103. Facing Limits

Note: This post is the one hundred and third in a series about government and commercial ethics. Click here for the full listing of the series. The first post in the series has more detail on the book 'Systems of Survival' by Jane Jacobs which inspired this series.


"Hope you don't think users are the only abusers niggaz
Gettin high within the game
If you do then, how would you explain?
I'm ten years removed, still the vibe is in my veins
I got a hustler spirit, nigga period
Check out my hat yo, peep the way I wear it
Check out my swag' yo, I walk like a ballplayer
No matter where you go, you are what you are, a player
And you can try to change but that's just the top layer
Man, you was who you was 'fore you got here
Only God can judge me, so I'm gone
Either love me, or leave me alone"

From "Public Service Announcement" by Jay-Z

----

"It all belongs to Caesar, It all belongs to Caesar
Go to the bank, Go to the bank
We're going down to Mexico
To get away from this culture
Go to the bank..."

from "Go to the Bank", by James¹

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I've been reading through the archives of Morris Berman's blog.

Writing this series of posts has led me into a habit of automatically classifying people as commercially or guardian minded (remarkably few people seem to manage to see both sides on a regular basis) and Berman is one of the clearest cut cases of a Guardian thinker I've come across. Whether he's decrying the building of a casino at Gettysburg (lack of respect for tradition), supporting efforts to take vengeance against the current U.S. elite (encouraging people to vote for Sarah Palin to speed up the collapse, for example), or recounting the loss of community in the face of a relentless self-interested thirst for more consumption, he is consistently singing from the Guardian songbook.

Berman is best known for a series of books on the decline of the American civilization, the most recent of which, "Why America Failed" traces the roots of America's cultural decline to its origins as a nation of 'hustlers' and the eventual takeover of the nation by commercial (hustling) interests.

Of course, there are lots of folks out there commenting on the decline of our civilization, and lamenting the commercial takeover of our communities. But it was one post in particular, that I wanted to mention here, the reason being that in this post Berman comes quite close to recounting some of the main points I've been circling here.

In this particular post, Berman likens humans to frogs:

"[In] An experiment with frogs some years ago ... [they] were wired up with electrodes in the pleasure center of the brain, and could stimulate that center–i.e., create a 'rush'–by pressing a metal bar. Not only did the frogs keep pressing the bar over and over again, but they didn’t stop even when their legs were cut off with a pair of shears."

Berman does allow that some of us frogs are a bit smarter than others:

"The first intelligent frog who comes to mind is the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, perhaps most famous for having been married to Margaret Mead. For Bateson, the issue was an ethical one. As he himself put it, 'the ethics of optima and the ethics of maxima are totally different ethical systems.' The ethics of maxima knows only one rule: more. More is better, in this scheme of things; words such as 'limits' or 'enough' are either foolish or meaningless. Clearly, the 'American Way of Life' is a system of maxima, of indefinite expansion."

Berman links the notion of respecting (or not) limits, with the goal of maximization vs. optimization, and from there, with the difference between individual and collective decision making:

"the economist Robert Frank, writing in the New York Times (12 July 2009), argues that 'traits that help individuals are harmful to larger groups. For instance,' he goes on,

'a mutation for larger antlers served the reproductive interests of an individual male elk, because it helped him prevail in battles with other males for access to mates. But as this mutation spread, it started an arms race that made life more hazardous for male elk over all. The antlers of male elk can now span five feet or more. And despite their utility in battle, they often become a fatal handicap when predators pursue males into dense woods.'"

The problem is that what was rational on the individual level was irrational on the collective level, thus leading to a systemic collapse.

We are thus led, quite naturally, from a consideration of optima vs. maxima to the question of individual vs. collective behavior."

Berman goes even further to note that democracy is a more tenuous method of transforming individual preferences into collective behaviour vs. dictatorship:

How, then, can excess be curbed in a free democratic system? For we can be sure that the intelligent frogs, who are really quite exceptional, are not going to be listened to, and certainly have no power to enforce their insights. True, there are certain countries–the Scandanavian nations come to mind–where for some reason the concentration of intelligent frogs is unusually high, resulting in decisions designed to protect the commons. But on a world scale, this is not very typical. More typical, and (sad to say) a model for most of Latin America, is the United States, where proposed “changes” are in fact cosmetic, and where the reality is business as usual. In the context of 306 million highly addicted frogs, the voices of the smart ones–Bateson, Frank, Posner, Hardin, et al.–aren’t going to have much impact or, truth be told, even get heard."

...

"Of course, authoritarian systems don’t have these problems, which is a good indicator of how things will probably develop. Under the name of 'harmony', for example, China regulates its citizens for what it perceives to be the common good. Hence the famous one-child policy, introduced in 1979, supposedly prevented more than 300 million births over the next 29 years in a country that was threatened by its own population density. In the case of the United States, the imposition of rules and limits on individual behavior to protect the commons is not, at present, a realistic prospect; the population is simply not having it, end of story. But how much longer before this freedom of choice is regarded as an impossible luxury?"

So, just in this one post, Berman covers quite well one of the main areas that separates the guardian syndrome from the commercial one, the ability to deal with / impose limits. The commercial syndrome prioritizes individual competition which prevents collective (cooperative) decision making, which can work in an unlimited domain where maximization is the goal, but fails when faced by a limit because it becomes impossible to constrain individuals to respect the limits and to optimize rather than maximize, and to allocate shares within the limit rather than everyone just taking as much as they can.

And he raises an interesting question, if the citizens in a country face real limits, but would rather pretend those limits don't exist and will only elect politicians who act as if those limits don't exist, will democracy survive?



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¹As an aside, I was looking up the lyrics for the James song I referenced at the top of the post, and ended up at the song meanings entry for a different (but similarly themed) James song, "Lost a Friend (to the sea)" about a man trying to free a friend from living in the world of television and bring them back to reality. While there, I found one of those occasional nuggets of gold that one gets if you sift through enough of the mountains of dirt that make up most comment sections on the web, a comment from 'draven66':

"I logged onto facebook.com for the first time yesterday and realized that I have lost my friends to the sea. A sea of electronic lies, bloated materialism, and denial that hides their suspended disbelief that modern western lifestyles of decay are not only consuming them but everyone we kill under "foreign policy" to maintain this sick way of life. You've seen it before .. those tired sore smiles that say "I am hypnotized, and adequately, even willingly! desensitized, and sedated! Please don't let my suspicions be true, please just give me another hit. The worst part is when everyone can capture it fifty times a day, digitally. This life was made possible by FUTURE SHOP, keep on pretending you sad empty sheep, you are owned and cultivated and laughed at! GOD I feel so alone.

