Evolution and Crime

Written By: lprent - Date published: 12:19 am, December 28th, 2008 - 76 comments
Categories: police, prisons, science, scoundrels - Tags: economist, evolution

The Economist is one of the few main stream media that seem to be flourishing in the days of decline for most media outlets. This is probably because it offers truly interesting comment and opinion.

For instance in the current science section, they have “Darwinism:Why we are, as we are, a view on the current trends in evolutionary theory related to society. I’ve picked out a few bits about the evolutionary role of crime.

Now this is not the mindless use of evolution professed by some of our more stupid trolls. They never seem to have learnt why Social Darwinists are considered to be fools for ignoring the societal glue of altruism and its relatives. Humans evolved as a social species and evolved society as a means to continuing development on the same lines

For instance, there appears to be a blind faith insistence by some that more rapid and longer incarceration has a noticeable effect on crime. There is essentially no evidence that this is or has ever happened. Policy makers should probably learn more about the factors that actually drive crime in evolutionary terms. There are remarkable similarities in criminal patterns worldwide when you eliminate age and population density factors. For instance in the age ranges and frequency of homicides.

An evolutionary analysis explains many things about crime (and not just murder)â€”particularly why most criminals are males of low status. A woman will rarely have difficulty finding a mate, even if he does not measure up to all her lofty ideals. In the world of Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, however, a low-status man may be cast on the reproductive scrap heap because there are no women available to him at all. Though the world in which humanity evolved was nowhere near as polygamous as Moulay Ismail’s, neither did it resemble the modern one of monogamous marriage, which distributes women widely. In those circumstances, if the alternative was reproductive failure, risking the consequences of violence may have been are worth the gambleâ€”and instincts will have evolved accordingly.

Like the Economist article, I’d suggest that politicians and the publics ideas about causation of crime are incredibly weak and depend far more on wishful thinking than analysis. For instance ‘born criminals’, racial characteristics of crime, and poverty driven crime don’t appear to be supported by the evidence. In the latter case the correlations can be explained as easily by status and reproductive failure. As the chart above notes for its area, crime is largely the province of males. This tends to indicate that it is as much a reproductive strategy as a male peacocks tail. In its typical acid tongue, the Economist notes:-

Sexual success, by contrast, tends to dampen criminal behaviour down. Getting married and having childrenâ€”in other words, achieving at least part of his Darwinian ambitionâ€”often terminates a criminal’s career. Again, that is a commonplace observation. However, it tends to be explained as ‘the calming influence of marriage’, which is not really an explanation at all. ‘Ambition fulfilled’ is a better one.

Now obviously this is not going to accord with some peoples ideas. As the article states close to the beginning

Traditionally, the answers to such questions, and many others about modern life, have been sought in philosophy, sociology, even religion. But the answers that have come back are generally unsatisfying. They describe, rather than explain. They do not get to the nitty-gritty of what it truly is to be human. Policy based on them does not work. This is because they ignore the forces that made people what they are: the forces of evolution.

Perhaps our law makers and upholders of the law should learn a bit more about the sciences of human behavior and its evolutionary background. Because it is difficult to see what much of the law and order debate in the recent election had to do with reality.

76 comments on “Evolution and Crime ”

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r0b 1

28 December 2008 at 7:58 am

Interesting post Lynn, thanks for that. Nice to see some topics like this, not necessarily on current political issues, but looking for the real explanations that underlie social behaviour and important social / political issues.

I was going to take issue with the conclusion – if the alternative was reproductive failure, risking the consequences of violence may have been are worth the gamble – as far too simplistic – until I read the article. The full article is a good summary and makes a reasonable case, I do recommend that people read it before piling in with any knee jerk responses!
lprent 2

28 December 2008 at 9:01 am

rOb, yeah. The problem is that if you are trying to compress into about 400 words, it gets impossible to be precise. This one wound up as 600 odd words on one aspect of a much larger article. Which was itself a summary of some of the study and thinking of one aspect of explanation across a number of areas.

What I wanted to do with this post was point out an alternate way of thinking about the issue, and get people reading the article.

Personally, I’ve always found thinking about the evolutionary approach has been the most effective in understanding the patterns I see in people. Strip away the rationalizations that people place on things and assume that humans are smart social animals. That seems to work more often than not. It is a pity that research in this area seems to be constrained.
Peter Burns 3

28 December 2008 at 9:21 am

I think the holistic approach to tackling the current scourge of crime is a far better option than evolution methodology, which has failed and mass produced moronic heartless filth.
Must go, got to get to that Church on time.
God bless.
Anita 4

28 December 2008 at 9:38 am

One of the frustrations for me about this kind of “Darwinian” analysis is the way in which it overlooks biology and focusses on providing a scientific rationale for “rational choices”.

A more biochemical analysis would look at the chemical soup that makes us up and discuss, for instance, that the curve in the graph looks a lot like the graph of testosterone over the lifetime (although the decay curve is not quite as steep and also the male/female differences in testosterone levels which also match the statistics. They could then discuss the evolutionary advantage of testosterone levels like that.

I’m not arguing against a Darwinian analysis, just that pop science tends to focus on higher order behaviour and ignore the fact that we are no more than chemical soup. Many behaviours can be better explained by a kind of biochemical determinism than an attempt to apply Darwinian logic to a pure free will model..
marco 5

28 December 2008 at 9:46 am

I agree there needs to be a better approach to crime prevention in this country, however there also needs to be a sense of justice for the victim. The reason for this is its generally victims who campaign for tougher sentences, which galvanises opinion and influcences policy.
The best form of crime prevention is a higher standard of education. Most violent offenders (although not all) have a lower level of education. This ifluences reasoning and decision making.
Manurewa which has been in the news with regards to its violent crime, only has 35 percent of its under 5’s in early childhood education. A quick check around Manurewa shows that all its early childhood providers are full meaning there is a huge market for more childcare providers in the area.
This is both a failure of private enterprise (plugging the hole in the market) and the government (who fail to make it attractive to become a provider in the area).
Anita 6

28 December 2008 at 10:00 am

marco,

The reason for this is its generally victims who campaign for tougher sentences, which galvanises opinion and influcences policy.

Many victims of crime don’t campaign for tougher sentences. Some even campaign against prison sentences for the types of crimes of which they have been victims.

