The worthies, on the closing of the browser tabs:
- The Let's Get Wellington Moving plan for bus-priority looks like it hits a big bottleneck on a key route, with no workaround.
- National seems incoherent on vaccine passports.
- Remember the old Discount Brands litigation from 20 years ago where new retail was blocked because it would hurt the amenity value of an existing shopping centre? Still happening. Ashburton Council blocks new retailers from taking up spaces in a new complex because it would hurt existing downtown properties. Meanwhile, the Commerce Commission is running an inquisition into supermarket pricing that will be poring over loyalty programs and weighted cost of capital measures, but won't be getting into regulatory constraints into allowing new entry until Session 8 on Thursday.
- A hundred specialists call for harm-reduction approaches when the WHO has its own inquisition into vaping.
- An MIQ shake-up is coming. Still no word on how non-residents might be able to enter.
- Roger Partridge on the uncertain path ahead for Auckland.
- An update to the Stats Act. An update's been needed, I hope the framework winds up being more enabling for research. But going through it will take some time.
- RIP Anthony Downs. I'd set the following question on my take-home exam in my 3rd year Public Choice class, back in the day.
Some work in economics is called seminal: it is the seed from which springs whole new fields of enquiry. Anthony Downs’ 1957 “An economic theory of political action in a democracy” is one such work. Demonstrate that insights in that paper anticipate at least three major developments in later work in public choice: show me the initial Downsian insights and how they’ve been developed later by others.
- "Economics is still a discipline where you can put forward non-PC results without being destroyed for it."
- How to protect kids, while the government continues to ban them from being vaccinated.