Nice song though."

70. War and Peace

Note: This post is the seventieth in a series about government and commercial ethics. Click here for the full listing of the series. The first post in the series has more detail on the book 'Systems of Survival' by Jane Jacobs which inspired this series.

Many years ago, I read 'Century Of War' by Gabriel Kolko. It's not actually about war itself, but rather about the impact of the war on the society that wages it. I don't remember any of the details of the book (it was many years ago), but I do remember coming away completely convinced of his argument that the wars led to a shift to more progressive policies. And I also remember not being nearly as clear about why war had that effect.

This post will look into that question, in a roundabout fashion, first returning to a story I related way back near the start of this series, "One of my childhood friends happened to have his birthday on the same day as Halloween. Naturally, a group trick or treat outing was incorporated as part of his birthday celebration. Afterwards, the group of us would pile into his bedroom and dump out our accumulated loot into a pile on the floor (one pile for each person - not one big pile). Note that at this point, the distribution of loot has been determined by the random allocations at each front door, and does not take into consideration each trick or treaters particular tastes. This raises the possibility of making trades that benefit all parties involved. For example, I always liked the Rockets and Mint Laura Secord bars the best, whereas others preferred items such as the Coffee Crisp that I had little interest in.

So the initial distribution was Pareto-inefficient in that changes could be made that would benefit people without making anyone else worse off.

So, naturally, we set about trying to achieve a Pareto optimal distribution of candy in a free wheeling round of candy exchange that would last until everyone was satisfied enough with their adjusted haul such that no further exchanges could be made that were agreeable to both parties."

Now, imagine if you were one of the trick or treaters, and you were about to embark on the candy exchange when your friend suggested that the two of you team up in order to trade more effectively. The immediate question that comes to my mind is, how would teaming up help? In fact, teaming up might well be harmful since if the two of us had to agree to trades together, that might mean that I have to compromise and trade for things we both like. If I love malted milk but my friend hates malted milk, then teaming up makes me less likely rather than more likely to get what I want. The more correlated our tastes are to one another, the less compromise and less sacrifice comes from teaming up, but why make any sacrifices at all, why not just have everyone remain as sole traders. And of course, that is what we did as kids.

Now, let's imagine that a couple of your friends haven't learned proper manners and they begin to violate commercial (trading) ethics by stealing candy and a fight breaks out, with everybody trying to grab candy from everybody else's pile. And further suppose that your best friend turns to you and offers to team up. In this situation, the benefits of teaming up are obvious. A two person force would be much more effective in a physical battle than two people fighting alone, especially if you and your friend are able to place your piles beside one another in order to form a more geographically contiguous territory to defend.

OK, another scenario. This time, you and your friends (let's say there are 5 of you in total) are getting along, but a couple of kids who are up to no good, start making trouble in your neighbourhood and come over and demand that you give them all your candy or they will beat you up. You figure that if all 5 of you stand together and fight, you can fight these older kids off, but if anyone gets scared and bails, you might well lose all your candy. In this situation, you need everyone to team together in an all or nothing battle.

So, let's say that you and your friends stick together and the older bullies are scared to attack you. So one of the bullies has an idea and makes the following offer, "The first one of you little punks to come over to our side gets an equal share of the candy after we beat up the rest of your friends." Now there is an extra incentive for one of your friends (or you) to betray the rest and side with the bullies. Strong bonds of loyalty will be required to keep the group together. A moral viewpoint that says this kind of trading, or selling out, is shameful behaviour wouldn't hurt either.

OK, final scenario, same as the last one, but this time, instead of the candy being divided relatively equally between you and your friends (as you might expect after a night of trick or treating together), let's say the candy is divided the same way that wealth is in the United States. So if you collected 100 candies in total, then one friend has 84 candies, another friend has 11, one friend has 4, the second last friend has 0.2 (one fifth of a pack of rockets, perhaps), and you have 0.1 candies (one measly rocket). Do you think the chances of someone selling out their friends to the bullies goes up in this scenario? I do. How much loyalty can the person with 0.1 candies really feel towards the 'friend' sitting across from them with 84?

In a situation where you need cooperation from everyone to succeed, then everyone has equal worth, since the withdrawal of any one person dooms the enterprise. And in a situation where people are tempted to defect, the more unequal the distribution of benefits, the greater the temptation to defect. The World Wars were just this sort of situation, and it's no surprise, looking at it this way, that they led to policies which tried to take care of everyone in society (more so than what came before, at any rate).

And now, 65 years since World War 2 ended and since any collective effort or sacrifice was needed in our society, we have settled into the mindset of candy traders, preferring private schools and health care to paying taxes for public services, driving our car exactly where we want to go, rather than compromising by riding transit, staying at home watching exactly what we want to watch rather than compromising by watching what others are watching as well, and bowling alone, rather than compromising by organizing our schedule around a time everyone can come.

60. Signalling

Note: This post is the sixtieth in a series about government and commercial ethics. Click here for the full listing of the series. The first post in the series has more detail on the book 'Systems of Survival' by Jane Jacobs which inspired this series.

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"Buying bread from a man in Brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, 'Do you speak-a my language?'
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich"


In a world where everyone behaves the same way (e.g. the world of most economic models), being able to tell one person from another isn't all that useful. But as we saw a few posts back, and as common sense also indicates, people vary, with some people being more prone to cooperative behaviour than others.

If we imagine ourselves wandering around a world filled with a mix of those who are willing to cooperate with us, and those who will pretend to cooperate just to take advantage of us, then the importance of knowing who you can trust becomes obvious.

One way is to learn by experience. If you can remember who you've dealt with in the past, then you can shun those who've defected against you and only deal with people you've had successful dealings with before. But this still leaves a problem of what to do with people you are meeting for the first time, or people who you are dealing with in a new situation, or even people who defected on you before, but claim to have turned over a new leaf.

In these cases, we tend to look for signs that indicate we can trust someone. Maybe a common language or culture, or skin colour or alma mater, or a certain manner of dress or hairstyle, or a certain level of courteousness, or a certain credit score, or even a certain food choice (e.g. vegemite sandwich).

Thinking more generally, even someone's past behaviour could just be considered another type of signal to take into consideration.