That the crime-and-punishment lobby is so successful in the media is not because all victims of crimes are behind it. It’s because of a very successful media strategy, and the media’s appetite for crime stories and extreme points of view.
RedLogix 7

28 December 2008 at 10:05 am

But just because the shape of the murder rate/age curve is the same in the UK as it is in Chicago, does not discount the fact the UK curve is still by far the better one to have. What this does tell us is that while the underlying cause of murder is the same everywhere, external social conditions play a dominant role in determine just how many murders occur.

The best analogy that comes to mind is say, shot noise in electronic circuits. While the root cause is the same (the stochastically random motion of individual electrons), the actual amount of noise in any given circuit is also directly related to absolute temperature.

Given that humans evolved within a purely Darwinian framework over millions of years, it is entirely unsurprising that the root causes of our behaviour also have Darwinian explanations. But the pre-eminent feature of humans (I won’t say unique) is our astonishing ability to form and manipulate purely asbtract concepts. It is this faculty that allows us to ‘step outside of the box’, to become post-Darwinian as it were. Religion has long proposed a dual nature to humanity. The essence of this idea that is while our mammallian-derived behaviours are largely predictable, hard to change and destructive, we are also possessed of another nature that is creative, contemplative, and transformative.

Our life in this world necessarily constrains us into inhabiting the body of an ape, with all the hardwiring and firmware that evolution has endowed us with. But we also get to play with the application layer. The fact remains that the total murder rate in Chicago and the UK is differrent, AND that we can manipulate this if we choose.

In fact taking the article to it’s logical conclusion, we could almost eliminate murder if we arranged our society to ensure most people married and had children much younger than our present custom, pretty much from the age of say 16 onwards. A society that was so ordered as to make such young families sucessful (emotionally, financially and socially) would look a fair bit different to ours present form, but is not wholly unthinkable. And that is the point.
lprent 8

28 December 2008 at 10:10 am

A: Sure we are a chemical soup.

The point I was trying to make is that the debate about crime is just weird. It ignores virtually everything known about human behavior and concentrates on the corny discredited solutions. It seems to operate on the general basis of “it it didn’t work last time, maybe it will this time”.
Anita 9

28 December 2008 at 10:22 am

lprent,

the debate about crime is just weird. … It seems to operate on the general basis of “it it didn’t work last time, maybe it will this time’.

Isn’t that the definition of insanity? 🙂
Ianmac 10

28 December 2008 at 10:40 am

It follows I suppose, that the Destiny Church has a valid function in helping to provide a base for males to be successful and therefore create fewer criminals. They seem to my middleclass eyes to be a bit dodgy, but like the Salvation Army they are probably a vital part of society.
burt 11

28 December 2008 at 11:25 am

lprent

The point I was trying to make is that the debate about crime is just weird.

It might not be weird, perhaps all that you thinking it is weird tells us is that you don’t understand it.

I think Anita has made a very valid point, I could probably use that same graph to illustrate road deaths as a result of stupid driving behaviour (arguably criminal behaviour – arguably not). I could probably also use that graph to show number of times a hormonal pimply faced person (male or female) masturbates each year.

But hey that wouldn’t be using the graph to preach my ideology would it.
Mr Magoo 12

28 December 2008 at 11:52 am

Merry xmas everyone and soon to be happy new year for you guys I hope. Yes I am happy, I am not working and this always makes me happier. 🙂

I lament that an article on scientific rigor uses a graph with three plots from random places and implies from this that crime is very similar all over. Now I have no idea if it is, but I am damned sure that graph proves absolutely nothing and is VERY misleading.

But that is what you get with journalists I guess. Their science is about as good as their ethics.

Having got that off my chest. Interesting point about getting your freak on stopping crime. It figures.
We are just rutting animals in a field. 🙂

PS: Yes, that last post was intentionally and ironically vulgar.
RedLogix 13

28 December 2008 at 11:52 am

Is this the point you are referring to Burt?

A more biochemical analysis would look at the chemical soup that makes us up and discuss, for instance, that the curve in the graph looks a lot like the graph of testosterone over the lifetime (although the decay curve is not quite as steep and also the male/female differences in testosterone levels which also match the statistics.

I was wondering if Anita was going to spot the obvious question that might arise from her biochemical explanation, is that if it is true, then can we infer that young males in Chicago have roughly 30 times the testosterone levels of young males in the UK? (Hell this may be true, I don’t know.)

Captcha = thrust 17 (errk!)
Anita 14

28 December 2008 at 11:54 am

burt,

I’m not sure I was making the point you think I made 🙂

We are chemical soup, many of our patterns of behaviour have biochemical drivers seated in our evolutionary heritage we should consider this, rather that the need for vengeance or populist political point scoring, when we design our law and order, education and health policies.
Anita 15

28 December 2008 at 11:59 am

RedLogix,

I was wondering if Anita was going to spot the obvious question that might arise from her biochemical explanation, is that if it is true, then can we infer that young males in Chicago have roughly 30 times the testosterone levels of young males in the UK?

An lo, we have yet another example of proof that it is neither exclusively nature or nurture 🙂
Interrogative Mode 16

28 December 2008 at 11:59 am

Hmm. Thought-provoking post. I’d be interested in what the paper’s authors have to say about domestic abuse. We know that men (it’s almost always men) who were abused as children are more likely to abuse their own children and their partners. The behavioural explanation for this seems to me to be far more on point than any evolutionary explanation.
RedLogix 17

28 December 2008 at 12:11 pm

Some of the source documents by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson are here.
RedLogix 18

28 December 2008 at 1:39 pm

A fast skim through their material yeilds this one critical clue:

The results of these analyses support the proposition that the degree to
which resources are unequally distributed is a stronger determinant of levels of
lethal violence in modern nation states than is the average level of material
welfare.

In other words they consistently find that the GINI (income inequality) coefficient (especially when used on a local or regional basis) is the best predictor of violence. Young males, shut out from reproduction by severe social inequality, have nothing to loose by engaging in risky behaviour (even murder), because in essence, the reproductive difference between keeping one’s nose clean and dying celibate, and taking a risk and dying young is nil. For young male with no opportunity to attain a mate legitimately, it is worth the risk to attain one by behaving badly, even if the downside is death. (A rather brutal reduction of the old obervation that nice guys really do finish last.)

