North's answer on the Queen's powers (or more precisely the Governor General's powers since they act for the Queen) works just as well for Canada as it does New Zealand, so I'll just refer you to him.
New Zealand used to fall under the jurisdiction of the Privy Council, but we've had our own Supreme Court since the mid 00s.
We're not at all federal, below central government lies municipal governments and that's it. Of course with only 4 million people I'm not sure we could support another layer of government. I don't know how federalism would interact with a parliamentary system, but a Canadian or Australian would have a better idea.
Honestly, it's a bit of both. The party will select someone they think can win the election, but also someone who fits well with the party's ideology. In New Zealand at least we don't have primaries for candidates. Each party has an internal election where the local party has some say who is nominated, and the central party has some say (the exact balance depends on the party). But since MPs are expected to toe the party line, the party affiliation of a candidate matters a lot when the election rolls around.
Of course there are a few cases of especially charismatic or popular MPs defying their party and breaking off to form their own party. And since we have a partially proportional voting system we also have MPs who don't have an electorate at all.
Liberalism (and any ideology really) is most effective when it is restrained in certain regards.
It would indeed be good to have another ideology to compete with liberalism, but that won't happen until another credible alternative presents itself, and socialism doesn't fit the bill. Its prescriptions have failed and that makes its criticisms hollow.
It has been an unrestrained and antagonistic liberalism that has given us massive environmental destruction, a selfish and materialistic consumer culture which brought us to the brink of economic collapse three years ago (and will again unless the underlying basic problem is identified and purged), and the growth-at-all-costs model which prioritizes the accumulation of capital regardless of its intrinsic worth over maximizing the welfare of humans.
First, our environmental prospects are probably the best they have been since the industrial revolution. There are real issues to address (such as climate change) but on almost every dimension we are heading in the right direction on the environment. Secondly we were nowhere near economic collapse and consumerism is ubiquitous in every economy developed enough to have consumer goods. I don't understand your third point.
in an age without a frontier, is land not a public good? In a truly globalized age, do the resources of the earth and sea not belong to all?
No, one of the clearest results from environmental economics is that property rights are the most important when a resource is limited.
When we have the capacity to provide medical care for all, do we not have a responsibility to do that?
How much care? And who's we?
to try and put any sort of social responsibility on corporations as more interventionist schools of liberalism espouse will only result in a system which rewards the corporations that most effectively create the appearance of compliance
I certainly have my issues with corporatism (the economic mostly advocated by the left these days), and one of them is that most of its advocates fail to understand the constraints they face in directing corporate activity.
To treat corporations as people and not machines used by people has become a defining feature of modern liberal capitalism.
I don't think this is true, the only ways corporations are treated as separate from the people who own them are limited liability (which exists for good policy reasons) and corporate bankruptcy (which is not universal among liberal democracies)
In calling for a dialectic between socialism and libertarianism, I am specifically calling for a socialism that stops allying itself with progressive technocracy and a libertarianism that stops allying itself with social conservatism.
I honestly can't see an intellectual purpose for socialism anymore. It's premises have been tested to destruction and found wanting, just as fascism's were. For me liberalism (broadly construed) was the outright winner of the ideological wars of the 20th Century and the diverse branches of liberalism need to form the dialectic of the 21st Century. There's the more classical form that persists today in libertarianism and the modern form that took some of the valuable insights from socialism, but need not be wedded to its follies.
Perhaps you and I define libertarianism and socialism differently, in which case we might not actually be disagreeing, but from what I'm reading at least, I can't accept your dialectic as it stands.
Atheism is a small part of communism's belief set, but that's what you want to blame for the evils of communism?
Plenty of religious societies have committed vile acts as well. Perhaps the real lesson here is that powerful people will do horrific things if they are permitted to. And that lesson has nothing in particular to say about religion or atheism.
Yes indeed. I picked up my brand of libertarianism through economics, but that's not true of most libertarians, and many of those are just as ignorant of economics as everyone else.
In other words, we know how to produce good education outcomes with high quality inputs (skilled teachers, motivated pupils), but that's not really that impressive from a systems design point of view.
There will always be a limit to what we can do with the most disadvantaged children, but that doesn't mean we just give up on children in inner city schools (and frankly, that's what the status quo is). And while it's true that sometimes experiments give you bad results, it's not like the results now are awe-inspiring.
Hell, right now for the worst-perforimign schools a renaissance-era education would probably be a step up, teach them to read and figure a little and apprentice them at age 14. At least that way, they'd learn some useful skills.
I agree completely, our educational model has ossified and has serious problems that need to be addressed. More knowledge is needed, and experimentation is the only way to do that.
The problem is that knowledge is not highly praised in political environments. If you do an experiment it might tell you things you don't want to hear.
Then I don't think we have a problem, I just feel it's overused as a rebuttal in some cases, and I think the reasonf ro that is people try to argue against ideologies in toto rather than just arguing about how ideologies apply in specific cases.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that we should abandon ideological labels, I still call myself a libertarian because its an efficient way of explaining to some one the approximate beliefs I hold.