Ideally, the signs that we look for will be hard to fake, since otherwise defectors might just try to pass themselves off as cooperators. Barring the use of memory altering technology, past experience with a person can be very hard to fake, which makes past experience with someone one of the best signals of their potential willingness to cooperate in the future.

Given a perfect ability to differentiate cooperators from defectors, even a group of cooperators as small as just 2 people could outperform a society full of defectors. But given a complete inability to differentiate cooperators from defectors, and lacking a way of keeping track of the results of prior dealings with people, then cooperators would become helpless against defectors - and the defectors will likely take advantage of the cooperators until eventually there are no cooperators left.

As we covered a while back, this distinction is what led David Gauthier to assume, in Morals By Agreement that people pursuing cooperation would be able to perfectly differentiate cooperators from defectors.

This is all pretty straightforward common sense, but as this series goes along and I talk more about how cooperative behaviour can evolve (or go extinct) in various circumstances, it will be useful to keep some basic points in mind, such as the importance of signalling cooperative intentions and remembering past interactions with people in sustaining cooperation.

* * *

A few other notes on the topic of signalling:

It's worth mentioning that signalling is only necessary when one party to a transaction has information that another party lacks (the information that will be signalled) so, from an economic perspective, situations requiring signalling are an example of one of the effects of asymmetric information , a topic which we discussed here a while back.

Of course, barring an ability to read minds or predict the future, you never really know for sure what the other person is going to do, so in that sense every transaction involves asymmetric information, which is a bit hard on economic theories which rely on the absence of asymmetric information as a key assumption.

* * *

Signalling problems can also be tied back to game theory via various 'signalling games' which investigate what messages might be sent and received between players under varying circumstances.

* * *

Some concepts related to the idea of signalling:

Cheap Talk - Signs that can be made with little effort and thus don't signify much. For example, if I ask you, 'Are you going to screw me over?' And you say, 'No', your answer would qualify as cheap talk, since it doesn't cost you much to make that statement. Or if cooperators tried to identify one another by wearing a yellow shirt, than anyone could wear a yellow shirt and pretend to be a cooperator. This notion is generally captured in the expression, 'actions speak louder than words' - since actions typically have a higher cost than words do.


Common Knowledge - Something that everybody knows, and everybody knows that everybody knows, and everybody knows that everybody knows and everybody knows, and so on. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides an example:

"A proposition A is mutual knowledge among a set of agents if each agent knows that A. Mutual knowledge by itself implies nothing about what, if any, knowledge anyone attributes to anyone else. Suppose each student arrives for a class meeting knowing that the instructor will be late. That the instructor will be late is mutual knowledge, but each student might think only she knows the instructor will be late. However, if one of the students says openly 'Peter told me he will be late again,' then each student knows that each student knows that the instructor will be late, each student knows that each student knows that each student knows that the instructor will be late, and so on, ad infinitum. The announcement made the mutually known fact common knowledge among the students."

Twin Peaks

"When something goes wrong
I'm the first to admit it
The first to ad-mit it
And the last one to know"

Paul Simon, Something So Right



So, a while back in 2007, I predicted that Vancouver housing prices would peak in 2008 - and they did, as the graph below shows (click to enlarge). But somewhat implicit in my prediction was the notion that they wouldn't reach a higher peak in 2010, which they also did.



I've heard of the V-shaped and W-shaped recession, but as the inventory of houses for sale climbs in a pattern reminiscent of 2008 (see chart below) I wonder about chances of an M-shaped housing bubble...



Note: Chart was originally posted by commenter vibe in the forum at Vancouver Condo Info. REBGV = Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

That's What Keeps the Rent Down, Baby**

I've been (very slowly) going through my blog archives and adding tags to all the old posts. I ran across one from 2005 where I wrote, tongue in cheek,

"What's the difference between China and Canada? China keeps its currency down vs. the American dollar by legislative fiat, while Canada does it by making the markets nervous with endless political shenanigans."

It struck me* that maybe the same thing is happening now, only more deliberately, in Europe, where The Germans are allowing Greece to twist in the wind which is helping keep the Euro down (from 1.5USD a few months ago to about 1.3USD now), which helps German exports.

With Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney caught between a high Canadian dollar, rising prices and a housing bubble, maybe a little domestic crisis would be just what the doctor ordered...

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* Hmm, looking around the interwebs, I see I'm not the only person this thought has occurred to, oh well.

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** Post title reference

39. Clint Eastwood and the Guardian Syndrome

Note: This post is the thirty-ninth in a series. Click here for the full listing of the series.

The next few posts in the series are going to focus on the Guardian Syndrome, as outlined in Jane Jacobs' 'Systems of Survival'.

As a reminder, here is the list of ethics in the Guardian syndrome:

Guardian Moral Syndrome:

Shun trading
Exert Prowess
Be Obedient and Disciplined
Adhere to Tradition
Respect Hierarchy
Be Loyal
Take Vengeance
Deceive for the sake of the task
Make rich use of leisure
Be Ostentatious
Dispense Largesse
Be exclusive
Show Fortitude
Be Fatalistic
Treasure Honour

The Guardian syndrome is based on taking (as opposed to trading) as a way of life, and is used in organizations that are territorial in nature (governments, militaries, religions).

A few points to note while I'm on the topic:

1) While maximization is a logical goal of the trading based commercial syndrome, maximizing taking (whether from nature or from other people) is not a sustainable approach.

2) While the commercial syndrome treats everyone equally as people/orgnaizations who have something to trade, the guardian syndrome makes a distinction between us and them (be exclusive, deceive (them) for the sake of the task) and also between superior and subordinate (respect hierarchy, be obedient, dispense largesse).

3) While the commercial syndrome never calls for somebody to make themselves worse off (only to refrain from bettering their condition at somebody else's expense) the guardian syndrome (treasure honour, be loyal, show fortitude, etc.) is all about sacrifice in the name of duty or some greater good.

---

Unlike the boring, rational, commercial syndrome, the guardian syndrome is full of excitement and lends itself well to television and movies. The best example of the Guardian Syndrome in action that I can recall recently was the Clint Eastwood movie 'Gran Turino'. So I thought that showing the connection between the movie and the syndrome might help to give a flavour of the guardian syndrome. (Warning: lots and lots of spoilers for the movie in what follows)...

Walt Kowalski (played by Eastwood) is a military veteran (the archetypal guardian career) who is now retired and still living in and carefully maintaining his old house in Detroit (complete with American flag out front), even though the neighbourhood has been abandoned by almost all white people and has become a slum.

The plot follows three main threads.

