Not ‘That’ Much Government
With the announcement that the various levels of the U.S. Government are going to work to directly stabilize the market, I found this commenting on the issue of government in general and regulation, or its intervention in an otherwise traditional free-market system. I agree in principle to some of the points being raised, but I don’t believe this is a ‘return’ to any type of big government, and I don’t think the U.S. has ever (during the last few presidencies anyway) been practising “raw capitalism” as Paulson states. The very fact that the government is employing this effort to try and help is in and of itself evidence that not only the government can do something (though it’s still up in the air what the long term effects are going to be) but that it was structured to be that way. The issue has always been, and summed up with in the TNR article:
The tragedy is that none of this was necessary. Regulators looked the other way when investors borrowed heavily to increase their potential profits, ignoring the growing risk of failure and its impact on the economy. They failed to prohibit mortgages that could never be repaid and to head off the resulting wave of foreclosures. It turned a blind eye to fraudulent short-selling and to rating agencies giving top grades to shaky bonds.
In effect, the government is being forced to, as a result of this crisis, pay more attention to its regulation and work to making sure they’re actually being enforced. This isn’t an expansion of government, but more a refocusing of government into already existing priorities.
Now, this could be argued as a more expansive role of government in general if it comes to pass. But then you’d have to ask whether a more proactive government in matters of health care, education, etc. is actually what may be needed to reform some areas which currently aren’t nearly providing enough.
Zimbabwe Deal?
Well, some good news coming from Zimbabwe, though it’s not entirely clear whether this will result in lasting peace, considering even that Mugabe himself decided to remark that ‘opposition parties in Zimbabwe and other African nations used any means, “including violence”, in order to achieve power.’ This isn’t really the sentiment of a president entirely willing to relinquish some fragment of power in the interests of a fair government, notwithstanding this agreement. That said, if they can accomplish progress and end up focusing on the issues of the food crisis and hyperinflation facing the country then that is quite the improvement over the past several months, and that does seem to be what Mr. Tsvangirai is focusing on.
Provided that the two leaders put aside their issues with each other’s party and work together, it would be encouraging to see Western nations pledging support and aid that is desperately needed rather than hanging up on the fact that Mugabe would remain as president. Yes, it wouldn’t reflect the results of the previous election but the past six months have demonstrated that Mugabe himself doesn’t want to leave. The fact that he’s at least willing to concede some power (honestly or not, we’ll see in the near future) and turn to helping fix his country deserves at least some support, since the aid will be primarily going to helping the populace which right now needs it more than anything.
I do hope this doesn’t slide into one of Collier’s predictions, especially with the suppression in the recent past and Mugabe’s recent comments, regarding conflict and civil wars. It would be a terrible thing to see this country sink down into the rest of the traps plaguing Africa.
Tribunals in the UK
From here, it seems that (at least for the past year) the UK is officially allowing Muslim arbitration tribunals to operate in the UK. Now this isn’t entirely unprecedented, as Jewish (notably in New York) and Christian tribunals have existed for a while now, but this is one of the more publicized acceptance of tribunals in the West in my recollection (in my own country’s case for instance, this issue came up but was eventually denied, along with every other type of religious tribunal).
On the issue of the UK’s implementation, I’m sitting at tentatively positive. As explains in detail as well as what the MAT’s site itself states, these tribunals will require consent of both parties and are only applying to civil matters. Since those wishing arbitration at the moment have the choice of whatever type of arbitration they want to begin with, this simply provides another option to those that wish a more Muslim focused way to resolve their issues. And in addition it seems that if one or more parties object to the ruling, then they can continue their dispute by heading to a traditional UK civil court and the results of the MAT will simply be used as one piece of evidence, while they can present their case once more.
That said, there are still overall issues surrounding religious tribunals into the extent at which both parties have choice in joining them or not. This would be quite the problem in the issue of isolated communities where this may be the only realistic choice available to them, but I’m not entirely convinced this is what is happening in the UK. In the absence of this then, I see this as a positive way to encourage cultural diversity in the UK.
New Year
I really should update this more often, but maybe this time it will stick.
So it’s back into the swing of things with a new university season and we already have an election. I’m not expecting much of a change from last year in terms of government, but it will be nice to see how well the Greens perform this year (even though I don’t support them). Considering their recent acquisition of their first MP it will be interesting how Elizabeth May performs in the national leaders’ debates. Oddly enough recent polls seem to have all the parties (except the Bloc) split on how well people figure they will handle the economy, which I’d imagine bodes not so well for the Green Party considering they base their platform and name around environmental stewardship yet only tie with the NDP and Liberals.
ACTA Unveiled
This looked quite interesting, partially because I’m getting the odd feeling that with this in the news, the RIAA might start using the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement model (even thought it appears to be simply an international agreement) as vindication of what they have been doing or as a means to continue their aggressive policy towards file-sharing. Now don’t get me wrong, I do agree that with the initial premise behind the ACTA to combat physical forms of piracy related to the mediums of CDs and actual large-scale copyright infringement is good (as those attempting to distribute and make money off of ripping people off should be prosecuted and shutdown), a reading of what little information there seems to be on it seems to me to leave a large wide-open gap as to whether this agreement will apply to online file-sharing as well.
