Public servants and politicians

Big News displays a certain ignorance when commenting on Nania Mahuta's "rebel submission" on the Foreshore & Seabed Bill:

If public servant Haami Piripi almost lost his job for doing the same thing, why then are public servants forced to be apolitical when Government MP's don’t even have to toe the party line?

Firstly, Piripi is not a public servant. Secondly, linking public servants and politicians in the above manner is simply a category error. The duty of public servants to be neutral and professionally serve the government of the day has nothing whatsoever to do with the activities of elected politicians. Big News might as well have asked why public servants are forced to be apolitical when there are opposition MP's in the House, and it would have made as much (or as little) sense. Thirdly, Nania Mahuta doesn't work for the government or for Helen Clark (despite what she may think), and is under no legal obligation to "toe the party line".

The role of politicians is to debate and decide policy. Nania Mahuta's submission is simply a part of that process. While it has been unusual recently for MPs to dissent so publicly from party positions, it was common under FPP, and it is something I'd like to see a lot more of.

By contrast, the role of public servants is to enact the policies of the government of the day. Because we want an experienced and professional public service, we also demand that they equally be able to serve future governments (the alternative is replacing much of the public service with every change of government). Hence public service neutrality.

Punishment and sackings

DPF points out another obvious flaw in Goff's proposal - it would establish some very bad incentives:

It would almost be encouraging prison guards to beat up prisoners, so that damages would be paid to the original victim.

He also points out that prison officers need some way of punishing misbehaviour within the prison and protecting themselves from violent inmates. But they can already do this under the present law - and such protection is a long, long way from making people live in their own filth under constant lighting with no wristwatches, clocks, or calendars. "Psychological torture" is a strong phrase, but there is a certain similarity between the Behavior Management Regime and disorientation techniques used to break people's will and soften them up for interrogation.

As for sackings, I've been curious about that myself. Surely running a prison that violates basic human rights standards and losing your employer half a million dollars seem to be good reasons for heads to roll? Unfortunately, the communications unit at Corrections has been singularly unhelpful, and so my Official Information Act request will be in the mail.

Staggered

The crown apparantly thinks that it would be acceptable to keep Ahmed Zaoui in jail without trial for five years.

I am simply staggered by this. Imprisonment without trial is about as fundamental a violation of human rights as you can get. Our earliest constitutional document - the Magna Carta - explicitly bans it:

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

This is considered so important that it is the only section of the Magna Carta which has been retained in New Zealand law (through its confirmations in 1351, 1354, and 1368). For the crown to suggest that it is acceptable to keep someone in jail without trial for five years is pissing on our most fundamental laws and values. That's the sort of thing that goes on in shitty despotic regimes like Burma, China, North Korea, and Algeria - it should not be happening in New Zealand.

If the government cannot guarantee Zaoui a fair and speedy trial, then it should release him while the lawyers do their work. We grant that much to suspected murderers; surely we can grant it to a refugee who has not been charged with any crime.

Ploughing on regardless

Phil Goff is going ahead with his law to prevent prisoners being paid compensation by the government. The law will apparantly cover any compensation payment by the state to an inmate and give it to the prisoner's victims. There's an obvious problem in that this seems to be far too broad. Compensation cases can take years to progress through the courts; is Goff really trying to say that people should be denied justice on a years-old ACC or police brutality payout dating from before conviction (and having nothing to do with any criminal activity) because they happen to be in prison at the time? There's also an obvious loophole, in that prisoners may complete their sentences before filing or seeing a judgement - several of the BMR claimants had been released, as had Andrew MacMillan). Plugging this would require effectively saying that no prisoner can ever receive compensation for something done to them while in prison - which will give our prisons carte blance to violate the law and victimise and brutalise prisoners with impunity. Don't think it doesn't happen here, because this case proves it does, and there are far worse.

No society should single out a section of its population as ineligable for justice. But that is exactly what Goff is trying to do here. Not explicitly, of course - that would be a little too blatant, even for him - but by denying incentives. And that is bad enough.

National has become the National Front

National has really come a long way from being the party of Jim Bolger, Doug Graham, and historical reconciliation - as illustrated by this extraordinary press release from Gerry Brownlee:

National Party Maori Affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee says the rise of Tariana Turia's Party should force Labour to come clean on its agenda for Maori and its plan for race relations should it win the next election.

"The Maori Party has made it clear that it plans to work with Labour after the next election and that it plans to be uncompromising in its pursuit of bottom-line policies.

"Their presence, with significant support from Maori, will mean the political debate takes a different shape and direction.

"Labour can no longer sit on the fence. The Government must now make it clear where it stands on Maori issues and the place of the Treaty - so the public can make an informed choice about our country's direction.

Brownlee is demanding that Labour choose between Pakeha and Maori. And he has the gall to call them "divisive"?

Once upon a time National purported to govern in the interests of all New Zealanders (or at least in the interests of all the rich, regardless of race). Now by demanding that other parties choose which race they represent (and choosing itself to represent only Pakeha interests), it has degenerated into simply being a larger version of the National Front.