The first main thread follows Walt adjusting the boundaries of his us vs. them group. At the start of the movie it is Walt against the world, defending the territory of his small patch of lawn in the slums of Detroit against all comers. By the end, he has overcome his racism to include the local Hmong community as part of his 'us' group that he is loyal to, choosing them over his own family who he sees as materialistic, shallow, commercial, self-interested and lacking in respect, discipline and honour. As Walt enters the Hmong community we even see the Hmong helping Walt make rich use of his retired leisure instead of just sitting on his porch all day. Walt's final act of largesse is to will his beloved Gran Turino to his neighbour Thao instead of to his family members who were coveting it.

The second thread is the escalating cycle of violence and vengeance with Walt and his Hmong neighbours on one side and local gangs, in particular the local Hmong gang, on the other. The movie ends with Walt making the ultimate sacrifice, restoring his own honour, employing deceit for the sake of task, exerting prowess, showing his loyalty, and taking vengeance all in one final action.

The third thread is Walt taking on a guardian type role with respect to his adolescent neighbour Thao, doing his best to help Thao 'become a man' while maintaining a hierarchical (paternal) relationship in which Thao is expected to obey what Walt tells him, and Walt feels justified in deceiving Thao as necessary to protect him.

Looking at it again, every scene in the movie seems to reinforce the guardian characteristics of Walt's character. The movie opens with the funeral for his wife. At the funeral, we get a sense of Walt's character as he stands erect in formal suit and snorts in disgust at the lack of respect (for tradition, for their elders, for the church) shown by his grandchildren at the funeral. Where a commercially minded person might embrace the 'openness to novelty' of wearing a midriff and bellybutton ring exposing shirt to your grandmother's funeral, obviously Walt isn't buying it.

Next we see Walt's disdain for the self-interested materialism of his granddaughter who tries to convince him he should give her his car (the Gran Turino).

Next we see Walt's exclusiveness, as opposed to his willingness to collaborate with strangers, as he is extremely rude to the teenage boy next door (who is of Hmong descent) referring to him as 'zipperhead'.

Then he corrects the local priest who calls him Walt, saying his name is Mr. Kowalski, again demanding the respect for tradition, and hierarchy.

That's just the first few minutes, I could go on like this describing every scene, but hopefully you get the point - point being that Clint Eastwood's character in this movie is one of the purer depictions of the Guardian syndrome you're likely to see - both the good side and the bad side.

More discussion of the guardian syndrome next week...

The Trouble With Normal...

..is it always gets worse.

Back in 2006, I wrote that, "one of the things which I find annoying about the 'right-wing' these days in North America, is an inability to distinguish being things which should be partisan, and things which shouldn't." and complained about, "the politicization of the Government of Canada webpage, which, since the election, has become an extension of the Conservative Party site."

Somewhat naively, I offered that, "Perhaps now that the Globe and Mail has picked up on this story, with a well-written article by Ivor Tossell, the Conservatives will be shamed into making the taxpayer funded website less of a marketing tool for one particular party."

So now we see that, far from improving, things have steadily deteriorated on the inappropriately partisan front. In addition to disproportionately funneling federal stimulus funding to Conservative ridings, Conservative MP's have been running around the country passing off taxpayer money as being provided by the Conservative party or its MP's.

With the instinctive 'yeahbuttheLiberals' response rising from the Conservative side, not to mention the recent stacking of the senate by Harper, it's a pity Arzt is no longer with us to point out that the pigs are walking.

Reading the Globe and Mail comment threads and wondering...

Why is Joe Sixpack so hard in the middle? The rest of his life is so soft.

But I Don't Wanna!

I don't really have anything to add to what Timmy, Greg and Andrew have already said about the latest evidence that when it comes to trade deals with the U.S., Canada gets to play the role traditionally played by Native Americans (i.e. the patsy).

To summarize, Canada won another trade panel ruling in the endless softwood lumber dispute and the American response was,

“We are, of course, disappointed with the (panel’s) decision, but it will have no impact on the anti-dumping and countervailing duty orders,”

Or to put it more bluntly, 'We don't wanna and you can't make us'.

No doubt Americans are working behind the scenes to fix the flaw in the trade agreement which allowed a trade panel to rule against the U.S., but, until they fix that error, the NAFTA agreement has less and less credibility.

I'm reminded of a classic Seinfeld moment at a car rental agency:

"Agent: Can I help you? Name please?

Jerry: Seinfeld. I made a reservation for a mid-size

Agent: Okay, let's see here.

Agent: I'm sorry, we have no mid-size available at the moment.

Jerry: I don't understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?

Agent: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.

Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.

Agent: I know why we have reservations.

Jerry: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.

Agent: Let me, uh, speak with my supervisor."

The Americans know how to sign trade agreements, they just don't know how to *abide* by them. And that's really the most important part of an agreement, the abiding. Alas, the problem with dealing with the Americans is that when things go wrong there's no supervisor you can talk to.

The scene concludes:

"Agent: I'm sorry, my supervisor says there's nothing we can do.

Jerry: Yeah, it looked as if you were in a real conversation over there.

Agent: But we do have a compact if you would like that.

Jerry: Fine.

Agent: Alright. We have a blue Ford Escort for you Mr. Seinfeld. Would you like insurance?

Jerry: Yeah, you better give me the insurance, because I am gonna beat the hell out of this car."

What puzzles me are the Canadians who, in reaction to this kind of behavior from the Americans, would be more inclined to demand that Jerry apologize for his comments about beating the hell out of the car (because it might damage the relationship with the rental place) rather than looking for a way to make an uneven exchange (in which one side has all the leverage) more even.

It's the Same Old Tune?

There seems to be quite the media blitz going on for the movie version of 'The Dukes of Hazzard'. With it's release, I guess Jessica Simpson will then have to be considered a music star, a TV star, and a movie star.

Maybe it's snobbish to suggest that different routes to becoming successful have a different moral value and some are thus better than others, or that some people are more deserving of fame and recognition than others, but, looking at Simpson's body of work, I think it's fair to say that I don't think Waylon done it that way.

But Everything Changes / And My Friends Seem to Scatter...

Via Bound by Gravity, I see that it is not just an internet snafu that gives me an error when I try to visit The Heart of the Matter - Treehugger has signed off.

