Fran wrote:
> On Apr 28, 11:11 pm, Hunter01 wrote:
>> Considering fags is busy on his bandwagon, I will make a case in defense
>> of us holding the relay (as irritating as it is to back his position
>> even if spitting on his labor-worship reasoning). I would call it a
>> national pride thing, we are a part of the global community, we have
>> always been a part of global events, and I'm very proud of the way the
>> torch run was handled.
>
> That's as may be but consider the argument I put from utility.
>
> Suppose you and I agree that injuries on the road are a bad thing.
> They cost the economy money because resources are tied up in
> ambulances and hospitals and physiotherapy. Time is lost from work.
> People who have had massive amoutns of public resources poured into
> them are killed or incapacitated. All their loved ones are distressed,
> and in practice they live worse lives. They may need to be supported
> on pensions, and even wherwe this is covered by CTP, somebody has to
> pay this cost.
>
> We might agree that certain policies involving licencing, access to
> motor vehicles, public transport etc might reduce the road trauma
> costs. And we'd set out to deploy the resources to achive the program
> goals of reducing road trauma costs by $X for the expenditure of $
> dollars over some number of years. Maybe someone would point out that
> if we reduce the number of cars on the road we can not only reduce
> road trauma but cut pollution and lower health costs in another way,
> but at the end of it we get a measurable set of prospective benefits
> on one side of the ledger, and some costs and inconvenience on the
> other. If we believe the pay off is big enough, we go ahead, and if we
> don't we say 'it's not worth it' -- even though we know that doing
> nothing will have some costs up to and including the deaths of some of
> the citizenry.
>
> If we go ahead, and the program is successful, then further road
> safety initiatives will, by definition, have less scope to produce
> measurable benefits. But again, if they are sufficient, assuming we
> have the resources, we go ahead, and if they aren't, we don't.
>
> It's said that the Federal government is looking for ways to avoid
> spending money, and that 'fighting inflation' is a key objective. If
> this is right, then we can conclude that the government will cut
> certain programs or reduce the resources made available to them. The
> question then becomes, which resources should be withdrawn?
>
> Clearly, if one is a porkbarrelling populist, then the resources that
> should go are those that do nothing useful for your actual or
> potential political support base. If one is rationally acting in the
> public interest however, the resources that should be withdrawn are
> those that produce too little public benefit for the resources they
> demand and if there are several competing claims, those with the
> lowest priority have to make way for those that serve more pressing
> needs.
Agree completely so far.
> It may well be that participating in the international torch relay
> gives a substantial number of people a warm inner glow for a day or
> two, but how does this compare with $2 million (or in Stanhope's mind,
> $20 million) worth of budget savings, or improved Aboriginal health or
> education, or LITO for low income earners or any number of other
> programs?
Not well at all, but compared to a hell of a lot of government spending
its ROI is much higher. What do we actually get in this country from
arts grants? Do we get anything other than some warm fuzzy feelings over
having some people that claim to be artists, which is questionable
considering a little experiment a decade or so ago where a monkey with a
paintbrush was able to fool a number of the worlds top critics (says a
lot about art). How about Rudd's bullshit "pc for every student" scheme?
A long while ago I made the point that people involved in the project
were screaming that it was doomed to failure because the order given was
to just make sure the numbers match up, forget anything to do with
feasibility or infrastructure to actually make any of them usuable for
anything other than a doorstop after the fact, and recently this has
actually come to public light, yet we're still spending on that joke of
a project. Is it worth spending millions, or perhaps billions, to try to
sustain remote communities purely because Aboriginals live there, when
anyone else is forced to leave an area when it can no longer support
itself? I think not, there's no ROI at all there.
With the olympic torch run perhaps tangible returns are low, but if it
does a little to unifiy the people of the country with pride, if it does
a little to help our reputation around the world as the one place that
didn't errupt into violence during the run, if it accomplishes these
small things it is still accomplishing more than all of the spending
mentioned above.
At the end of the day if it came down to things like the torch run over
hospitals then the hospitals would obviously win every time, but it
isn't that simple, there's a lot of even more insane spending which is
much more deserving of copping the knife before it gets down to that level.
> Not well. Throw in the fact that it's basically a PR stunt for the
> Beijing regime, and it looks a pretty poor candidate for state
> support.
No it isn't, it's the same torch run it's always been. China may like to
think it works in their favour but only idiots like Fags are praising
China over the torch run, and the only reason he is doing so is it
happens to work in with his mindless worship of Rudd, who chose the
Olympics as the time to go play with China.
The rest of us are well aware that Rudd's little ploy isn't going to
make any difference to Tibet at all, and that the Olympics at the end of
the day also have sweet . all to do with Tibet, or China, other than
as a physical venue for this time around.
>> Our cops backed their thugs off right from the
>> beginning of the run and told them to stay the . out of it, we had a
>> mostly non-eventful run (probly the most peaceful seen of any country in
>> the world where it's been held), we might have had a lot of pro-China
>> bussed in rent-a-crowd but at the end of the day it went well.
>>
>> What is wrong with that?
>>
>> The cost, yeah, well considering Rudd's idea of economic rationalism (at
>> the cost of health and education just as a start) I really think we can
>> live with this one, and for once can't criticise his govt for how things
>> went, I think Australia scored on this one. You may disagree.
>>
>> (wouldn't it have been nice if you could've got honest opinion from the
>> senile fags like this, as opposed to his rent-a-script worship
>> rubbish???
>
> Yes. So much heat, so little light.
The heat seems to come from hot air rather than anything else, there's
nothing clever or original there, just venomous regurgitated diatribe.
When there is no free-will or intelligence behind the argument the
points are not worth arguing, add to that a distinctive lack of honesty
and his attempts to drown all opposition in volumes of convoluted crap,
and you're left with something that evolution appears to have left behind.
>> You and me rarely agree, and it seems we don't agree on this
>> point, but at least I'll always give you an honest argument).
>
> Fair enough.
>
> Fran
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