My point is merely that not all libertarians believe the same thing (and nor do liberals, conservatives etc.). When debating someone you need to argue against what they believe, not what people with similar tribal identifications believe.
My point here is that libertarians are not all the same. Some libertarians really do argue as you describe, and the Somalia reply may be appropriate for them. But that arguments completely fails to address other forms of libertarian thought. For instance, I'm an Friedman / Hayek type libertarian who's never even read Rand. I'm not calling for Galt's Gulch, I just want government to stop doing a few of the things that it's doing. To engage with someone like me, you need to go beyond the Somalia argument.
This is why I advocate specificity in debate, don't argue with "libertarians", argue with the libertarian in front of you.
Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Once you've worked out what your opponent believes you can use the arguments that are appropriate to their position.
Let’s decode this, shall we? Because when Conor talks about expensive and inflexible labor force, what he’s talking about is that people in these jobs are well-paid and have job security. I know we’ve all been living through decades of plutocrat-adoring Republicans defining the political vocabulary, but you know, there was a time when workers expecting to be paid well and have some job security was considered a pretty elementary part of the social compact.
I think Freddie is overdoing the distributional analysis here. While there's nothing wrong with examining the effect of post office pay on the post office staff, there are other issues that might make high pay a concern. If post office staff are being paid more than they could obtain in the private sector then that means either the financial health of the post office is being threatened or postage is higher than it needs to be. I would have thought that anyone who felt that the post office was important enough to be a government activity would be concerned at either outcome.
But if the Post Office didn't exist other low-cost, low priority providers would enter the market. And if no-one could offer you equivalent service at that price you're effectively asking the government to subsidise your business.
What you say is true, and it suggests to me that the problem goes back to the voter. After all, the role of the voter in the democratic process is to hold elected representatives to account. Politicians only engage in the pomp and circumstance because it works. Ideally any politicians that tried to demagogue would be laughed out of politics.
Now actually getting that to happen, there's the tricky part.
I definitely agree with this. Most people believe its easy to tell lies with statistics but that's not really true, but using statistics to lie to people who don't know about statistics is easy.
Some of the research to come out of behavioural economics also suggests that statistically-capable people are less vulnerable to a range of cognitive biases as well.
You make a good point Jaybird, this is what your government's constitutional limits are supposed to prevent.
But they don't prevent it because as a practical matter the constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means and the Supreme Court is appointed by the politicians the Constitution is supposed to restrain.
So the question becomes how do you restrain the government from getting involved in trivial matters? I guess an amendment explicitly banning the government from banning the use of drugs might work, but good luck getting that passed.
The only thing I can think of that would work is large-scale cultural change i.e. convincing about 100m people not to support banning drugs. But that seems even less likely to happen.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Parliaments and Republics”
North's answer on the Queen's powers (or more precisely the Governor General's powers since they act for the Queen) works just as well for Canada as it does New Zealand, so I'll just refer you to him.
New Zealand used to fall under the jurisdiction of the Privy Council, but we've had our own Supreme Court since the mid 00s.
We're not at all federal, below central government lies municipal governments and that's it. Of course with only 4 million people I'm not sure we could support another layer of government. I don't know how federalism would interact with a parliamentary system, but a Canadian or Australian would have a better idea.
"
Honestly, it's a bit of both. The party will select someone they think can win the election, but also someone who fits well with the party's ideology. In New Zealand at least we don't have primaries for candidates. Each party has an internal election where the local party has some say who is nominated, and the central party has some say (the exact balance depends on the party). But since MPs are expected to toe the party line, the party affiliation of a candidate matters a lot when the election rolls around.
Of course there are a few cases of especially charismatic or popular MPs defying their party and breaking off to form their own party. And since we have a partially proportional voting system we also have MPs who don't have an electorate at all.
On “A New Political Dialectic”
It would indeed be good to have another ideology to compete with liberalism, but that won't happen until another credible alternative presents itself, and socialism doesn't fit the bill. Its prescriptions have failed and that makes its criticisms hollow.
First, our environmental prospects are probably the best they have been since the industrial revolution. There are real issues to address (such as climate change) but on almost every dimension we are heading in the right direction on the environment. Secondly we were nowhere near economic collapse and consumerism is ubiquitous in every economy developed enough to have consumer goods. I don't understand your third point.
No, one of the clearest results from environmental economics is that property rights are the most important when a resource is limited.
How much care? And who's we?
I certainly have my issues with corporatism (the economic mostly advocated by the left these days), and one of them is that most of its advocates fail to understand the constraints they face in directing corporate activity.
I don't think this is true, the only ways corporations are treated as separate from the people who own them are limited liability (which exists for good policy reasons) and corporate bankruptcy (which is not universal among liberal democracies)
"
I honestly can't see an intellectual purpose for socialism anymore. It's premises have been tested to destruction and found wanting, just as fascism's were. For me liberalism (broadly construed) was the outright winner of the ideological wars of the 20th Century and the diverse branches of liberalism need to form the dialectic of the 21st Century. There's the more classical form that persists today in libertarianism and the modern form that took some of the valuable insights from socialism, but need not be wedded to its follies.