Treehugger set himself a lofty goal (especially for a blog):

"I hope that everyone who came here saw that I tried to provide a blog that was not an ideological echo chamber. I tried to set an example that it was possible to have people from all walks of political belief talking to, instead of yelling at, each other. That was my goal from day one."

and he definitely succeeded - I can think of few blogs which stimulated more interesting (and civilized) debate than the Heart of the Matter.

You'll be missed Treehugger.



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If, like me, you didn't catch the sign-off post, you can see ithere through the magic of google caching.

And Now for Something Completely Different...

I see that Blogger has finally added picture uploading capability. This calls for a parade!

The Conservative Coyote gets Hit by Another Anvil

I know, I haven't written much about policy lately but I'll get back to that soon, I promise. In the meantime, I was reading the Star this morning when I broke out laughing after coming across the following quote from Conservative party house leader Jay Hill (referring to late Thursday night when the Bloc, NDP and Liberals all agreed to invoke closure and force a vote on the budget when the Conservatives weren't expecting it and didn't have everyone in the house for a vote),

"It's going to be extremely hard to know whether we can trust anyone after what happened on Thursday night,"

Just in case it isn't clear yet, here's some advice for the Conservative party: you can't trust the NDP, you can't trust the Bloc Quebecois and you definitely can't trust the Liberals. I'm not sure about the independents, but I'm guessing you can't trust them either. Heck, after Stronach crossing the floor and Grewal sabotaging his own party, you can't even trust your own MP's.

Trust has a very important place in our society - but parliament hill is not that place.

I'm thinking this is all part of the top-secret, Acme-inspired, Conservative Coyote Plan to shake their label of being 'scary'. You see, the trouble is that, in an ideal world, the Conservatives would like to have a majority government and (potentially) do some stuff that many Canadians would find scary: signing on to the next U.S. foreign adventure, defying the courts by denying rights to gays, cutting taxes and increasing spending plunging us back into deficit, adopting a 'climate change? you don't believe all those silly scientists do you?' policy, starving or shutting down the CBC, removing Federal support for various programs (scientific research, gas tax money for cities), etc. etc. Continuing with the ideal world, the Conservatives would like to shake their 'scary' label without having to shake their scary policies.

Giving lip service to abandoning their scary plans of old hasn't worked well so far - which brings us to the Coyote plan. Anyone familiar with the roadrunner cartoon will remember that while, in real life, being hunted by a coyote is a pretty scary thing for a roadrunner, in a cartoon, the coyote is so consistently, humourously, pathetically inept, that instead of being scary, the coyote is actually kind of endearing and you almost want it to catch the roadrunner sometime.

Maybe this is the Conservative plan, but I'm no political strategist so don't take my word for it.

Paint it True

"Paint it True, paint it true - to miss or mister
if you don't we wont get the picture
lies and deception is a terrible mixture
when you speak from the heart it'll uplift ya"¹

So I've been trying to avoid writing too many dissections of media articles since that seems to lack a certain style or originality but, to tell the truth, part of my motivation for blogging in the first place was to no longer bottle up the irritation I feel when I encounter the worst of the media so let's have at it...

Tommy Steele, (from Canadian Steele) has a good post up on what it means to be non-partisan. All I'll add right now is that to me non-partisan means a) what Tommy said and b) the opposite of an article in the Tyee today by Mitchell Anderson, entitled 'Let's Keep Vote Reform Alive'.

The article is a pro-MMP piece which attempts to show that the 'message' sent by the referendum was that the people of B.C. want to see an MMP system brought in. Which is fair enough for an objective, it's just the implementation that went awry. Let's do a line by line critique...

"The referendum question on BC-STV needed 60 percent support to succeed. It got 57 percent.

There are two lessons that we should take from this result. The first is that BC-STV is a dud. A poll by Ipsos-Reid in late April showed that 64 percent of British Columbians knew "nothing" or "very little" about BC-STV. A second poll by Nordic Research Group poll on the eve of the referendum showed that only 37 percent of respondents could even name STV."

So here's my question, how can the reason that (43% of) people voted against STV be because it is a dud if they couldn't even name the system being voted on? How could people be expected to prefer MMP, if they're not going to bother to even learn the name of what they are voting on? Will people be more likely to learn the acronym MMP than the acronym STV because the system which the MMP acronym corresponds to is a little bit simpler than the one which STV corresponds to?

If people don't even know the name of the proposed system, that doesn't indicate that it's a dud, it indicates the people are a dud because they have no interest in how they are governed and/or that the process for educating people was a dud. It says nothing about MMP being better than STV (or vice-versa).

"British Columbians were voting for change. They were not voting for BC-STV."

It's nice that the author believes he knows the motivations of all the people of B.C. who voted, but I for one voted for STV and I think a lot of other people did as well. It seems like pretty hard spin to suggest that people who answered 'yes' to a question, 'do you want to adopt STV as the new electoral system' weren't voting for STV. Maybe not all of them, but enough to make the 57-43 split in favour? definitely.

"While BC-STV has now failed, electoral reform continues to move forward. Just one day after the election, both Gordon Campbell and Carole James have stated that improving the voting system is a priority that should be revisited before the next election.

This is stunning rebuke to the cynical argument made prior to May 17th that while voters might not like or even understand BC-STV, they had better vote for it or electoral reform in BC will be set back for years."

And I guess if Campbell comes out tomorrow and says the Liberals want to help out the poor, that will be a stunning rebuke to those who said that voting NDP would be better for the poor than voting Liberal. When it comes to politics, action speaks a lot louder than words. If we end up getting a new electoral system some time in the next, say 6 years, *that* will be a rebuke to those who thought a 'No' vote would set back electoral reform. And besides, the only reason electoral reform still has the momentum it does is because so many people voted 'Yes'.

Furthermore, I would challenge the author to point out where 'Yes' supporters are on the record as saying that people who don't understand STV should vote 'Yes'. It was the 'Yes' side which did by far the lion's share of the work to get people to know about and understand STV. The 'No' side seemed reasonably content to rely on simplistic (and often misleading) fear-mongering rather than try and educate people.

"Carole James has also revealed that she does not favour STV -- a sentiment shared in the vast majority of the public submissions of the now defunct Citizens Assembly.

In fact, fully 80 percent of the public submissions to the Citizens Assembly process were in favour of some form of "mixed-member proportional" (MMP) system, used in some variety by most established democracies around the world. Unlike STV, MMP has a solid record of delivering proportional results and achieving gender equity of elected officials."

This is the real heart of where the article goes awry. First off, as is well known by now, the Green Party stacked the submissions to the Assembly, by lining up speaker after speaker to support MMP without any other system having such organized support behind it. So the quoting of statistics which the author must surely (by now) know to be misleading is quite disingenuous.