Critiques

JustLeft talks about the Market Society and its fallout. It's good reading, illustrating many of the problems that arise from a monomaniacal focus on markets. Along the way, he comments

The left has not had a persuasive critique of market extremism that has been well trotted out, mainly because it involved levels of nuance that are beyond the media's ability to understand or articulate.

To the contrary, I think the left critique of market extremism in the early 90's was both extremely persuasive, widely reported, and very simple; all people had to do was look at the simultaneous growth of foodbanks and unemployment, the falling wages, and the taint of corruption surrounding various privatisations to see the obvious flaws. The problem was that both major political parties ignored this critique, and the stacked electoral system prevented minor parties from voicing it effectively, despite their gaining significant support.

The modern critique is just as simple. The market is simply a tool. It's an extremely useful tool, but it's not the only one at our disposal, and it's not the best solution to every problem. Most importantly, it serves us - we do not serve it. The problem with the 80's and 90's was that policymakers forgot this; they became obsessed with their shiny new market tool, applied it to areas where it really don't work, and increasingly substituted its goals for their own. It was a classic case of someone who only has a hammer thinking that every problem is a nail.

As an aside, JustLeft also comments on the importance of the next election:

National still thinks it can govern with its old extremist ideas. A third consecutive election defeat at the hands of a mildly left-wing government might help hammer home the fact that they're wrong.

Third? The people of New Zealand have already rejected market extremism in five successive elections (every election since 1987). It's only due to the undemocratic nature of FPP and the vagaries of Winston that they managed to hold sway for so long. If National doesn't understand by now that people don't think that the market is the answer to every problem, then they're completely deaf to public opinion.

Equal rights for all couples

Having previously railed against confusing the Civil Union and Relationships (Statutory References) Bills, Big News now seems happy to deliberately conflate them in the service of bigotry. Using the example of a lesbian couple who have been together for two months, he asks "should this couple have equal rights as married couples now, later, or not at all?", and points out that "Michael Cullen has said that the Civil Union legislation is designed to recognise those in long term relationships", not short-term ones. But what rights are acquired by de facto couples and when are questions about the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill which have very little to do with civil unions or gays.

I've previously agreed that there are valid questions to be asked about the rights of de facto couples, and that in some cases a threshhold time (as used in the Property Relationships Act) may be appropriate. But what is absolutely clear is that a) the rules should be completely blind to the gender of a couple; and b) that the rights of de facto couples should (after some period of time) be substantively equal to those of married and civil unioned couples unless there is explicit "contracting out". Relationship rights do not come from god - they exist by virtue of the relationship and its implied consent. Marriage and civil unions simply make this consent explicit and concrete. If people don't want to have the ceremony and the piece of paper, that's fine - but it should not adversely affect their legal standing with respect to one another and the community as a whole.

Given the increased prelevance of de facto relationships, we would need the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill anyway to tidy up their legal situation (and some of this work has already been done in other legislation). And if it had not been coupled to the Civil Union Bill, I expect it would have been fairly uncontroversial (or no more controversial than the amendments to the Property Relationships Act). Unfortunately, because the two bills have been presented together, it is now being tarred by the religious right as a gay attack on the institution of marriage and attacked as a way of limiting the rights and status of civil unioned couples. We should not allow this to happen. While the bill itself may need tweaking, its goal of substantive equality for all couples is something that deserves support.

As for Big News, his obsession with gays and lesbians says more about him and his backward attitudes than it does about the bill in question.

Market culture

I've spent the last few days writing an assignment on New Zealand's climate change policies, and specifically on the "projects mechanism" of reducing emissions (and promoting renewable energy) by incentivising the market with carbon credits. This is only a temporary system, with the ultimate aim being to have emitters pay the full cost of their emissions through a carbon tax (thus allowing the market to effectively incetivise itself).

I was struck when looking at what other countries are doing on the same issue by how far New Zealand is from the international mainstream. Good old social-democratic Germany has set a renewable energy target and supports it with direct subsidies. Both the UK and Australia have followed suit on the target, but are enforcing it by regulation and a quasi-market mechanism; electricity suppliers must purchase a specified percentage of electricity from renewable sources (or tradable certificates saying that such electricity has been produced) or face legal and economic penalties. By contrast, we have adopted an extreme market route: New Zealand electricity companies are expected to provide renewable generation themselves, and it is only when this would not happen under "business as usual" that the government will step in to provide support (though in practice this means supporting projects that would properly happen anyway, to ensure that they happen sooner).

Partly this is for historical reasons; due to the unequal way in which generation assets were distributed during the reforms, a British/Australian style scheme would be seen as unfairly targeting the only significant privately-owned player in the market, Contact Energy (who got most of the gas plants on the basis that they were highly profitable). Partly it's due to the structure of the New Zealand electricity sector - the market framework makes market solutions the path of least resistance. But mostly, it's a matter of culture - Roger Douglas' lasting legacy has been to alter the thinking of policymakers, making them turn to markets and incentives first instead of regulation (alternatively, credit or blame could be assigned to Roger Kerr instead)

And on the other hand, markets are simply tools, to be assessed by their effectiveness in achieving the desired goals. Seen this way, New Zealand's efforts to reduce emissions can be seen as using the market as a tool to pursue green ends, with an obvious parallel to "third way" social policies (which use markets as tools to pursue social democratic ends).