Perhaps you and I define libertarianism and socialism differently, in which case we might not actually be disagreeing, but from what I'm reading at least, I can't accept your dialectic as it stands.
"
Atheism is a small part of communism's belief set, but that's what you want to blame for the evils of communism?
Plenty of religious societies have committed vile acts as well. Perhaps the real lesson here is that powerful people will do horrific things if they are permitted to. And that lesson has nothing in particular to say about religion or atheism.
On “What the hell is going on?”
When you have high explosive strapped to your feet, you're always in a minefield.
On “Somalia and Binary Thinking”
Yes indeed. I picked up my brand of libertarianism through economics, but that's not true of most libertarians, and many of those are just as ignorant of economics as everyone else.
On “The Limits of Knowledge in the Education Debate”
You can have religious education ... if I get to design the curriculum.
"
Now I'm picturing Admiral Adama as a teacher.
"
In other words, we know how to produce good education outcomes with high quality inputs (skilled teachers, motivated pupils), but that's not really that impressive from a systems design point of view.
There will always be a limit to what we can do with the most disadvantaged children, but that doesn't mean we just give up on children in inner city schools (and frankly, that's what the status quo is). And while it's true that sometimes experiments give you bad results, it's not like the results now are awe-inspiring.
Hell, right now for the worst-perforimign schools a renaissance-era education would probably be a step up, teach them to read and figure a little and apprentice them at age 14. At least that way, they'd learn some useful skills.
"
I agree completely, our educational model has ossified and has serious problems that need to be addressed. More knowledge is needed, and experimentation is the only way to do that.
The problem is that knowledge is not highly praised in political environments. If you do an experiment it might tell you things you don't want to hear.
On “Somalia and Binary Thinking”
Then I don't think we have a problem, I just feel it's overused as a rebuttal in some cases, and I think the reasonf ro that is people try to argue against ideologies in toto rather than just arguing about how ideologies apply in specific cases.
On “The Post Office’s Problems Aren’t Its Employee Costs”
There would be transitional issues, but ideally major policies shouldn't be enacted suddenly in any case.
On “Somalia and Binary Thinking”
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that we should abandon ideological labels, I still call myself a libertarian because its an efficient way of explaining to some one the approximate beliefs I hold.
My point is merely that not all libertarians believe the same thing (and nor do liberals, conservatives etc.). When debating someone you need to argue against what they believe, not what people with similar tribal identifications believe.
"
Honestly, I don't really get into these debates in New Zealand either, I really only get into them on the internet, and predominantly with Americans.
I don't know why that is, but your description of Canadian political discussion sounds similar to how things go down here.
"
At some point I should probably do a post on the basic differences between parliamentary democracy and the American republic model.
"
My point here is that libertarians are not all the same. Some libertarians really do argue as you describe, and the Somalia reply may be appropriate for them. But that arguments completely fails to address other forms of libertarian thought. For instance, I'm an Friedman / Hayek type libertarian who's never even read Rand. I'm not calling for Galt's Gulch, I just want government to stop doing a few of the things that it's doing. To engage with someone like me, you need to go beyond the Somalia argument.
This is why I advocate specificity in debate, don't argue with "libertarians", argue with the libertarian in front of you.
"
Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Once you've worked out what your opponent believes you can use the arguments that are appropriate to their position.
On “The Post Office’s Problems Aren’t Its Employee Costs”
I think Freddie is overdoing the distributional analysis here. While there's nothing wrong with examining the effect of post office pay on the post office staff, there are other issues that might make high pay a concern. If post office staff are being paid more than they could obtain in the private sector then that means either the financial health of the post office is being threatened or postage is higher than it needs to be. I would have thought that anyone who felt that the post office was important enough to be a government activity would be concerned at either outcome.
"
But if the Post Office didn't exist other low-cost, low priority providers would enter the market. And if no-one could offer you equivalent service at that price you're effectively asking the government to subsidise your business.
On “The Percentage Sign as a Signaling Device”
What you say is true, and it suggests to me that the problem goes back to the voter. After all, the role of the voter in the democratic process is to hold elected representatives to account. Politicians only engage in the pomp and circumstance because it works. Ideally any politicians that tried to demagogue would be laughed out of politics.
Now actually getting that to happen, there's the tricky part.
"
I definitely agree with this. Most people believe its easy to tell lies with statistics but that's not really true, but using statistics to lie to people who don't know about statistics is easy.
Some of the research to come out of behavioural economics also suggests that statistically-capable people are less vulnerable to a range of cognitive biases as well.
On “We, as a society”
I do love a self-correcting problem ;)
"
This is one of the problems with democracy, contra Menken, we don't get the government we deserve, we get the government the median voter deserves.
"
You make a good point Jaybird, this is what your government's constitutional limits are supposed to prevent.
But they don't prevent it because as a practical matter the constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means and the Supreme Court is appointed by the politicians the Constitution is supposed to restrain.
So the question becomes how do you restrain the government from getting involved in trivial matters? I guess an amendment explicitly banning the government from banning the use of drugs might work, but good luck getting that passed.
The only thing I can think of that would work is large-scale cultural change i.e. convincing about 100m people not to support banning drugs. But that seems even less likely to happen.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.