Speaking of which, the statement that MMP is used in some variety by most established democracies around the world is simply a falsehood. As far as I know, out of the 30 or so countries which make up the OECD (a group of the world's wealthiest / most advanced nations) only Germany, New Zealand, Mexico, the U.K. (for some regional elections) and Italy (lower house) use MMP. That's hardly *most*. In fact, it's only 2 more than use STV (Ireland, Australia (upper house), and U.K. (again regional elections). And maybe this would be a good time to mention that New Zealand is only using MMP because it won a referendum - with a 54% yes vote, 3% less than voted for STV in B.C.

But even worse is the statement that 'unlike STV, MMP has a solid record of delivering proportional results' - another outright falsehood, since by pretty much any measure STV has a solid record of delivering proportional results as well.

As for achieving gender equity, I've been over this ground many times. I don't think allowing party leaders to basically appoint women to MLA positions is the solution to the gender gap nor do I think that differences between countries in the number of women elected can be attributed with any degree of reliability to the electoral system.

"The main advantage of MMP is that it preserves local representation while also ensuring that elected seats accurately reflect the popular vote. Under MMP, minority and coalition governments rather than simple majorities are far more likely.

Because different parties know that they may one day have to work together, the public debate tends to be more respectful than the embarrassing spectacles seen regularly in Victoria or Ottawa. Coalitions also mean that governments are much more accountable to the people between elections - not just on voting day."

Sorry, how is this any different from STV? (and this is the 'main' advantage of MMP -over what? - oh I see, we're doing the old shifting comparison game, comparing MMP vs. FPTP when it suits us and vs. STV when that suits us).

"Countries that use MMP also have better representation from women - up to 42 percent in Sweden. This system has also been shown to significantly increase voter participation - over 80 percent in countries such as Denmark, Sweden, and the Belgium."

Which would be more convincing if a) Those countries actually used MMP and b) Those countries didn't have a long stories historical track record of equitable treatment of women extending across almost all facets of their society. But I'm sure more female MP's is down solely to the electoral system. Imagine how many women would be elected in the Middle East if only they used MMP! note: sarcasm

"There is little doubt that if BC voters had been given the chance to choose the much more popular system of MMP, the results of the referendum would have been very different."

Obviously there's no doubt since MMP is much more popular - the author says so! Less sarcastically, I say 'huh'? Maybe the results would have been different but I'd say there's lots of doubt. Keep in mind that STV's 57% support in B.C. was 3% higher than what MMP got when it was put to the test in New Zealand. And of the pro-STV blogs I listed on my STV-blog, I got the feeling that there were a fair number which supported STV but wouldn't have supported MMP.

"For reasons that remain unclear, the Citizens Assembly instead chose to disregard the vast majority of public input and recommend BC-STV"

The reasons are not unclear, they were spelled out (clearly) on the Assembly website and if the author had contacted any of the assembly members for an explanation I'm sure they would have answered at length as they did when the question came up at the public forum I went to.

Of course the reasons were the disadvantages that come with MMP (different classes of MLA's, the need to add more MLA's to the legislature, too much power in the hands of party leaders being the main ones) but maybe the author would rather cast vague aspersions against the integrity of the Assembly members than deal with the cognitive dissonance of how dedicated intelligent people studying the problem for a year might not think his favoured system is the best.

"As for the die-hard boosters of BC-STV, the rules of the referendum are clear and though they came close, they lost. They should now graciously admit defeat, and either pitch in on the new struggle for a more palatable system of electoral reform, or clear out of the way.

Some BC-STV zealots have now suggested that the referendum threshold of the 60 percent should now be lowered retroactively to allow their preference to succeed. Can you image the outrage if the threshold was retroactively raised had BC-STV had achieved 63 percent support?"

The rules were clear, but perhaps not clear enough for the author to understand them properly. The mandate for the referendum only stated that the government would be required to bring in STV if it got 60% support, NOT that it would be forbidden to do so without that support. So the author's comparison is a false and misleading one. In fact, the vast majority of all changes in electoral systems have been made with less public support than the 57% who voted in favour of STV. Even having a referendum at all set a higher bar than is often used (PEI is planning a referendum with a 50% threshold, and last I heard Quebec was planning electoral reform without a referendum).

On a more personal level, I find it irritating to have someone suggest I clear out of the way in one paragraph and accuse STV-supporters of being zealots in the very next paragraph.


Stepping back a bit, I should note that I have nothing against MMP. I think it's a perfectly good system (far better than our current one) and I think B.C. voters should have the chance to vote on it. What I don't like are articles which contain multiple falsehoods, articles which try to exploit statistics the author knows (or should know) are misleading, articles which prefer to cast aspersions on upstanding citizens rather than acknowledge the weakness in their case and articles which resort to name calling instead of making logical arguments (STV is referred to in the article in various places as 'obscure', 'arcane', 'baffling', a 'pig in a poke', a 'dud', and an 'unfortunate artifact', and its supporters are called 'die-hards' and 'zealots').

If your argument makes sense then you should have the courage to make it honestly and not resort to a host of cheap debating tricks to try and fool the reader into supporting your point rather than making an informed decision for themselves.

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¹ From 'Sketch' off the album 'Connected' by the Stereo MC's.

STV Referendum Post (not-so) Mortem

Where do we go from here?
The battle's done,
And we kind of won
So we sound our victory cheer

Where do we go from here?
Why is the path unclear?¹

After thinking it over for a couple of days, I have to say I'm pretty positive about the outcome of the referendum on Tuesday. True, STV getting 60% and passing would have been ideal, but I think when you consider that 60% is a pretty high bar to begin with, it was always going to be tough to reach that level, especially when trying to explain a complicated system like STV to the entire population - especially with no real budget for educating the voters and in competition with an election going on simultaneously.

Another complicating factor was that the process was designed so that elections BC would design the electoral boundaries only after the referendum. This allowed people to rightfully ask how they could vote on an electoral system when they wouldn't even know how it would affect the riding they would vote in.

A final factor was that, undeniably, some of the people who argued and voted against STV did so not because they preferred the current system to STV but because they wanted to have a chance to vote for a third system, the Mixed Member Proportional system, which was the second choice of the Citizen's Assembly. One of the reasons the Citizen's Assembly did not choose STV was that they were constrained by their mandate to not increase the number of MLA's elected in B.C., an arbitrary and unnecessary restriction.