And on the third hand, the problem of emissions reduction needs to be addressed from the demand side as well as the supply side, by promoting energy efficiency. And here it seems that politicians are taking a more traditional route, with the government openly speculating about promoting energy efficiency by tightening the building code to require double-glazing or solar water heaters. The problem is that it will only affect new houses - most of New Zealand's housing stock is old, uninsulated and draughty, and if we want to seriously improve our energy efficiency stats then something needs to be done about them. While demolishing Wainuiomata and rebuilding it from scratch has a certain appeal, realistically this means encouraging homeowners and landlords to install insulation. There are already some pilot projects to do this (some funded through the health budget on the basis that better housing will reduce health costs), but if we want to seriously reduce demand (and stop people from suffering from third-world diseases), then they need to be dramatically broadened. But then what would they look like? A market incentive, of course...

If you haven't already seen it

Greyshade has another excellent post on the role and interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi.

His side of the story

Having been refused permission to interview Ahmed Zaoui in prison, the Herald is giving the Corrections Department, the SIS, the judge, and the politicians a right good bollocking on the matter. And from the look of it, they really deserve one. There's no issue here with security - Zaoui has been in jail for almost two years now, and is not considered at all dangerous. There's no question of poisoning a jury pool, because Zaoui hasn't been charged with anything and will never face a jury. The only reason to prevent him from speaking is that the officials responsible for his unjust detention are afraid that he will give his side of the story, and that this will (rightly) cause the public to ask nasty pointy questions about how he is being treated.

They see it differently, of course. Zaoui could use an interview to gain public sympathy (with the implication that he does not deserve it) resulting in a "trial by media" and increased political pressure for a fair trial or release. And of course the secret nature of the allegations against him means that the government could not properly respond to any publicity.

Bollocks. The secrecy has in fact worked the other way, with the government putting about lurid allegations of terrorist connections, while Zaoui has been powerless to respond. Denying him direct access to the media is simply an effort to perpetuate this imbalance. As for a "trial by media", Zaoui's case involves issues of fundamental human rights of concern to every New Zealander, which are deserving of the highest level of media scrutiny. But I guess our official's "right" to cover their own arses from public scrutiny and political flack is more important than that.

A state of their own

MusiCal wonders why people are willing to fight for "a state of their own":

What's this thing about separate states? What am I missing? Why can't you share a state with other (different?) people?

Well, you can - if they respect you and treat you equally, and if your interests are properly taken into account. But where that doesn't happen - where the law is unequal, where you are treated as a conquered people "in your own land", or where your local concerns are essentially ignored by central government, then running things yourself begins to look appealing.

Most separatist campaigns are driven by perceived injustice. Remove the injustice, and separatism becomes unnecessary.

Paying the bill

The government could have to pay up to $4.5 million to prisoners imprisoned under the Corrections Department's "Behavioural management Regime". This is what happens if you run an unlawful and inhumane system of imprisonment, and if the government wants to avoid such payouts, it should put its fucking house in order.

As for the Sensible Sentencing Trust's position that "it was absurd for the inmates to claim they had been psychologically tortured by the strict solitary confinement after the way they had treated their victims", it is simply wrong. Inhumane and degrading treatment in prison is wrong. So is murder. Being a murderer does not remove your fundamental human rights, and it does not mean that you can be victimised at will because crimes against you "don't count". The Sensible Sentencing Trust and Phil Goff would obviously disagree, but by doing so they are not standing for justice - they are standing for the Hobbesean war of all against all.

The bigger picture

Predictably, JustLeft accuses me of "losing sight of the bigger picture" over my post attacking Phil Goff. I guess it depends on whether you think the "bigger picture" is all about the Labour Party - or about advancing the progressive values for which it purportedly stands.

Phil Goff's record as Minister of Justice speaks for itself. At every turn he has done his utmost to compete with National and ACT to be ever more vindictive, merciless, and "tougher" towards criminals. He has increased sentences, proposed chemical castration for sex offenders, shifted the burden of proof in asset forfeiture to "guilty until proven innocent", introduced majority verdicts on juries to make gaining a conviction easier, and repeatedly opposed any compensation for those mistreated by the state on the grounds that criminals are scumbags - even in the most egregious circumstances. These are not liberal or progressive positions, and they are not worthy of our support. And thanks to MMP, we don't have to support them.

Contrary to JustLeft's implication, you can take a principled stand on human rights without risking a National-party government. Both of Labour's "wing parties" take human rights seriously; both have repeatedly expressed their opposition to Goff's excesses. Voting for them rather than Labour will shift the balance of power within the left, and increase their ability to restrain Goff's authoritarian impulses. Because it's quite clear that his fellow Labour MPs, despite their impressive individual records on human rights issues, are unwilling or unable to do it themselves.