Conversely one could draw the obvious conclusion that monogamous societies which strive to moderate the extremes of wealth and poverty, allow for an equality of opportunity and security, and encourage the formation of stable families… are going to experience the lowest levels of violent crime.

Kind of bleedingly obvious really, so why does our public policy persist in heading off in entirely the opposite direction?
Ag 19

28 December 2008 at 2:05 pm

Kind of bleedingly obvious really, so why does our public policy persist in heading off in entirely the opposite direction?

Because it is written by social dominators who see themselves as winning this “contest”?
Paul 20

28 December 2008 at 2:36 pm

of course the difference between England and Chicago may well be simply down to the availability of weaponry – young males in England may end up in a punch up outside the pub while in Chicago one of them pulls a saturday night special – the initial arguments may be similar but the results are amplified by the tools available
burt 21

28 December 2008 at 3:27 pm

Interrogative Mode

It’s always the step father, quite possibly the step father that was messed up by an abusive parent (step father) themselves, but nevertheless it’s usually the step father occasionally the uncle.

RedLogix

Kind of bleedingly obvious really, so why does our public policy persist in heading off in entirely the opposite direction?

Because our social policy is incapable of reducing the problem to it’s root cause as you have done. We cannot provide breeding vessels as a compensation for young male antisocial or dangerous behaviour. Therefore we seek to address another more PC factor and we administer more welfare and/or harsher sentences and pretend we are dealing with it.
Anita 22

28 December 2008 at 4:25 pm

burt,

It’s always the step father, quite possibly the step father that was messed up by an abusive parent (step father) themselves, but nevertheless it’s usually the step father occasionally the uncle.

Nope. Craig Manukau, Lilybing, Sade Trembath, and the Kahui twins for starters.

I need to walk in the sunshine now.
Peter Burns 23

28 December 2008 at 4:36 pm

Anita, contrary to feminist ideology the presence of the biological father does help in the nurturing process and provides the much needed balance craved by healthy and happy children. Family breakdowns are always aided by the no fault divorce system in which the bio dad is shafted into oblivion by a gender bias de family court of mongrels. The system breeds resentment! Criminals abound – build more jails dumbos! Anybody remember the days of mum, dad and the kids. What century was that? Why do I bother. What year did Coral B get killed. RIP Kahui Twins etc…etc…

Don’t forget to put on your sun cream and I hope you don’t get mugged by young thugs.
Ari 24

28 December 2008 at 5:16 pm

ROFL Peter…

The presence of the father only helps when the father has half a clue. Abusive and manipulative parents can be worse than no parents at all. That goes for mothers as well as fathers. What Anita was saying was that it’s not exclusively step-fathers and uncles who are to blame for abuse- which seems a pretty logical conclusion.

Get off your hobby horse 😉
Peter Burns 25

28 December 2008 at 5:36 pm

I know I hit a tender point when Ari starts a reply with ROFL. Yawn, so predicable. Rising crime rates and family breakdowns go hand in hand when a family unfriendly government does not endorse the traditional family as the fundamental building block of society. But, you know this and we sit on different sides of the ideological fence. Please don’t insult my intelligence with pathetic jibes like ROFL and hobby horse.
How many more prisons shall we build Ari?
Carol 26

28 December 2008 at 6:18 pm

I welcome any nuanced approach to understanding crime, especially when it includes a consideration of social class differences and issues of relative power. However, an evolutionary approach seems pretty limited to me. A sociological one seems more helpful.

The problem with using crime stats is that they don’t fully reflect the violence and other crimes actually happening or the social class distribution of the perps: eg with domestic violence.

How much white collar crime is masked by the people with most power? Who defines what counts as a crime? How many police officers (from middleclass backgrounds) commit and get away with illegal acts of violence or other crimes in the course of their jobs? Violent crimes against humanity, initiated by middleclass men (and women) in positions pf political power are not included in national crime stats: eg Iraq, Palestine etc.

What evidence is there that large numbers of women are attracted to men who commit crimes? Many pacifist and/or non-criminal men are very attractive to some women.

IMO it’d be more fruitful to look more closely at the contexts in which crimes occur with a focus on socioeconomic and political factors.
Peter Burns 27

28 December 2008 at 6:30 pm

Yes Carol I find it rather offensive that police officers and judges can continue working with protection orders in place. Doesn’t DV count for the slimy – underhand judiciary!? Silly me, evolution dictates that the selected few are different in a world of the survival of the fittest. Thanks Charles. Want a Bible in hell mate?
RedLogix 28

28 December 2008 at 6:53 pm

Considering only the category “fatal batterings of small children” the data is very striking:

Australian data indicate an even larger Cinderella effect. Wallace (1986) reported that perpetrators of fatal baby batterings in New South Wales in 1968-1981 included 11 putative genetic fathers and 18 stepfathers, even though the victims’ median age was only 12 months. Strang (1996) reported that comparable cases for the country as a whole in 1989-1993 included 11 children killed by putative genetic fathers and 12 by stepfathers, although the victims’ median age was in this case less than 1 year.

For both of these samples, the age distribution was such that fewer than 0.5% of a random sample of same-age children from the population-at-large would be expected to have had a stepfather according to Australian Family Characteristics Survey data, and the estimated relative risk from stepfathers vs genetic fathers exceeds 300-fold.

From Daly and Wilson again. here

Sorry if the data is a dated, but there is little reason to think this affects the takeaway conclusion much. A similar highly elevated risk is found in most countries with reliable source data.

There will be of course genetic fathers who do kill children, but the authors stress that these cases often present quite differently; the usual history being of a parent either depressed or alienated from his family commits a murder/suicide in which the minimum of actual suffering is inflicted, death usually inflicted by gun or asphyxiation.

Also of interest:

Nevertheless, all available evidence indicates that excess risk from stepmothers (relative to genetic mothers) is roughly on the same order as excess risk from stepfathers (relative to genetic fathers).

although they emphasise that the actual number of children who live with stepmothers in these modern times is very low. (In contrast to pre-Industrial times were death in childbirth was very common and step-mothering was the usual resort. Which is why this whole phenomon is called the “Cinderella Effect.)

Carol:

How much white collar crime is masked by the people with most power? Who defines what counts as a crime? How many police officers (from middleclass backgrounds) commit and get away with illegal acts of violence or other crimes in the course of their jobs? Violent crimes against humanity, initiated by middleclass men (and women) in positions pf political power are not included in national crime stats: eg Iraq, Palestine etc.