So the real question now is, what next? The rule of 60%, while I think it is overly high² was set before hand so it would not be right for the government to take the 57.39% Yes vote and treat it as close enough and go ahead with STV. But on the other hand, given the 57-43 vote in favour, as well as the fact that a majority voted in favour of STV in 77 of the province's 79 ridings, clearly the population of B.C. has an interest in reforming the electoral system.

Under the circumstances, the course I recommend to the B.C. government would be as follows.

1) The Assembly should be reconvened, freed from the no new MLA's restriction and allowed to present two complete systems.
2) Elections BC should be directed to draw up suitable electoral boundaries and voting rules for each of the proposed systems so that voters would know exactly what they are voting on.
3) There should be a second referendum which would allow voters a choice between the 2 systems recommended.
4) This referendum should be held on its own without being linked to another election going on simultaneously.
5) Funding should be provided to mount a campaign for both options presented as well as a 'No' campaign.
6) The ballot should ask voters two questions: The first would be: 'Which of the two electoral options presented do you prefer?' ('Neither' would be an option here). The second would be 'Do you believe B.C. should change it's electoral system to whichever of the options in question 1 gets the most votes? Possible answers would be, "No", "Yes", "Yes, but only if the preferred system is option 1", and "Yes but only if the preferred system is option 2"

Then whichever system got more votes in question 1 would have to get 50% Yes (or at most 55%) on question 2 (adding up the unconditional 'yes' votes and the 'yes' votes conditional on that system being chosen).

There's probably a simpler way to accomplish this (I'm no political scientist), but you get my point. Given the expressed desire for change among B.C. voters, they should be given a second chance to vote for electoral change, in a properly funded referendum, one which gives citizens a choice between the two systems which have a strong base of support in the province.
-----------

Note: Rafe Mair articulately makes some similar points to mine over at the Tyee.

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¹ From the song "Where Do We Go From Here", from the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Season 6, Episode 7).

² See Wikipedia for some interesting history on referendums. Following from there to the article on Canadian referendums it seems we've only ever had 3 (at the federal level): One on prohibition, one on conscription and one for the Charlottetown Accord. So in the history of the federal government only 3 questions have been deemed to be of enough significance to warrant having a referendum at all. And *no* question was ever been deemed important enough to require a super-majority from a referendum vote, not even the government forcing the nation's youth to fight and possibly die in a foreign country or changing the nation's constitution.

Similar commentary from a "Yes" campaign press release:

- No other province, or country we know of requires such a high threshold for approving a referendum on electoral reform.

- PEI's referendum on electoral reform requires a simple majority.

- New Zealand's referendum on electoral reform passed with 54%.

- The two Irish referendums to replace STV with First Past the Post used a simple majority

- The BC Referendum Act stipulates a simple majority for any other referendum.

- The recent BC Referendums on Aboriginal Issues, and on Initiative and Recall all passed based on a simple majority of votes

- No former BC referendum has ever required more than a simple majority.

- The two referendums on Quebec separation required a simple majority

- The Charlottetown Accord referendum concerned very significant constitutional issues, yet required no more than a simple majority.

- Nearly all governments in British Columbia are themselves elected with considerably less than 50% support.

Fear of a Green Planet

Note: Cross-posted to the e-group

It looks like some of the recent high poll results for the Green Party are setting off some mainstream alarm bells. Check out this article by Mary Janigan in Macleans.

On the one hand, the article does a good job showing how Green support has risen and tracing it to increased environmental awareness, disenchantment with the mainstream parties and most of all, the Green party moving to the political centre by eschewing the unnecessary divide between environmentalism and market-oriented economic policies.

But on the other hand the article is almost comical in its fear of a big green tidal wave swamping the country.

The increased support for the Greens is, "both remarkable and unsettling"

and also, "Canadians should be very sure that they are voting for the Greens' relatively radical platform" because "The stakes are high".

Voters should also remember that, "until we clean up the contract-tendering system itself, every party will eventually be suborned by power."

And a final warning to finish off with, "voters should be sure the Greens' evolving amalgam of the practical and the highly problematic is what they really want. Accidents do happen."

You hear that Green voters? - be careful or we'll accidentally elect a majority Green government - it's happened before! ok, it's never happened, but it could happen! Think twice before you destroy us all!

It's good to see smart policies being rewarded and Canadians having more options at the ballot box. I don't think there's really much 'risk' of us electing a Green government next election, but I am hoping to see the party continue to make strides and hopefully win a seat or two.

"C" is for Cauliflower, that's just not good enough for me...

A reader passed me a link to this disturbing news that the Cookie Monster is going to be telling Sesame Street viewers that 'A cookie is a sometime food' as part of an anti-obesity drive. Hey, it's not my fault my kids are fat - it's that darn bad influence cookie monster!

No word yet on anger management training for Oscar the Grouch as part of an anti-violence campaign, or having Snuffaluffagus become visible to everyone in order to discourage kids from lying about having imaginary friends ... oh yeah, never mind. Sigh.

Anyone looking for ongoing commentary on this issue, should probably check here.

Shut it Down

"You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You better free you mind instead"¹

I hate to disagree with Paul and John, and I've been to the building that houses the Senate and it's quite nice, so burning it down seems a tad excessive, but the appointment of a bunch of new senators seems like a good time to point out that the Senate really should be shut down. The truth is, I don't really care who is appointed to it.

If anyone disagrees, please let me know what the Senate has accomplished in the last 10 years besides thwarting the public (and the government's) desire to update our 113 year old (and counting) animal cruelty legislation. The whole, absurd, story can be found here. And if it was accomplishing more, would that be a good thing, given its undemocratic nature?

Seriously, do we really need to spend millions of dollars a year just so we can have a chamber of sober second special interest pleading? Is the governance of the provinces suffering in some way due to the absence of provincial Senates?

I appreciate that it's a whole can of worms to try and modify the constitution but is that the only reason the Senate is still standing - or are there people who think it's a good idea? - Or people who'd like to see an elected Senate? I'm just wondering (I'll have to figure out how to post a poll one of these days).

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Update (mere hours later): You know how once you're looking for something you suddenly see it everywhere?

From today's globe,

"Environment Canada estimates that, on average, a minimum of 300,000 seabirds are killed every year in Atlantic Canada waters as a result of ship operators illegally dumping bilge oil. This number of deaths is greater than that caused by the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989.