As for the "bigger picture": it is not about the Labour Party or its internal membership; it is about us, the voters, and how we can best advance our values. Labour is simply a vehicle for doing this, to be judged on its effectiveness, and it is not the only one. We - and they - should keep that in mind.

Those who support human rights should not support Labour

So, Phil Goff finds it "personally offensive" that prisoners can go to court and win damages from the crown when they are grossly mistreated by the Corrections Department?

Well, fuck it, I find it personally offensive that Phil Goff thinks that keeping people in solitary confinement for extended periods of time and forcing them to live in their own filth is acceptable treatment. I find it personally offensive that he believes that there is a group of New Zealanders who are not entitled to equal justice under the law or to the fundamental protections enshrined in the Bill of Rights. And I find it personally offensive that he wants to "solve" this "problem" by trying to retrospectively punish these people for the crown's crimes.

What the Department of Corrections did to these prisoners was unlawful, and it was wrong. They are therefore deserving of compensation. If the government believes it is appropriate for violent offenders to pay reparations to their victims, then it should give judges the option to impose such at sentencing. But to impose them post facto, in an unlimited fashion and without the oversight of a judge is grossly unjust (not to mention a fairly transparent effort to insulate the crown from liability for future misbehaviour). If justice is to mean anything, it must apply equally, to everyone - even prisoners and criminals.

As for Goff, he symbolises everything that is wrong with the Labour Party today. He has compromised on its fundamental values of human rights in favour of arbitrary state power and pandering to the vicious vindictiveness of the "hang 'em high" brigade. As long as he holds his ministerial warrant, those who support human rights should not support Labour.

Six years

Former Malaysian Deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim has had his conviction for sodomy overturned and will be released later today. The Malaysian Federal Court found that the lower court had "misdirected itself" and that Ibrahim should have been acquited. It's a victory for justice, but a rather late one - noone should have to spend six years in jail on trumped-up charges, especially for a bullshit "crime" like sodomy.

Advocacy is not terrorism

I'm constantly appalled by the right's eagerness to fling charges of "treason" at anyone who disagrees with them, and sadly our local right-wing bloggers are no exception. In response to last week's comments by Margaret Mutu, MyRight suggested that she be prosecuted for terrorism, under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. I suggest that he should actually read the legislation. While he has correctly quoted section 5 (2), which says that terrorism is about inducing terror or compelling governments, he seems to have missed the part where it says that a terrorist act must be "1 or more of the outcomes specified in subsection (3)". What are those "outcomes"? Subsection 5 (3) is fairly specific:

(3) The outcomes referred to in subsection (2) are -

(a) the death of, or other serious bodily injury to, 1 or more persons (other than a person carrying out the act):

(b) a serious risk to the health or safety of a population:

(c) destruction of, or serious damage to, property of great value or importance, or major economic loss, or major environmental damage, if likely to result in 1 or more outcomes specified in paragraphs (a), (b), and (d):

(d) serious interference with, or serious disruption to, an infrastructure facility, if likely to endanger human life:

(e) introduction or release of a disease-bearing organism, if likely to devastate the national economy of a country.

So unless she kills people, blows stuff up, or poisons sheep, Mutu isn't a terrorist. But I guess MyRight didn't bother to read that bit.

But what about threats? Didn't Mutu threaten to do some of the above? This is covered by subsection 5 (5):

(5) To avoid doubt, the fact that a person engages in any protest, advocacy, or dissent, or engages in any strike, lockout, or other industrial action, is not, by itself, a sufficient basis for inferring that the person -

(a) is carrying out an act for a purpose, or with an intention, specified in subsection (2); or

(b) intends to cause an outcome specified in subsection (3).

The law explicitly states that advocacy, by itself, does not constitute terrorism. There must be evidence of actual participation in a conspiracy, not just protests or vague threats. I guess MyRight didn't bother to read that bit either.

But what if, for the sake of argument, we granted MyRight's underlying contention that advocacy is terrorism and changed the law to suit? This would certainly allow Mutu to be prosecuted - but the second person into the dock would be Don Brash. His comments in Australia can certainly be seen as a deliberate attempt to cause "major economic loss" for political gain, and as a former Governor of the Reserve Bank, there is no question that he knew exactly what he was doing. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, after all; if Mutu should be prosecuted, then so should Brash.

Strangely, I don't think MyRight will be so keen on adopting a consistent stance on this matter...

No matter how cynical I am, it's never enough...

In relation to yesterday's post on money and MMORPGs, a correspondent has informed me that there are already online games which have incorporated the admin's ability to create stuff from nowhere into the revenue model, and which explicitly sell in-game stuff to players. Apparantly the online CCG Star Chamber works like that. I should have known...

Moral arguments

The chief reason for opposition to the civil union bill is an underlying belief that homosexuality is wrong. The two most common justifications given for this belief are that a) homosexuality is "unnatural", or b) that God (through the Bible) says it is wrong. However, both of these attempts at justification fail to provide an ethical basis for the conclusion that homosexuality is wrong (or any other ethical conclusion, for that matter).

