Matt Nolan

Happiness, policies, and economics

/9 Comments/in , , , /by

It is good to see the Frog Blog discussing happiness and policy – as fundamentally the goal of policy should be to promote the highest social happiness, not necessarily to promote the largest GDP number.

The article that Frog links to can be found here, and on Saturday there was an article in the paper by Chris Worthington on the subject as well. However, I get the feeling that Mr/Mrs/Miss Frog interprets this policy implication a little differently to me (and both are different to this previous post) – lets discuss.

Read more

Matt Nolan

Technology and resources: The value judgments

/9 Comments/in , /by

Technology and the limited nature of non-renewable resources is an important issue in economics, the social sciences, and general policy making. It is an issue where each side of the political spectrum feels that the other side is stupid.

In an article we have linked to here, there are people that feel economists ignore the concept that our natural resources are limited (something that would be quite a fail, given that economics is the study of scarcity). However, there are also many people that feel a stroke over-confident about the ability of “technology” to evolve in a way that will allow us to substitute, easily, and cheaply away from these resources when the time comes.

In truth many people sit between these two extremes, believing that non-renewable resources will run out, there will be some cost, but that technology will provide some type of substitute. However, the value judgments involved in this opinion, especially when looking at technology, are not entirely clear. As a result, lets have a look at “technology” in more detail and see what framework we can come up with.

Read more

Matt Nolan

Boobs on bikes and violent male crime

/13 Comments/in , /by

Source: Stuff

There has been a lot of discussion surround the recent Boobs on Bikes parade in Auckland. Specifically, there is a belief that pornography, which is promoted by this parade, causes violent male crime.

This is a bold claim – a claim I know practically nothing about. However, I’m going to try and describe the way I would frame the issue for analysis, so that we can have a structured discussion on the issue.

Before doing so I would like to note that other New Zealand blogs are discussing the parade – they are linked to here: (Tumeke) (The Hand Mirror *) (No Right Turn *) (Liberty Scott) (No Minister) (Public Address). Now for the discussion:

Read more

Matt Nolan

Benefit policy: Another value judgment

/19 Comments/in , , /by

Following our discussion of one possible value judgment associated with benefit policy I’ve decided to have a crack at another one. Now note that what I say here is not necessarily my opinion – a fact that should be obvious given that it is completely different from my last post.

This post will be based on an article by Nigel Pinkerton in the Dom post on Saturday (link here). Furthermore, we will start off by discussing the same line as we did last time from the press article:

It is widely accepted now that long-term dependency on welfare benefits should be avoided where possible

Lets see what we come up with:

Read more

Matt Nolan

Benefit policy: Give me a value judgment

/17 Comments/in , , /by

I have avoided discussing Nationals benefit policy so far. I just haven’t seen any need given that I like to stay relatively apolitical – and also given that it does not imply much of a change from the status quo (do you guys know how difficult it is to renew your benefit anyway nowadays!).

For anyone that does want to see the partisan discussion we have:

Kiwiblog links, The Standard links, No Right Turn.

However, I’m low on things to write about, so when Kiwiblog linked to this article in The Press, I thought I would form some value based argument on the first line of the article (it is not necessarily my beliefs – just an argument against the first line) – then we can discuss what value judgments I’m making etc in the comments.

So the first line is.

Read more

Matt Nolan

Specialization: Policy and morality

/11 Comments/in , /by

Philosophy et certa links to an interesting paper by Richard Sharvy titled “Who’s to say what’s right or wrong?  People who have PHDs in philosophy, that’s who”.

At some level this makes sense – philosophers (can) specialise in the study of ethics and morality, and as a result of this training they will have a better idea of what is “right or wrong”, and why it is so, then other people.  My impression of “rightness” and “wrongness” is that it is subjective – deciding what is wrong involves making moral judgments.

As a result, if we accept this, then when forming policy it is Philosophers that should be the ones forming the subjective value judgments required to qualify what the appropriate policy is.

The job of economists is to describe – we have to objectively describe what happens to a bunch of variables in society when one of them is moved.  However, if Philosophers are the experts when in comes to value judgments – they should be the ones that place a values on different variables, so when the economists model moves it can come to some sort of conclusion.

What do you guys think?  How do other disciplines fit into the policy creation process?