Couldn’t agree with you more, but the thread was mainly focussed on the root causes and responses to the kind of violent crime that captures popular paranoia.
Anita 29

28 December 2008 at 7:12 pm

Peter Burns,

Anita, contrary to feminist ideology the presence of the biological father does help in the nurturing process and provides the much needed balance craved by healthy and happy children

I think you’re disagreeing with me about something I didn’t say (and don’t believe).

In fact I think you’re disagreeing with feminism for something that it (to the extent feminism is a single belief structure) doesn’t believe either.
burt 30

28 December 2008 at 7:15 pm

My comment about the stepfather’s earlier in the thread was partially tongue in cheek. Clearly it’s not always the stepfather but as the statistics dug out by RedLogix support – there is a very amplified risk to children with step parents.

This sort of non genetic offspring abuse is common across much of the mammal species. We think we have evolved eh…. We are indeed a chemical soup.
Rex Widerstrom 31

28 December 2008 at 7:31 pm

Like r0b, I’m pleased to see analysis of issues outside of reaction to a particular incident. Not only because this is something The Standard does particularly well, but also because it takes some of the heat out of the comments if people aren’t reacting to some horrendous slaughter and can thus think more dispassionately. So thanks, lprent.

Being a particular hobby horse of mine, there’s so much I want to comment on here I could easily exceed the length of the original post (a sure sign your comment is too verbose 😉 ). However there’s a point Anita made that jumps out for me at present:

Many victims of crime don’t campaign for tougher sentences. Some even campaign against prison sentences for the types of crimes of which they have been victims

I recently had lunch with a member of the Prisoner Review Board (formerly known as the Parole Board) in WA. She’d grown up watching domestic violence by her father on her mother, then been a victim of it over a prolonged period by the father of her child. She became a member of the government’s Victims Reference Group and then was appointed the first “victims’ representative” on the Board.

Despite the fact that she personally was a delightful person I approached her with my guard up. I wanted to challenge her on whether her appointment was any more valid, than, say, a representative of the wrongfully accused or those whose sentences were excessive compared to others of a similar nature.

But her attitude to prisoners totally disarmed me. She’d taken the time to think through the issues and her responses didn’t seem to be at all motivated by fear, revenge or prejudice. She had the capacity to see prisoners – and victims – as individuals with individual needs and whose paths to being “fixed” differed greatly.

Despite the intensity of what she’d endured (she was the first person in WA’s history to be granted a lifetime restraining order against her former partner) and despite working with hundreds of victims since then, she’d retained – or perhaps recovered – her humanity.

Rather than challenge her I listened, and learned. And amongst the many things I was taught was that Anita is absolutely right: not all victims want longer and harsher sentences. Some actively oppose it. Most can see that offenders are individuals, and that what works for one won’t necessarily work for another. And that the time to ask them what they want isn’t just after they or their family have been offended against, or as the sentence is handed down. They admit their thinking at such times isn’t rational – which is, of course, exactly why the SST choose those moments to exploit them.

And because they were victims they know that what’s most important isn’t that the Garth McVicars of this world get a pulpit from which to preach their sermon of dehumanisation and punishment, but that other members of society are stopped from becoming victims too.

And if the price paid for that is to treat prisoners like human beings it’s a price the vast majority of victims say they are only too happy to pay.
RedLogix 32

28 December 2008 at 7:43 pm

We are indeed a chemical soup.

But that overstates the case in the other direction. The other fact that is relevant here is that the huge majority of step-parents do a wonderful job, all the more admirable given their relative lack of genetic drive to do so. We have to keep in mind that extreme child murders and abuse are still relatively rare.

Yes we are a chemical soup, but one with the astonishing faculty of self-reflection.
Chris G 33

28 December 2008 at 8:17 pm

Interesting thread all round. Great post and good user comments.

Crime just seems to be the most difficult problem to even attempt to solve in our society. I think our first problem is that we never have open discussions and debate on causes of crime, we only hear from (in the media) this one sided victim/vengeful perspective and I think its this huge obstacle for us moving forward in anyway – Its sort of created this Cartesian thing going on like ‘We’re all victims and over there are the dogs who roll in crime’. Eg.It doesnt help when you get dopes like Michael Laws week in week out in the SST decrying criminals as ‘brown, uneducated underclass’ without offering any realistic solutions to solving crime other than alluding to long jail sentences.

It also doesnt help when you get a flurry of Anti-Abortion lobbyists using the Nia Glassie et al. cases as examples of why Abortion is bad! They essentially believed that those crimes were committed as some part of evidence of why abortion is bad. That just gobsmacked me when I read all those letters to the editors. Surely it should serve as a case for pro-abortion… anyway, I digress slightly.

The point im getting at is that we are rarely, if ever, shown reasoned debates or inferences about causes of crime. Threads like this should be up for more widespread, public discussion. Instead we get this crap ingrained in our national psyche by the media that we can place a ‘box’ around criminals and we tackle them as a side issue by listening to fuckin McVicar and Michael Laws and hear Rodney the Razor Saying he’ll get tough on crime… but how the hell will he pull through?

I hear what your saying Peter B with regards to the importance of family, but. What is it, at a policy level, that can strengthen families? Tax cuts? – bollocks (refer: families under $44K in latest tax package), ultrafast broadband – bollocks……. Spying on Greenpeace? (Okay that wasnt at a policy level, but I had to chuck it in)

Once again I stream of consciousness and I wont bother to check over what I’ve scrawled…Take from it what you will.
Bill 34

28 December 2008 at 8:26 pm

What exactly is crime when it’s at home?

Killing a Muslim may be a crime today, but during the crusades was a sure way to heaven.

Killing your neighbour might be a crime. Killing over a million Iraqis isn’t. Apparently.

Stealing a handbag is a crime. Stealing a pension fund?

To argue that the marginalised and dispossessed ( the people ‘crimes’ are invented for after-all!) are more disposed to being criminal is….whatstheword? I’ll settle for ‘not very ingenious’ when you look at it face on for a second.
RedLogix 35

28 December 2008 at 9:05 pm

Bill,

Again the same answer as to Anita, who raised the same issue. I agree with you, but for the purpose of the thread we had discounted the wider questions you raise. In all three examples you mention, deplorable acts are justified by power elites protecting their interests via a conventional wisdom.