The view that homosexuality is "unnatural" runs into an immediate problem if applied literally, in that it is simply mistaken about the "natural order" it claims to look to for moral guidence. Homosexual behaviour is widespread in the animal kingdom, and humans seem to be unexceptional in that regard. Shifting to a telelogical claim that "the purpose of sex is reproduction" and that something is immoral if it does not serve its purpose suffers from the same flaw, as it seems that in nature sex is not used solely for reproduction. Bonobos, our second-closest primate relatives, use sex as a greeting, as a form of bonding, and during food sharing (in fact, according to Frans de Waal, "anything, not just food, that arouses the interest of more than one bonobo at a time tends to result in sexual contact. If two bonobos approach a cardboard box thrown into their enclosure, they will briefly mount each other before playing with the box"). In humans, sex seems to be used most frequently for pair-bonding. A further shift could be made to claiming that the purpose of an organism is to propagate its genes (and that homosexuality is therefore wrong as it interferes with this), but this completely ignores the fact that homosexuals frequqently do have children - and that many hetereosexuals do not (that's quite apart from objections based on the vehicle / replicator split, or from the liberal pluralist position that the only "purpose" for a person is that which they define for themselves).

But there's also a more general problem with this claim, and that is that it purports to derive a moral conclusion (an "ought" statement) from facts about the world ("is" statements). But David Hume pointed out long ago that this is troublesome:

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.

What Hume is saying (in his eighteenth-century English) is that there can be nothing in the conclusion which is not already in the premises; if all you have are "is" statements, you can't derive an "ought". In practice, this means that any argument from nature needs an explicit linking premise to provide the moral content. The most common linking premise is a simple definition: natural = good, and unnatural = bad. The problem is that this immediately founders on the fact that nature is red in tooth and claw; rape and murder are both natural, as is cannibalism (just look at all those animals where the male eats any unrelated offspring), but we don't want to regard any of those as being good. The second most common link is to invoke god, which is dealt with below.

What about the argument that homosexuality (or anything "unnatural") is wrong because God (through the Bible) says so? This is known as the Divine Command Theory of ethics, and its flaws can be seen the moment you pause to think. If things are wrong solely because God says so, morality is essentially arbitrary, a game of divine "Simon says" only with the possibility that rape, torture and murder would actually be good if God decided that they were. We're left with the "morality" seen in Genesis 22:2 (in parody: God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son, and it was good). What's being promoted here is not morality, but blind obediance to authority - something that is very definitely not good.

(The Divine Command Theory also reduces claims that God is good to a vacuous tautology - God is good only in the sense that he does whatever he wants to. Four-year-olds do whatever they want to too; does that make them good?)

Neither of these common arguments provides a proper basis for believing that homosexuality is wrong. If opponents of civil unions wish to rely on a moral argument against homosexuality, then they will have to look elsewhere for justification.

Random thoughts on money and online games

What is money?

A common answer is "anything that can be used as a medium of exchange". Money is a symbol for the value of goods, a kind of shorthand for "three pigs" or "one chicken". Such symbols have included precious metals, shells, giant stone wheels, and the current paper and electronic data. But on this definition, money isn't just the stuff issued by governments as legal tender - to the extent that they can be used to purchase goods and services, it also includes limited and private currencies such as air points, book tokens, and McDonald's cheeseburger vouchers.

I've often wondered what prevents the owners of these private currencies from simply "printing more money" - for example, what stops Air New Zealand from paying its debts with airpoints, or PayPal from paying people by tweaking its database? The obvious answer is self-interest. The owner of a private currency is frequently also its backer, so every voucher or airpoint created is effectively a contingent liability which must later be repaid. Air New Zealand must provide travel in exchange for air points, and PayPal must ultimately provide US Dollars in exchange for money stored on their system. But interestingly, in the latter case PayPal may not actually need to provide those US dollars - its widespread acceptance means that fewer people need to take their money out of the system and into the real world, effectively reducing PayPal's liability. And so, to some extent they can simply "print money" (tweak their database) to pay their bills.

A more interesting example is online games. Most MMORPGs (Massively Multi-plyaer Online Role Playing Games) include an in-game currency, used for various purposes in the game world (buying cool stuff and as a kind of score), and they all have in-game goods (magic weapons, artefacts, or simply the characters themselves). It didn't take long before people started trying to convert their in-game wealth into "real" money - first through one-off auctions on EBay, and now through the GamingOpenMarket (an online currency exchange enabling funds to be transferred from one in-game currency to another, and into US Dollars). This has effectively set an exchange rate for these currencies, and given them a real value. This is kindof cool (I've heard of people who are trying to make a living by building then auctioning MMORPG characters), but also dangerous - because what the MMORPGS are effectively doing is printing money. Most of it stays within the game-world, but to the extent that it can be transferred into real currencies and represents a claim on real goods and services, it is as if they were printing US or NZ Dollars. This raises some interesting issues:

• How long will it be before the MMORPG companies notice this and incorporate it into their revenue model? They'd still need to produce a game, attract players and collect fees, but if a game became popular enough to create a secondary market, the company could start creating in-game money and goods specifically to sell for real money. While this would undoubtedly cause in-game inflation and alter the balance of character power in a way that (probably) detracted from the game, many MMORPGs have a limited lifespan and the problems may take long enough to show up for the company to reap a healthy profit in the meantime.
• This is inflationary - a private organisation is effectively increasing the money supply. Banks do this all the time when they issue credit, but their power to do so is tightly regulated by the government. This is mostly a theoretical problem, because of the relatively low rate of transfer - the GamingOpenMarket has only exchanged about US$350,000 of real currency for virtual, and transfers are limited by the number of people who want to gain in-game wealth without jumping through all the hoops - but its still interesting nonetheless. And what happens if transferring virtual money into real, whether from MMORPGs or a similar online form of entertainment which seemingly creates wealth ex nihilo, really takes off?
• On the third hand, you can view an MMORPG through the lens of our existing foreign exchange system as just another country (though a virtual one). Normally what happens if a country just prints money to pay people overseas is that the exchange rate drops; however MMORPG exchange rates are really a matter of popularity rather than anything to do with their economies or trade balance. Conceivably, a game could sustain large inflows (could keep on transferring wealth from the game world to the real one) as long as there are players willing to pay for it. And in a way, this is no different from the current US practice of funding enormous defecits by selling bonds to the Chinese; the significant difference being that a really good game could be self-sustaining, wheras eventually the US's creditors will want their money back.
• And on the fourth hand (how many hands do I have anyway?), what the MMORPGs are doing is really no different from making spoons, or giving a musical performance. They're producing goods which other people value and are therefore willing to pay for. It doesn't matter that those goods are virtual and cost practically nothing to make at the margin - neither does an autograph or a trading card, and people are willing to pay outrageous amounts of money for those (though usually not from the people actually signing things).

But while MMORPGs are fascinating, I think they are mostly of intellectual interest; it's things like PayPal which are important. Traditionally, currencies have been the domain of the nation-state and its sovereign power - but now we're seeing the beginnings of totally privatised currencies without ties to any government (and while PayPal is within US legal jurisdiction, it need not be; you can run a website from anywhere). As more transactions move online and are conducted in these private currencies, it will increasingly break down the barriers between economies and undermine the ability of nation-states to operate monetary policy. Our ability to (say) control inflation will depend not just on the actions of our government, but also on the decisions of private corporations beholden to no-one but their shareholders, who will be running their monetary policy for private profit rather than any sense of the public good (and no matter how twised you may think current monetary policy is, they still appeal to the public good to justify it).

The only way to prevent this is some form of global regulation. But I can't really see that happening any time soon.

Catching up

On sleep, and on the news. Despite buying the Herald in hardcopy every morning, I still feel completely out of touch with what's been going on in the world the last few days.

Silence

Why the silence? I'm currently in Auckland, and (mostly) AFK. Normal bloggage will resume Wednesdayish.

A blow for justice

Chile's Supreme Court has stripped former dictator Augusto Pinochet of his immunity - allowing him to finally be put on trial for the torture, murders, and disappearances committed by his regime.

No wonder I feel so tired

In my first year of blogging, I wrote just short of 110,000 words. A quick glance at my blogger profile today shows that I've written that much again in the six months since. Is this what addiction feels like?

Iona has a few thoughts on the sanctity of marriage and Dail Jones' anti-intellectualism...

Dunne on freedom of speech

Peter Dunne stands up for freedom on speech in the Herald today, with explicit reference to David Irving. There's an obvious question of why it has taken him a month to speak up on this - a skim of Scoop's archive of United Future press releases shows nothing but tuneless whistling and foot shuffling on that front. But the real reason quickly becomes apparant: Dunne is trying to tar those who oppose fundamentalist Christian opponents of the Civil Union Bill as intolerant and opposed to freedom of speech. This is simply mistaken - no-one is saying that people like Maxim or Destiny Church have no right to speak. What they are doing is calling bigotry by its name when they see it, and turning out into the streets to oppose it. But this is simply an example of answering speech with more speech - the very freedom that Dunne praises!

What Dunne fails to acknowledge is that tolerance of a view does not mean giving it a free ride. Destiny Church and their bigoted friends have every right to speak - but they have no right to expect the rest of us to remain silent about it.

A rat notices the rising water

Stephen Franks has indicated that he will consider moving to National next year if ACT continues to languish in the polls. This wouldn't involve a straight-out switch, which might invoke the Electoral Integrity Act; rather he would resign from Parliament before the election then stand as a candidate for National.

It's difficult to see this as anything other than a calculated attempt to undermine Rodney Hide, and his reaction will be interesting. But more interesting will be the reaction of National party members and MPs. They've already seen Don Brash cuckoo'ed into the party and then the leadership, and he seems to making it clear that MPs who do not share his extreme free-market views, such as Lynda Scott and Roger Sowry, are no longer welcome in National. If Franks jumps ship and gets a high list placing, things begin to look like a fully-fledged takeover...

Saving the Americans from their own stupidity

Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani returns from London, marches on Najaf with thousands of his followers, and within a few hours has a peace deal. This is an overwhelmingly positive step for Iraq - it allows both sides to back down from the standoff while saving face, and more importantly saves the Americans from their own stupidity.

