8 thoughts on “Monday Message Board”

  1. The issue of gaming tax, on gambling sites registered in the Northern Territory, is now hotting up. Whether it is optimal to tax “bad” items like cigarettes, alcohol and gambling sites is not been discussed by state and federal tax officials. The whole debate is about what share, if any, the federal government should get from the gambling tax “pie”. The social costs of gambling seems also to not be an issue to these tax grab obsessed governments.

  2. The Sydney Anglican Archdiocese has decided to spend $1 million supporting the No campaign in the SSM survey. It seems a bit strange to wait until just about everyone who was going to participate in the survey has already done so, but there you go.

  3. Experts say we need to avoid using peoples names and so giving a kind of celebrity to mass shooters. In keeping with the tradition of trying to name a thing with reference to essential features only, I think there may be no option but to simply use the label ‘deranged male person’. I cant remember hearing of a female mass shooter and we can all agree that they are deranged. Despite the great American tradition of the lone gunman some of these deranged men are not white , Christian, or American. But they are always blokes .Maybe thats where we should start when wondering why.

  5. In your previous comments on IP (https://johnquiggin.com/2016/05/25/intellectual-property-extract-from-economics-in-two-lessons/#more-13949) you focus only on the utilitarian arguments for IP. FYI there is a principled, propertarian-based argument against IP as well, put forther by Austrian-influenced libertarian such as me (http://c4sif.org/resources/).

    You are right to express skepticism as to the empiricial case for IP (see http://c4sif.org/2012/10/the-overwhelming-empirical-case-against-patent-and-copyright/ ) — but you are wrong that patents are needed in the case of pharmaceuticals. See Boldrin & Levine, chapter 9 of Against Intellectual Monopoly http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm and http://c4sif.org/2012/09/boldrin-and-levine-the-case-against-patents/

  6. It’s not often I would agree with a Republican Senator but one has called Donald Trump’s White House an ‘adult day care centre’.

  7. I declare I want Justin Gleeson SC and his arguments for Tony Windsor to prevail in the High Court currently hopefully to bring this government down.
    I distinctly heard Brandi’s SC Donoghue slip up in a submission when referring to Justice Brennan in the High Court decision of Sykes v Cleary, by mistakenly referring to him a Justin Brennan.
    I bet the Honourable Justices did not miss this as an insight into his current state of mind and his belief in his case,

  8. My 2c worth on Catalonia – I think there is a case to be made for calling a legal referendum but not for the one that took place to be taken as representative. I can’t see how it could have been; most of those opposed probably did not vote at all in a poll facilitated entirely by Separatists. Not that the Spanish government has handled this well at all; the contrary, and a legal vote now would probably see more uncommitted swayed towards secession.

    I am always wary of irrevocable decisions made on the basis of popularity when it involves and invokes some form of Nationalist us-and-them sentiments; like other button pressing rhetoric, when strong emotions are triggered the parts of the brain needed for considered, rational decision making seem to get turned off.

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