How about this idea? The very broad overview of history (sort of Toynbean-ish) suggests that social evolution consists of a series of stages, each one embracing a wider moral horizon than the one before.

At some stage in our pre-history the prime moral value was the survival of your family, and secondarily your familial tribe. Civilisation has progressed as we have been able to extend that loyalty to larger and larger constructs, religion, city, culture, race, and state. An act (such as disembowelling a thief from a rival tribe) that was acceptable, indeed praised at one stage, is deplored and criminalised at a later stage.

Killing Muslims en-masse is ok while you are at that moral stage, (and sadly lots of people still are)… but the horizon has shifted since the time of the Crusades.

Killing your neighbour is an act committed by an individual, and society is long accustomed to regulating the behaviour of individuals. Much less so when it becomes a question of regulating the behaviour of the so-called ‘sovereign state’. Collectively we lack the institutions and will to convict a rogue state that illegally kills a million Iraqis, but at least there are many, many others in the world who now recognise it as a moral wrong. Consider the few lone voices who protested WW1, compared to this, so maybe we are progressing painfully in the right direction and will get a proper International Court within our lifetimes.

Again stealing handbags is a crime we are accustomed to dealing with. Vulnerable women have been robbed since time immemorial, while the complexities of the monstrous Ponzi scheme that is Wall St and global finance is only just being grasped by most of us. This kind of non-violent (yet hugely destructive) crime is something relatively new in human history, with the fall-out really only hurting us three times, 1873, 1929 and 2009. Each time we think we have put in place safeguards to prevent it happening again, but each generation in it’s hubris forgets and gets suckered by the cheaters all over again. When enough people truly believe greed is good… dissenting voices and whistleblowers are silenced and eventually things go very bad.

(It turns out Madoff bribed the SEC to give him a clean bill of health, despite numerous very clear concerns having been raised about his fund. The rot had infected the whole system, it had to collapse, and take with it all the pernicious crap about ‘self-regulating free markets’.)
Rex Widerstrom 36

28 December 2008 at 10:36 pm

Ohh this thread is so good I just wanna strip down to my togs (why is it no Australian understands this term?) and wallow in it. Sorry about that mental image…

Carol asks:

What evidence is there that large numbers of women are attracted to men who commit crimes? Many pacifist and/or non-criminal men are very attractive to some women.

In my experience it very much depends on the “class” into which you were born. Where I grew up, in a distinctly lower socio-economic area, nice guys do finish last in the reproductive stakes. They did when I was young and by all accounts still do. Hence I do question that part of The Economist‘s conclusions.

Growing up, the aggressive, if not violent, boys – those who rarely attended school and disrupted it when they were there – were like magnets to “good” and “bad” girls alike. I’ve seen mothers – from the mothers of girls I grew up with to the mothers of my daughter’s friends 20 years later – encouraging relationships with boys who had a steady job, a car, some dreams and at least some prospects, all to no avail. It was the ones who stood over those kids for their money or to “borrow” their cars to whom the girls almost always flocked.

When I returned to the school as Chair of it’s Board I was only slightly surprised to learn that, while in my day the ‘pecking order’ amongst boys was determined by how many girls one could seduce and then abandon this was now so commonplace as to hold no cachet at all – status was now gained by the number of girls one could impregnate and abandon. Thus there were teenage boys proud to have had, in some cases, two or three children, all to different mothers.

The problem with the conclusion that:

…Sexual success, by contrast, tends to dampen criminal behaviour down. Getting married and having children?in other words, achieving at least part of his Darwinian ambition?often terminates a criminal?s career.

…is that amongst lower socio-economic orders sexual success doesn’t equate with “getting married and having children” any more. Instead it has come to be viewed as a scorecard – like how many people you’ve robbed or how long you’ve spent in juvenile detention – as merely an indicator of your “success” as a societal outcast.

Then we have a generation of children growing up and knowing that’s the entire extent of the regard held for them by their biological fathers…
Ag 37

29 December 2008 at 4:27 am

Each time we think we have put in place safeguards to prevent it happening again, but each generation in it’s hubris forgets and gets suckered by the cheaters all over again.

We do nothing about the root of the problem, because most of our cultural mechanisms for dealing with bad behaviour assume some form of the free will theory, which is usually tied to some vestigially Christian belief that everyone has an equal chance to be good or bad.

Of course, it isn’t true. Some people are born bad, and others are made that way with no way of going back. Anti social personalities and social dominators abuse this belief to the detriment of everyone else.

As usual, the first people to think about this knew the answer. Even Plato understood that the primary focus of any large organization ought to be to discover some way of measuring those who are psychologically unfit to be put in positions of authority over others, and then preventing those people from ever being put in such positions. It’s amazing how well things run when that happens (although it mostly does by accident).

My favourite claim of his is the one that says that anyone who has the remotest interest in exercising political rule ought for that very reason to be excluded from consideration as a potential ruler.
Anita 38

29 December 2008 at 11:33 am

Carol,

What evidence is there that large numbers of women are attracted to men who commit crimes? Many pacifist and/or non-criminal men are very attractive to some women.

A Darwinian argument would be that a woman should be attracted to men who are most likely to successfully reproduce the woman’s material.

In my nice middle class enclave that means men who will be financial successful so that our children will not only survive childhood but also have the best possible educational and economic outcomes, giving them the best possible chance of reproducing successfully. So yeah, I should choose intelligent, driven, healthy and non-violent (more likely to not get himself killed).

In a more violent and less financially able place perhaps I would be better to choose a man able and willing to win physical contests. That way he’d live to breed and support me and my children and our children, in turn, would be more likely to survive a physically violent world.
uroskin 39

29 December 2008 at 2:20 pm

Looking at the graph cynically, I can’t but think that if we locked up all males when they hit puberty until they have grown a brain, there’d be no crime.
merl 40

29 December 2008 at 3:43 pm

This is not a position that I hold (just a random neuron sparking in the back of my brain).

But when I read the argument about “Sexual success, by contrast, tends to dampen criminal behaviour down. ”
That seems to me to be an argument to ‘lock them up and throw away the key’. If you penalise crime by essentially removing their ability to procreate, then would the be considered a sufficient deterrent?