And if it does apply, then we run the real risk of continuing to have organizations such as the RIAA pursue litigation against anyone and their dog, rather than adapt to a changing market environment in the distribution of music as they should do if they value the free market system. I mean, we already have Radiohead releasing their album online where people can pay whatever they choose for it, other artists either advocating or encouraging music downloads, and even journal articles* on the subject of online music sharing. I’m wary to see legislation going in the opposite direction and ignore the reality individual file sharing has in musical purchases.
~Shaun
*Sources related:
- Whatever happened to payola? An empirical analysis of online music sharing, Marsden, J.R.; Bhattacharjee, S.; Gopal, R.; Lertwachara, K., Decision Support Systems,vol.42,no.1,pp.104-120,Oct. 2006
- Do Artists Benefit from Online Music Sharing? Gopal, Ram D; Bhattacharjee, Sudip; Sanders, G Lawrence, The Journal of Business [Chicago], vol.79, no.3, pp.1503-1533, 2006
- Covering music file-sharing and the future of innovation, Russell, Adrienne, First Monday, vol. 11, no. 9, pp. np, Sep 2006
- The Anti-competitive Music Industry and the Case for Compulsory Licensing in the Digital Distribution of Music. Srivastava, Ankur, Touro Law Review, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 375-472, 2006
Potpourri News Day
Looks like there isn’t going to be an election any time soon in Canada, what with the Liberals (predictably) abstaining. While I understand they want to wait until Stephane Dion shows himself to be a bit more of an astute leader than he currently is and/or something goes horribly wrong with the Conservatives (and to be fair to Harper, he’s rather clever when it comes to politics and I don’t foresee him slipping up in the near future), it still just seems like they’re sacrificing bits and pieces of what the Liberal party stands for (and not at all acting like an Opposition) just to avoid a vote. They might as well not even be there, since the NDP and Bloc are far more visible in actual opposition of the government. The problem with continuing to wait until their situation becomes more tenable is that all the government has to do is continue to issue confidence motion after confidence motion, since, as we’ve already been familiar with Stephane Dion for 10 or so months now, large scale changes in perception aren’t going to happen in just a few months. It could be up to a year before anything substantial shifts and by then the Conservatives would have already managed to push through dozens of pieces of legislation. I guess we’ll see if Harper will try and push his luck and force something through the House that won’t allow the Liberals to simply abstain again.
In other news, it would seem that, a few, businesses are attempting to emulate the guild behaviour of a few MMOs. Now, forgive me for possibly pointing out the obvious, but, wouldn’t your aim (as a business) be to try at all possible moments to [i]lessen[/i] the amount of stress and competitiveness amongst your own employees? Competition between separate business entities is great, because it can spur innovation and the like, but when your own employees begin to compete with each other (and gods forbid they take it to the extreme that higher ‘status’ within this system equates to higher salary) then (at least taking experience from actual MMOs here) they become far more focused on their own individual selves and less on the actual company. If there was a choice between doing something that might help the business and doing something else that will benefit your ‘stats’, then I’m fairly sure the majority of workers (who already don’t care much for the long grind of work) are going to try and get more for themselves.
And as if there was some entity out there trying to prove that it was a slow news day last year, I present this gem. Because as we all know: an evolutionary theorist we’ve never heard of who makes a report for a satellite TV channel about a prediction -thousands- of years in the future, is entirely newsworthy within the BBC. This saddens me.
~Shaun
Edit: And note to self, as my lovely partner in crime on this blog here pointed out: Check the damn date on the article! Which brings up another question, since said article is currently #3 on most read and #1 on most emailed today (and you bet I made sure I checked the date this time)…What the hell is everyone doing being so concerned about a year old article anyway? We as a society aren’t that behind in keeping up on the news are we?
Almost…
Straight out of science fiction and one of the more promising developments that seems to be emerging within quasi-space architecture arena is the space elevator. And just this past week we nearly had a Canadian university team, who were working on building a part of said elevator (at least the things that may end up building/transporting stuff up and down it) nearly fulfill the requirements set by the contest to claim top prize! They still came in first, nonetheless, missing out by climbing the structure just 4 seconds too slow, and seem to be on track to finally reach the ever-increasing and ambitious goal set by NASA when they compete again in 2010.
All in all, great showing, and an awesome stride forward to the possibility of making such an orbital-delivery system that much more closer to reality.
~Shaun
Security Certificates Revised
Well, it would seem that the government has finally introduced legislation with respect to those security certificates that the Supreme Court unanimously deemed against the charter of rights and freedoms. It was predictable that the conservative government would alter the certificates to try and withstand another Supreme Court challenge rather than simply scrapping them outright. Though what attempting to figure is that if they do indeed allow impartial (and not simply government-favourable advocates) advocates to have access to the information and communicate some of it with their clients then…why even have these secret trials in the first place? It seems to be placing nothing more than an extra, unneeded complexity over the entire judicial systems in these specific trials that are incredibly rare (being issued only 20 times in the last 17 years).
Rather than risk the Supreme Court striking this new legislation down, later on if the government’s plan turns out to not go far enough to protect civil liberties, why not try these suspects that they find so dangerous through the standard judicial system to ensure their trials, status, and repercussions for the government end in a timely manner rather than drag on for years (and possibly decades)?
~Shaun
Weakly Discourse 