For clarity, TPB risks - as I see them - are: constitutional, legal, fiscal, national and domestic security, social cohesion, international credibility as well economic.
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
Just for fun, we conducted an evaluation of the TPB using the good law-making principles in the RSB ... it did not go well for Mr Seymour's headline racism project
Shooting themselves in the foot, gr8 example of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing so the saying goes, i hope! Thanks for the illuminating evaluation. Most insightful.
That's mostly been done by the shiny new Ministry for Regulation in the interim Regulatory Impact Statement ... where they note the bill is a piece of junk with goals that can be achieved in simpler and more elegant ways. Even Seymour's Ministry disagrees with him
It's pretty extraordinary. The treasury RIS from 2011 + the RIS for this iteration both make the case very clearly that evidence does not support legislating in this way.
(what's frustrating is both suggest some legislative tweaks that could have value. But they're being ignored.)
OTOH, as many as 10 people emailed David Seymour saying that they like the idea of this bill after reading about it on Kiwiblog, so apparently the Will Of The Nation has been revealed? 🤷♀️
I’m sure there are several people who do support the RSB (and not just in the usual astroturf Venn diagram) but the only ones I have seen publicly are Straterra, the mining industry lobby group. Who could possibly have foreseen that?
They're no longer a libertarian party. I've been trying to say this for a while. They traded Hayek for Hobbes a few years ago. They are now the party of Leviathan. I've toned that criticism because its sound conspiratorial: but I don't think I am wrong.
I think you're right. Back at the 2014 and 2017 elections, Act managed less than 1% of the party vote - which shows how popular libertarianism isn't. Since they're pivoted to that heady combination of racism and fascism, things are on the up and up
They're basically an authoritarian party now, which is strongly reflected in their online supporters. They're very turned on by the abuse of state power.
Most of their policy ideas are now absolute sovereignty for a strong, centralised state with matching powers vibes, dressed up in the pretence and even language of free-market. Makes them hard to engage with in good faith because of this very specific disconnect.
They're still fundamentally the party of billionaires, so the policies are aimed at looting rather than building. The authoritarianism and the racism simply supply a socially acceptable reason for non-billionaires to vote for these people, and a veneer of unwarranted legitimacy
Comments
(what's frustrating is both suggest some legislative tweaks that could have value. But they're being ignored.)
Who would have thought that a libertarian is very much of the view that there's one law for me and another law for thee