Bill C-15 provides an opportunity to eliminate an unnecessary activity practised by irresponsible companies and individuals whose actions make the entire industry look bad. Newfoundlanders who have had to walk along beaches filled with dead and dying oiled sea birds - indeed, all Canadians who treasure Canada's coastal environment - will be pleased to see this abhorrent activity dramatically curtailed, if not entirely stopped. Without the swift passage of Bill C-15, this environmental disaster - first reported nearly 45 years ago - will continue."

C-15 has already passed the House of Commons but,

"Unfortunately, in the past few weeks, representatives of Canada's shipping industry have been working hard to scuttle this proposed law either by having the Senate defeat it, or by making amendments that will weaken the bill and cause it to go back to the House of Commons."

Sober second special interest pleading indeed.


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¹ From 'Revolution' by the Beatles, on the off chance that my pool of readers is large enough to contain someone who doesn't recognize it.

A Short Walk in the Mud

I have to admit I was a bit puzzled by Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper's reaction to the budget last week, and I thought that Warren Kinsella was rightly critical of his performance (in his feb 24 post). More generally, ever since the last election, I haven't really gotten the feeling that Harper's heart is really in the battle to form the next government.

Despite widespread fatigue with Liberal government, the ongoing sponsorship scandal, the humourous yet disturbing mismanagement of the Missile Defence file, the inability to actually come up with a plan on Kyoto and the media predictably going straight from their 'Martin can do no wrong' storyline to their 'Martin can do no right' storyline, the Conservative party is failing to make much of an impact with voters and are still polling below the combined vote of the Progressive Conservative and Reform parties back when they were still separate parties.

Rather than focusing on reducing Federal intrusion in Provincial affairs and putting tax cuts ahead of spending, the Conservatives seem to be bogged down in an attempt to convince minority voters to vote for them because they are willing (just in this one case?) to deny rights to one particular minority the other minorities don't like.

But besides all this, there's times when I see Harper in a scrum with reporters and he just has this look in this eye, and I can't help but feel that he's thinking, "If these dumbass journalists ask one more ignorant question which shows how little they know what their talking about, I'm going to make what Chrétien did to that protester look like a friendly greeting." Not that I don't sympathize sometimes, but that kind of thing comes with the territory, being a leader of a federal party and all.

And it's not just me thinking this and wondering, "Has anyone seen Stephen Harper?"

You put it all together, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Harper take a short walk in the mud¹ some time in the next year or two and announce that he is stepping down as leader of the Conservative party.

Which brings me to the reason I started writing this post in the first place, to speculate on a potential replacement for Harper. Now, Calgary Grit has a good post up handicapping potential replacements for liberal leader Paul Martin, but I thought that, rather than start with the prominent people, I would start with the qualities necessary for the job, and see if it brought anyone to mind. This way we won't be limiting ourselves to the obvious choices.

So what qualities would a good Conservative party leader have? (I'm trying to see this from the perspective of the typical Conservative voter which may be a bit of a stretch, but I'll do my best)

1. Ambition: One of the biggest problems with Harper's leadership has been the sense that he doesn't have the drive to do what's necessary to make the Conservatives into a party which can take power. A new leader would have to be someone who has shown a clear desire to set Canadian policy and to have clear ideas on what that policy should be - i.e. someone who really wants to run the country.

2. Improve relations with the U.S.: Given our strong economic and political ties with the Americans, it is essential that the new leader avoid getting dad angryimprove relations with our supremely powerful neighbours.

3. Proven dedication to Conservative priorities: For example, tax cuts and military spending (and not being happy with a budget which puts these off for years).

4. High Profile: While a party can succeed with a relative unknown at the helm, it would be advantageous to have someone already familiar to Canadians, especially to help with the trust factor which the Conservatives are struggling with.

So who fits these criteria? Stronach? Mackay? Lord? No, the answer is clearly: Paul Cellucci.

The timing is perfect since Cellucci is just coming to the end of his term as American ambassador to Canada. True, Cellucci is said to have a lucrative private gig set up but do we really think that the offer to become Prime Minister of Canada wouldn't lure him back into politics? If any public figure has shown an ambition to set Canadian policy over the last few years it has been Cellucci. Whether issuing vague warnings about our drug policies or rhetorically styling himself as the arbiter of Canadian sovereignty, he's probably made more headlines criticizing the government's actions than Harper has and Harper is the leader of the official opposition.

As for improving relations with the U.S., what could be better than having their former ambassador to us as our PM? Who could do a better job crafting Canadian policy to meet with the approval of the Bush administration than a man specifically appointed by them to manage our country?

In a similar vein, who could doubt the commitment to tax cuts and military spending of someone appointed by George Bush? And he not only has a significant public profile here in Canada, he's reasonably well known in the U.S. as well.

As an added bonus, Conservatives already like to dismiss any criticism of their policies as just being knee jerk anti-Americanism and that argument would be that much more effective with Cellucci officially running the party.

And finally, think of it from Cellucci's perspective. Is there a more time-honoured path to taking over the reins of an empire than by successfully running one of its outer provinces? I think not.

Sure, there may be some technical issues (e.g. citizenship) to overcome, but from where I stand it's all coming together for Cellucci in 2006.


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¹ Given 20 years of global warming and the difference in political tenure between Trudeau and Harper, I figure a long walk in the snow translates into a short walk in the mud.

Dividing the Herd

I remember, way back, reading a story in the book Taran Wanderer (by Lloyd Alexander), in which the protagonist, Taran, is forced to divide a herd of cattle between two untrustworthy locals (their herds have been mixed together). Since neither of the two locals would trust him to divide the herd fairly, he comes up with a clever solution - one local will divide the herd into two halves and the other one will choose which half he wants.

I've been thinking about various potential government policies with economic implications (such as Kyoto, or environmental protection in general) and I've decided that we need a somewhat similar solution for our Federal politics (the ones that influence the economy anyway):

I propose that the NDP decide what our priorities should be and set targets, and the Conservatives are put in charge of getting as close as possible to these targets.¹ The Liberals would of course still retain all the official reins of power including titles and the ability to make patronage appointments.

The way I figure, everybody wins. The NDP gets what they really want, which is improvements to our overall quality of life, the Liberals get what they want, which is the trappings of power, and the Conservatives get what they want, the ability to prevent all those crazy socialists (in their view) from building up a big welfare state and bankrupting the country.

OK, that's bit cynical and unfair (especially to the Liberals), but I still think it could be an effective model.

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¹ Actually this isn't all that far from the Green Party platform in the last election.