Assuming of course that the above point is correct.
ak 41

29 December 2008 at 5:28 pm

Lovely post Lynn, and great thoughts everyone, even Peter4 (notwithstanding the mental image from Rex, but at least you kept your cossie on…budgiesmuggler?)

Like all great theories (and beliefs), Darwinism is open to interpretation and abuse. It can elicit the cruel, tory “survival of the fittest” mentality, and also the more enlightened “social Darwinist” staged evolution outlined by Redlo.

Both interpretations can be useful. The “testosterone/reproduction” scenario outlined above rings particularly true as an explanation of youthful status-seeking: the variable that cries for attention is the (socially defined) definition of status.

As Red points out, where wealth is more evenly spread, education and skills will carry more weight. In 1950’s NZ, where the postmaster lived next to the doctor, the man who had “passed UE” or “can play the piano” – (or the ultimate, the “university man”) had the status – and got the girl.

Nowadays, status is all money, and the fifty-million dollar paper-shuffling cipher is the new role model. Being the baddest biker or growing the big crop are indeed the rational choices for those ill-equipped to scale the increasingly-steep conventional ladders.

So where does the current social definition of status come from? Same place as most of our definitions – the brightly-coloured box that leaves pulpit, principal and whanau in the grey and dusty shade The handfuls of professional persuaders that daily bombard our youth with compelling messages of bliss-via-wealth in order to please their employers.

The (mainstream) media is the messenger. Which is why this interwebby thing has such huge potential: witty, pithy, well-made clips on U-tube garnering millions of hits accelerating Red’s social evolution – and nerdy left-wing computer geeks the new sex-symbols. (might even be a bit-part for Peter Burns as the reformed villain..)
Rex Widerstrom 42

29 December 2008 at 6:24 pm

(I swim in rugby shorts, actually… though only in my pool since a shark took yet another swimmer in shallow water near where I live, and the mad Aussies won’t dream of getting rid of it. I’m all for conservation till I’m dinner, then Darwinism kicks in in a big way).

I’m not sure we can lay the blame entirely, or even mostly, at the feet of the media – much as I’m always happy to lambast them for the crap they peddle, and not just in the ad breaks.

Aside from promoting rampant consumerism, which no doubt contributes to raising desire which can be met only by theft or perhaps even robbery, TV is still pumping out the same morality tales that have emerged from pulpit and principal for centuries.

Take “Californication” as but one instance, since it upset the moral orthodoxy so much. Yes, it showed a man indulging in emotionless sex and large volumes of drugs and booze. But he was unhappy. He yearned for a life with his wife and daughter and, at the very end of the first series, he got it. Redemption arrived in the form of the nuclear family.

Every show popular with young people – from “Buffy” to the new “90210” – is packed with interweaved morality tales: it’s bad to cheat; boys who treat girls with contempt might seem superficially attractive but they’re ultimately bad news; mums and dads might be hopeless nerds but they love you and usually know best… and so on.

Yes, you may watch a diet of these shows (interspersed with ads) and feel the urge to go out and get a flash car or an iphone, by illegal means if necessary. But the urge to bash for no reason at all? To rape? To murder? To allow yourself to be impregnated by a male who clearly will not give a damn for you or the child? To harm a child, sometimes to the point of senseless torture and death?

The status that comes from a trail of unwanted offspring, or the amount of harm – for the sake of harm – you’ve done to others isn’t, I don’t believe, generated by television or even violent video games.

It’s somewhere in that “chemical soup” Anita mentioned, and we’re far from understanding it.

Just last night I watched a documentary (not everything on the idiot box is for idiots, thankfully 😀 ) which showed experiments proving, amongst other things:

– That if a subject is asked to hold a warm cup of coffee prior to being asked to assess someone else’s personality, they will mark that person much higher than if they are asked to hold a cold drink with ice. Experimenters postulated it was something to do with the infantile warmth = comfort reaction.

– That a subject shown a series of random images (selected by computer), some of inanimate objects and some of people doing things designed to elicit an emotional response will begin to react emotionally 3 seconds before the “people” image appears even though they seemingly have no way of knowing which type of image they’re about to see. Experimenters couldn’t attribute it to anything but precognition.

We’ve barely touched on the mind’s complexity nor understood its uniqueness, yet we’re arrogant enough to think that threatening everyone with longer and longer sentences is going to act as a deterrent.

Sometimes I cannot help but conclude we’re only one step removed from chopping off the hands of thieves…
RedLogix 43

29 December 2008 at 6:53 pm

Fantastic comments everyone, esp ak… I envy the clarity and vividness of your writing.

Sometimes I cannot help but conclude we’re only one step removed from chopping off the hands of thieves

Actually a bit of a misapprehension. The Koran only specified the removal of the left little finger for the third offence. In the context of the barbaric, tribal society that prevailed in 7th century Arabia, where normally a suspected thief would be killed on the spot, this punishment was considered by many at the time absurdly ‘bleeding heart do-gooder’ liberal. (An irony you might appreciate Rex.)

It was a much later fundamentalist perversion of the Koranic Law that led to the practise of removing an entire hand. Sort of like how it’s hard to find much justification in the New Testament for burning witches at the stake.
Chris G 44

30 December 2008 at 12:13 am

Rex “not everything on the idiot box is for idiots, thankfully”

Agreed. Exception:channels 70-75 on Sky (Discovery, History, Animal Planet and Doco channel etc) are the only things worth watching

And of course Aljazeera english. But I just look at that via the web!

I digress (Sorry mods)

Back on: “I can’t but think that if we locked up all males when they hit puberty until they have grown a brain”

Seems very sensible…. It would be interesting to look at the same crime graphs for countries like Malaysia and (Singapore?) where males enter compulsory military training after high school. When they re-enter society… How does the crime graph look?

Food for thought. But I wont be the role of researcher for that, its too late.
Bill 45

30 December 2008 at 9:40 am

Redlogix

The idea you posited that we are undergoing some type of moral evolution, while appealing, just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The focus of our morality shifts over time and societies, but our basic (in)humanity persists.

I don’t know how accurate your example of a tribe dis-emboweling a thief from a rival tribe is, but the members of gangs approve of terrible acts of revenge on others. ( Think of the ice man executions as an example?)