For all the time the US military spends studying Clausewitz, they seem to have failed to absorb his most basic lesson: that war is ultimately just an expression of politics, whose success and failure must be measured in the political, rather than military realm. And looked at this way, there was simply no way they could win in Najaf. Back off, and lose face. Invade the shrine and martyr al-Sadr, and he becomes more powerful in death than he ever was in life. The last three weeks have been a futile exercise in American stupidity, driven by their desire to play hardarse, which has gained them precisely nothing, and killed a lot of people in the process. No doubt they'll proclaim a victory on the grounds of having killed hundreds of militamen, but those people are replaceable (and are being replaced even now by their brothers and cousins, all hellbent on revenge). The loss of goodwill with the Shi'a population isn't.

Morality, law, and cynicism

Philosophy, et cetera has a good post on the relationship between law and morality. He notes that there is an obvious connection - "why would we outlaw rape and murder if they weren't wrong?" - and tries to analyse it. Unfortunately, he fails to recognise that there are really two questions here: one about the actual relationship between the law and morality, and one about what that relationship should be. The first is entirely a matter of power and practical politics, to be answered by psychologists, sociologists and historians in the context of a particular society (though a quick and cynical answer is that the law will reflect the morality of the lawmakers). The second is itself a question of morality, to be debated endlessly by ethicists and political theorists.

As for domains, there are great chunks of the law that seem to have very little to do with morality. Food regulations, for example, or those governing weights and measures (or road rules, for that matter). These are practical considerations, not moral ones, and so the law cannot simply be a subset of morality . We outlaw things which are perfectly morally permissible, such as selling bananas by the pound rather than by the kilogram (at least in the EU).

The second approach - viewing the issue through the lens of folk-psychology - explains the actual relationship quite well. I've been thinking similar things when trying to build a political theory from cynicism and game theory - law is a tool for influencing behaviour by changing payoff matrices, based on a power-mediated compromise of the moral values of a society's members - but laid out like that, it simply seems trite and uninformative.

Media freedom in Iraq, part III

Having failed to deter the international media from covering the fighting in Najaf by repeatedly threatening to kill them, the Iraqi authorities have upped the ante, dragging them from their rooms at gunpoint to attend an impromptu press conference:

Correspondents in the Najaf Sea hotel said around a dozen policemen, some masked, stormed into the rooms of journalists and forced them into vans and a truck.

The Independent's Donald Macintyre reported that the police, some masked, "shouted threats and abuse at the reporters, along with their Iraqi drivers and translators, and fired about a dozen shots inside and outside the hotel before taking them before the police chief, Major-General Ghaleb al-Jazaari, to hear his emotional complaints about media coverage and the sufferings of police officers during the present crisis".

And the Daily Telegraph said today that its correspondent, a translator and a driver had been forced into a bus and two lorries before being subjected to a "tirade against the press".

The Iraqi Police, it seems, do not like the fact that the world is watching. But more importantly, they do not like the thought that their fellow Iraqis are watching - watching them doing the Americans' dirty work.

Impeaching Blair

My god! Somebody is actually doing it! After watching discontent simmer on for the last year over the way Tony Blair lied, manipulated, evaded and spun to gain support for the war in Iraq, it has all come to a head. A pair of academics have spent the last six months going over Blair's statements in public and to Parliament, comparing them with what he knew at the time, and concluded that there is a case to answer. Their report (update: - available here) argues that Tony Blair repeatedly lied and breached the responsibilities of his office. And it suggests a solution: impeachment.

Yes, impeachment - the same process that was used against Bill Clinton for rightly regarding his sexual indiscretions as nobody's business but his own. The Americans didn't get it from nowhere, they inherited it from the British Parliament - where it is still on the books despite not having been used for 150 years (having been replaced by the convention of Ministerial responsibility).

The impeachment procedure begins with one MP making an accusation and presenting his or her evidence. If the Commons agrees that there is a case to answer it appoints a committee to draw up articles of impeachment and notifies the House of Lords. If the articles are agreed, prosecutors are then appointed to try the case before the Lords, who are the judges. The Commons decides the sentence if the accused is found guilty.

Eleven MPs have risen to the challenge - sadly none from Labour - and that is more than enough to force a debate. Plaid Cymru MP Adam price makes his case here. I have no illusions about their ability to actually win the vote - but the mere fact that charges are being brought and debated will make it nigh-impossible for Blair to continue as Prime Minister. Hopefully the unctuous little weasel will get the message and resign.

Today is a beautiful day to be alive...

There is power in a union

In response to my post pointing out that lump sum payments to union members are simply the fruits of collective bargaining power, Capital Pundit stupidly asks

why can't teachers seek to secure economic benefits for themselves?

Because there is strength in numbers. Teachers are more powerful together than there are individually, and this allows them to extract greater benefits.

God, I know that we now view the world through the lens of atomised individualism (and as an individualist I think this is generally a good thing), but I didn't think it had gone so far as to blind people to this simple fact.

