carbon tax.
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If the world's poor have to pay more for carbons than they'll charge more for the products they sell. We'll therefore pay for their carbons in our imported coffee and other goods.
Yes, if it happens you are correct, but that is a very big if.
If you were a politician in a country, for example China which has a competitive cost advantage over the USA or Europe or NZ in part because of not being Kyoto Annex I or II, would you sign up to this? I wouldn't, because it seems political poison.
Increasing your cost base is going to mean China sells less goods to the West - millions lose their jobs in the massive export sector and rightly blame you for it. Suppose the price of carbon gets so high that its more profitable to sell the carbon credits of a powerstation to the West than sell power to unemployed Chinese - millions of unemployed Chinese have their power cut off (a few Party officials profit) and the people rightly blame you for it. And the reason you have to use to convince your people of the need for their sacrifice is that China needs to pitch in to solve global warming (a problem that all your fellow Chinese know is 99% caused by the West). Suicide might be too weak a word, treasonous action likely to cause civil war isn't a word though.
The Chinese are not likely to sign up.
I'm surprised that you ran with 'free markets rule the world' as your base explanation, and then let this fly.
I delight in pointing out flaws in markets, its a thing. Our attempt to control emissions causing an increase in global warming - flaw.
I am a little surprised by the sheer amount of lets make a really big global market gung-ho vibe the Public Address crowd has nowadays.
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If not, then how does the target level in one country (or group of countries) affect the pricing in another?
Because one metric tonne of carbon dioxide here and in Uganda is one metric tonne of carbon dioxide. (And if you don't have global prices the same then carbon leakage occurs whereby polluting industries seek out new production facillities in places with the lowest cost carbon and because of the nature of the ETS political landscape these places are in the developing world so goods produced are shipped back to the first world markets with a greater carbon footprint and sold at a lower price than locally made goods.)
If we want to reduce our effective emissions we can do so by purchasing carbon credits locally or overseas. The more we need to buy, the higher the price goes, the more unaffordable it becomnes to the worlds poor.