Is a wider moral horizon a step forward, or a merely an indication that all horizons are wider? If I now identify with a nation and a large religion rather than a tribe and a shaman, doesn’t it merely open the door to worse excesses (pogroms directed at and cleansings of, vastly more ‘others’ than would have been possible in a tribal set-up?)

And although many people protested Gulf Slaughter 2, how many less protested Gulf Slaughter 1…or the sanctions…the destruction of Afghanistan…world wide hunger…Gaza…and on and on.

We are, at the end of the day, still cave men and women who merely collectively posses more technology and fewer world views; much homogenised…both borne of cunning and fear. The technology and world views mutate rather than evolve, while the fear and cunning remain constant, only their focus shifting.

While it is true that we could devise cunning systems that rewarded the better aspects of human nature/behaviour, the reality at present is in the opposite direction. Hardly a sign of us evolving towards better selves.
deemac 46

30 December 2008 at 11:24 am

I knew a guy who’d been in a tough prison in Northern Ireland (or northern Ireland, depending on which foot you dig with… ) for a couple of years and he said if you don’t get the message after six months you never will; though of course there are some people in the latter category.
It’s worth noting that “an eye for an eye” in the bible is actually a demand to RESTRICT punishment to a proportionate response, ie if you lose an eye you can only demand an eye, as previously any dispute involving injury could soon escalate into a blood feud involving whole families and lasting for generations.
Rex Widerstrom 47

30 December 2008 at 7:02 pm

Bill:

While it is true that we could devise cunning systems that rewarded the better aspects of human nature/behaviour, the reality at present is in the opposite direction. Hardly a sign of us evolving towards better selves.

Bingo. Whether it’s the Taliban choosing to pervert Koranic law as RedLogix mentions above or our politicians choosing to play the “get tough on law and order” card to garner votes, this is an area of failure for which our leaders must carry more blame than most – because the populace understandably finds it difficult to set aside their fear and think logically – especially with crime the lead story on almost every bulletin.

While there were widespread protests in the US against the Iraq war, for instance, how many people turn out to protest every time a death row inmate is executed? A handful, comparatively.

Because it’s easy to decide that shooting or bombing civilians thousands of miles away is wrong – even if a miniscule percentage may one day possibly join a Qaeda and pose a risk on US soil – but it’s much harder to dismiss state sanctioned murder of one’s own citizens (or, in NZ’s case, sentences so long there’s no hope of rehabilitation) because we lack an understanding of the underlying issues and the efficacy of alternatives. Heck, some of us haven’t taken the trouble to consider that there are alternatives… we just go to bed at night trusting that the state will keep us safe till we wake.

It therefore falls to our leaders to have the courage to study the facts, listen to opinions, even experiment a little with the solutions. To be brave enough to admit that the hang ’em high brigade do have a right to a voice in the debate – but no greater voice than anyone else. To craft policies that don’t have the superficial attractiveness of longer sentences but which might, if the leaders held to their course, produce results over times that would help convince the populace of their effectiveness.

Yet no government has done this, ever, in New Zealand and only rarely in any Western deomcracy – and then in an overly cautious way that has damned it to either failure or mediocre results.

I’m normally amongst those objecting loudest when a politician or party says one thing and then does another. But on this issue we desperately need someone who’ll take a “Roger Douglas” approach to justice – do it, ignore the critics, almost certainly make errors along the way, but change things so fundamentally that there’s no going all the way back, because there’s simply no other way to achieve change. People will see it – and any Opposition will strive to portray it – as putting people’s safety at risk. The fact that better assessment of prisoners would inevitably see some – the true sociopaths – serving longer sentences (while receiving better treatment) would be lost in a babble of slogans.

Instead we see government after government make the wrong noises, take the wrong decisions, and eventually lose to another government whose policy is to do the same wrong, only more of it.
RedLogix 48

30 December 2008 at 9:10 pm

Bill,

I can see what you are getting at, but I don’t think it invalidates the basic thesis. The moral horizon has made it generally wrong and illegal for individuals to kill for a very long time, but murders still occur.

Just because a prohibition is not 100% effective, does not mean that we would be better off not having it.

Rex,

Lets see if this puts the problem in a lumpen sort of nutshell.

1. Humans have an innate instinct to distrust and dehumanise outsiders. Unscrupulous political leaders with little else to offer, like exploiting this instinct to distract from internal issues and unite an otherwise sceptical, fractious community behind them. This has always been a cheap source of political power.

2. Modern civilisation, if I stick with the notion of an expanding moral horizon, now generally encompasses in effect, the whole of humanity. The Declaration of Universal Human Rights (among many other things) for example, means that it is no longer acceptable to demonise others simply because they are of other race, nationality, religion and so on.

3. This means that the modern world offers a general lack of acceptable ‘outsiders’ to for our leaders to exploit, whereas criminals offer a soft target, because their actions do arouse strong emotions of despair and disgust. In the absence of an alternative, dehumanising them becomes a prime option for a politically weak leadership.

4. With the happy connivance of a profit driven media, the ‘law’n’order’ issue becomes an auction of the stupid, resulting in stupider sentences, almost certain recividism and an inevitable escalation of the very problem they were claiming to solve.

5. But of course an expanding criminal class (or even the perception of one) is in reality serving the underlying political drivers. A politician or party, who actually succeeded in reducing crime would be acting against the interest of the political establishment. Nations most stressed, difficult to govern or simply cursed with lazy incompetent politicos, would logically be most prone to punitively expanding their prison populations as a way of diverting attention from underlying, dangerous and challenging questions that the establishment is unwilling to face. (Like why do Maori represent 50% plus of NZ’s prison muster?)

This analysis begs the question then, where is the circuit breaker in this mess? It identifies that the root locus of the issue lies with the relationship between the political classes and the electorate, and it tells us that reforming prisons and prisoners ultimately is futile, if it ultimately suits our political masters that they don’t.

Is it simply a case of bringing enough people to awareness (by whatever means) so that they can see the process at work? Where is the point of leverage here?

But on this issue we desperately need someone who’ll take a “Roger Douglas’ approach to justice – do it, ignore the critics, almost certainly make errors along the way, but change things so fundamentally that there’s no going all the way back, because there’s simply no other way to achieve change.