More good news

Crime is down to its lowest level since 1983. Even National will be hard pressed to find something to complain about in this, given that it is an absolute as well as a per-capita decrease - but I'm sure their spin-doctors will find something with which to contine their tactic of dishonest fearmongering.

We don't need your "civil war"

So, Professor Margaret Mutu makes some stupid remarks about warnings of "civil war" over the foreshore and seabed bill "not being hyperbole", and the far north being wracked by "the sorts of things... that happen in Palestine and Israel", and the right is frothing about it. National's Wayne Mapp immediately brayed "treason!", while ACT has seemingly joined them in calling for Professor Mutu to be fired from her position at the University of Auckland. This is a telling reminder of the ugly authoritarian attitude towards political dissent underlying National and ACT's brand of "freedom" (for wealthy supporters of the status quo only), and frankly paying Mutu far more attention than she deserves. As David Farrar said,

It is rather sad that a so called academic has so little substance in their submission, they have to rely on threats instead of rational persuasion.

The thing is, in the long term, Mutu is right. If we cannot live together with mutual respect for one another, and if one side continually uses its political advantage to reinforce its own privilege while seeking to reinforce the inequalities produced by disposession, then there is no option but to return to the Hobbesean war of all against all. But even with the current dispute over the foreshore, we're a long, long way from that. It is to the great credit of Maori that despite all that was done to them, they have consistently eschewed such tactics, instead preferring a strategy of tireless, patient advocacy. They have argued their cases before the courts, the Waitangi Tribunal, Parliament, and even the monarch, often over the course of decades and in the face of conscious foot-dragging by successive governments (one case took fourteen years for a single reserved decision to be released - during which many of the original claimants had died). That's far more patience than most societies get, and far more than I think we have any right to expect.

Fortunately, the tide is flowing very much against Mutu and those threatening violence. While it may not look that way, the process of settling historical Treaty claims is well on the way to completion; talk of ten of fifteen years is almost certainly an overestimate, and one informed person I've talked to expects it to all be wrapped up by the end of the decade. Absent that source of historical grievance (which will disappear if the truth is told and the settlements are just), there's not nearly as much to fight over.

Dubber vents his spleen at the anti-immunisation wackos...

Refugee quotas

National and ACT are using yesterday's appalling statistics on the failure of New Zealand society to embrace refugees to call for cuts to the refugee quota. According to Richard Prebble, we shouldn't be admitting "illiterate Afghani camel drivers". Which tells us more about Prebble's prejudices about non-europeans than it does about the people who seek refuge here. I'm surprised he didn't call them "sand niggers"...

But National is right about one thing: we should be doing more to help refugees settle in and ensure that they can participate fully in our society. This means english language lessons, assistance with finding work, having overseas qualifications recognised or gaining new ones, and above all, changing the racist attitudes of New Zealand employers. Something you see time and time again in stories about refugees and immigrants is the difficulty they have with finding work (see this week's Listener for the latest example). A New Zealand accent is an unspoken requirement of many jobs, and this needs to change. Until it does, refugees will continue to be overrepresented in the welfare rolls, and highly-qualified immigrants will continue to drive taxis.

De facto marriages

Submissions on the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill are critcising the way it changes the rights of de facto couples, effectively "marrying" them without their consent. On the one hand, most of this is right and proper - the very purpose of the bill is to grant de factos legal equality with married couples. But on the other hand, some rights probably do require some sign of consent and commitment beyond simply shacking up. The existing Property (Relationships) Amendment Act 2001 resolves this with respect to property rights by imposing a three-year time limit, after which a couple is treated as effectively married for the purposes of disposing of property on a dissolution. Incorporating similar provisions into parts of the omnibus bill would be perfectly acceptable.

And on the third hand, these are exactly the sort of questions the select committee process is designed to resolve. The bill will almost certainly be amended in response to submissions, and the balance of rights will almost certainly shift. Hopefully those amendments will be reasonable, rather than simply an attempt to entrench privilege and deny rights to de factos out of spite.

A suitable first case

Huata v. Prebble seems to be an excellent first case for the Supreme Court. Unlike the other cases that have been put to it, it deals with an issue of vital constitutional significance: the relationship between Parliament and the courts.

ACT's case relies on a clause in one of our most fundamental laws, the Bill of Rights 1688, which demands that

the freedome of speech and debates or proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parlyament

This clause establishes Parliamentary privilege, but it also makes Parliament master of its own affairs. What the court will have to decide is whether who sits in Parliament is part of Parliament's internal affairs, or is an issue of wider public concern. Like the Herald, I hope it chooses the latter path. Our MPs should be chosen by the electorate, not their fellow politicians.

Interesting

Backdraft: How the war in Iraq has fueled Al Qaeda and ignited its dream of global jihad.

"Freedom to discriminate" is not freedom for all

Yesterday morning on National Radio, Stephen Franks announced that he would be willing to vote for the Civil Union Bill if he can use it to gut the Human Rights Act. In Franks' view, the state should be neutral, but individuals should be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual preference, religion, or anything else they desire, as a simple matter of freedom.

What's wrong with this view? Simply that it is deeply confused, both about discri