Saturday, July 31, 2004

The Price Of The Environment

Two Influences today - I, Robot, and my brother's mention about his lecturer, who edited the Aust Fin Review for a couple of years about how one cannot easily give a value to economic costs- everyone knows pollution is costing the environment, and in particular areas (my particular area of knowledge) of tourism, a very real economic cost. Though these are accepted truths, one cannot quantify the actual cost of a fishing ship's fuel in the water, and the fish it takes, compared to the cost to the tourism industry, let alone the environment that it effects. what matters though ( and this gets to the other influence of the day) is what is the logical choice, and which is the human choice. One who has seen the movie will understand the reasoning behind allowing humans to make mistakes that damage themselves, each other and the environment which allows our survival.

if one could give a human an actual value, that would debase that human's existence. who would really want to know how much their life is worth, ( not in the sense of the street price for 'taking care of business'). Much the same with the environment - if one could pay the dollar value to negate the cost of a certain sector of the environment, and thus destroy it, you might as well call the whole of existence off. better that some things remain priceless, separated on another path from economics and quantification. Though my trip to Europe may have a dollar value, it's worth to me will be unquantifiable.

Could you put a price on that?
posted by Keegan at 8:03 pm ... 0 comments

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Thursday, July 29, 2004

Seperate Your Powers

It's the one thing that makes the Australian system of governance different from the english 'westminster' system, and it's flawed in that the judiciary is chosen by the executive, which is taken from the legislature. If you're going to have 'separation of powers' it's not enough that no one person can hold a position in more than one office - a little something called a 'Political Party' among the other interests involved, like hello?

So while in theory it works, so did communism, and look how that turned out. Just because something looks good on paper, doesn't mean it is good. Mandate of the people to implement a GST? Mandate my ass. you didn't even get the majority of votes, which is the basis of democracy really, but with all this geographical distinguishers, who can tell? What if it was voted on along socio-economic factors? each percentage from the bottom 1% to the top 1% got one member of parliment each - some how Mr Packer would find himself in a abused minority...

Separate the Powers if you're going to separate them - have the Bar select the judiciary, every practicioner of law voting for the best candidate, have a separate election for the executive, and lets see a GST get through that muck.
posted by Keegan at 10:15 am ... 0 comments

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Wednesday, July 28, 2004

So Your Constitution Is Outdated

Well then you're a silly bugger, ain't'cha? The thing about a constitution is that it needs to be rather general and vague, yet command the ultimate authority. In class, there's some suggestions that the Australian constitution is old (certainly, 103 years is a long time), and needs to be updated to meet today's needs, and codify the unwritten conventions that were so recklessly ignored in the 1975 constitutional crisis. Appalling state of events it was, but still possible under the constitution which is why it was not changed to prevent the same thing happening again, but rather parliament created a few acts that limited the possibility of a recurrence.

you can't codify conventions, because they evolve and change - and situations can arise that were not planned for, and then what are you stuck with? A constitutional impossibility. Say, as I daydream about everyday, that the greens in our nation gathered enough seats under their banner that they held the balance of power in the house of reps and the senate - and they did not side with one party or another to give that party full governing control of the parliament- now if the current conventions were codified, the prime minister would change whenever the greens decided to swing one way or the other on any given issue, and such uncertainty would cause many problems.

By being general, it allows the possibility for this or any other scenario to adapt to the situation. You can't consider every possibility - who would've thought in 1901 that the aborigines would be allowed to vote, or claim ownership of land through native title? And by codifying evolving conventions, they die and gradually become outdated. If that means that every once in a while we have a ruckus like in 1975, well it has to happen, no system is perfect.

as much as i loathe the saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" seems to make sense - it works well enough, and if you muck with it, things just might end up worse... who knows? would you take the chance? do you feel lucky, punk?
posted by Keegan at 12:20 pm ... 0 comments

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Tuesday, July 27, 2004

So I Saw Fahrenheit 9/11 Today...

And I gotta say Moore knows what he's doing, even if it can't be considered a documentary in the strictest sense of the genre. certainly at the least it'll shift a few Americans to get around to voting, and mobilise some real action against Bush, like a good propaganda peice should. though somehow i don't see Kerry installing a compulsory voting system, such as that which exists in my own little puddle of a deputy nation, (and they still end up plonking a conservative in the rotating throne), I gotta admit America is real messed up.

So what really got me was the Oil, which I used some of to drive to the cinema, and on the was back i was enveloped in a cloud of pollution emnating from a Pick-Up Truck, one of those rare beasts on the road, compared to the utterly pointless City four-wheel drive... and it struck me that i'd read somewhere that if the US required car manufacturers to increase their MPG by 25%, then they would cover their fuel needs from entirely domestic sources. I'll track that one down if anyone comments on it, and probably fix the figure while I'm at it. Thinking Monbiot at the moment though.

Maybe I'd ride my bike if my apathy wouldn't get the better of me. After all, I'd only cancel out half of a 4wd with my own fuel use...
posted by Keegan at 5:35 pm ... 2 comments

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Sunday, July 25, 2004

I'm In Uni, And All Is Right With The World

Now if only government was big enough to pay for people to take tertiary education, or at least cover the costs to be paid back later, rather than working ridiculous service jobs (think "price check aisle 1, grocery, price check aisle one"), and still stuck at home leeching off your parents cos you're saving money to escape this drudgery and flitter off to your wonderful girlfriend somewhere on the other side of the world. such is life- I'll probably have more interesting things to say as uni goes on, because i'm getting to look at interesting things rather than reading airport trash (not that there's anything wrong with harry turtledove, just won't save the world with his insights into the human condition on Tosev 3 compared to that of space lizards)-

But before i rush off to another 9 hours in air-conditioned hell, I'll say that Joseph Stiglitz is ace, and i'm loving the interesting portrayal of the IMF and World Bank he gives in "Globalisation and It's Discontents" - He's won a nobel prize in economics, and it's not like they give the things away without some serious work being done.

until tomorrow,
this Beatniks' Gonna Fly
posted by Keegan at 1:59 pm ... 0 comments

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