I have to like the boldness of it, but by itself there is no political payoff for whoever undertook such a thing, just a vociferous triumverate of an Opposition, Media and a Public baying for blood. Something else is required. The only forces more potent that ‘fear of the stranger’ are forgiveness, compassion and love for the fallen ones. As you have described in a post above:

But her attitude to prisoners totally disarmed me. She’d taken the time to think through the issues and her responses didn’t seem to be at all motivated by fear, revenge or prejudice. She had the capacity to see prisoners – and victims – as individuals with individual needs and whose paths to being “fixed’ differed greatly.

How is this almost magical transformation wrought? You have seen it with your own eyes, so you know it is possible and I am not just going off on one of my pollyana-ish tangents again. And if it one person can do it, what is the means by which we all can? How do we get from the sanctified individual, to the sanctified society? I don’t believe this is the hopeless task it seems, because over and again our history has examples of seemingly instrangient generations of impossible prejudice melt away at the right moment, with the right touch.
ak 49

31 December 2008 at 12:35 am

A fine nutshell Red: and your optimism is justified. As you note, the list of targettable “outsiders” has shrunk rapidly since we and Pollyanna were born.

Gays, blacks, women, crips, loonies, Jews, Catholics – even reds under beds, with the fall of the wall – now off the menu for all but the tiny group of sociopathic flies that lazily drone around the reeking Rightblog recta.

I’d thought Race was our final frontier: but even there, the electoral mood demanded Key’s balancing-Act act with Pitariana. Even the language has flip-flopped dramatically since Orewa One: “inclusion” is the new blue/black for our golden kid and his bullet-point council.

When the strike wing of the exploiter axis is reduced to scraping the barrel-bottom for mythical armies of health bureaucrats (or lightbulbs!) to scapegoat, it points to the end of an era.

You’re wrong, Rex and Bill. Seen too many minor miracles. Humanity’s venom and misery has no innate or a priori mass: rather an inverse correlation to education and communication. Long way to go of course, but there’s silver dew-drops all over this beautiful Web.
Rex Widerstrom 50

31 December 2008 at 1:19 am

RedLogix:

It’s almost 7pm, it’s 38 degrees outside, a glittering blue pool beckons and yet your comment offers a stronger attraction. Damn you!! 😛

I’m essentially in agreement, though I think it might be possible, by some lucky accident, to find a politician willing to do what’s right despite the lack of short-to-medium term political payoff – as, in fact, was Douglas. Trouble is, almost every wide-eyed candidate these days sees themselves as a future PM and won’t dare say anything that has been rinsed through several focus groups and then blanched to remove any vestigal traces of controversy.

I didn’t have long enough with the woman I’ve mentioned above to delve into the how… I had too many mundane questions about the thinking of the Prisoner Review Board as a whole. I’m hoping we can meet again.

An interesting instance that did arise during the same conference was that of Belgium and the Dutroux case. Dutroux, you’ll remember, was the sadist with a habit of kidnapping young girls and keeping them locked in his basement. When he was arrested and briefly imprisoned on an unrelated matter there was no one to feed his current captives and two young girls died.

What was remarkable was that the parents of the victims led marches (called the “White March” and involving 350,000 people) and made statements not calling for Dutroux’s castration (nor for him to be shown unusual mercy) but for a wider investigation of corruption and an overhaul of the police and justice systems.

There was also an entirely different system at work – in common with much of Europe Belgium has an investigative legal system. Judges are required to conduct an investigation into the case; and in Belgium there are three police forces – judicial, state and communal (local) – which operate independently, and even in conflict and competition with one another.

Because of numerous questions surrounding the case (including whether policement had particpated in some of Dutroux’s kidnappings and whether he was protected as a police informant) there was a full enquiry into the case including 280 hours of televised hearings. Its first 300-page report was unanimously adopted by the Belgian parliament in 1997 and focussed on three key areas: streamlining the three overlapping police forces; training and new procedures on how to respond to missing persons reports; and fundamental reforms of the justice system.

So, in short, the parents of the victims (and some of Dutroux’s earlier victims, who’d survived) concentrated their anger and the energy it produced on improving the system.

True this didn’t encompass issues of rehabilitation and recidivism but nor was there a McVicar-like “let’s re-introduce capital punishment” response.

I’m not, at this stage, sure how they overcame their understandable thirst for vengeance but I’m in touch with a Belgian researcher (via the Prison Reform Group of which I’m a member) and hope to gain some insight. I’m sure all of the factors outlined above were in play, but even in combination they don’t explain it adequately.

Do Belgians have innately better natures than NZers? Does our adversarial court system encourage us to see things in black and white, with the guilty person irredeemably bad and no one else responsible for their actions? Are the Belgian media different to NZ’s?

Although I suspect we could answer yes to all of these questions I don’t think that explains the difference. While we can work to change these attitudes as you suggest, that process makes glaciation look rapid.

In the meantime, I still maintain our best hope lies with a politician who has (ironically, given the double entrende) conviction and courage.

ak: I admire your optimism, truly. But you’re deluding yourself if you think the narrow minded revenge-driven bloodlust is confined to a single blog (or two, or three). Read the comments section of “The Herald” lately? I regularly try to engage with the populace over here in WA on justice issues via a local newspaper’s blog. Their most recent consensus was that it was unfortunate that a woman suffering post-natal depression who took her child in her arms and jumped from an 8th floor balcony had not died along with her infant. A few voices suggested she didn’t deserve to die, but perhaps to spend life in a cell. They were denounced as “softon crime”. I sincerely wish you were right; I’ll weep with joy when and if you become so; but experience suggests we’re far, far from the tolerance you imagine you can see.
r0b 51

31 December 2008 at 4:40 pm

If anyone is still following this thread, I have a question. Assume that this evolutionary account of crime is completely true. Now what?

I’m a big fan of evolutionary explanations in general, they can be very compelling and powerful. But they also frustrate me, because it’s hard to build on them, to use them to guide future action. An evolutionary explanation is pretty much saying well, this is just the way we are, the way we’re made. (In such a case we happen to know quite a lot about the details – evolution – but it might just as well be an ineffable God, or some other cause).

So specifically then in this case – assume that this evolutionary account of crime is completely true. What does this understanding change? How does it guide future policy or action?
ak 52

1 January 2009 at 4:42 am

It’s a real long-term thing r0b. Millions of years – hard to translate into things to do tomorrow. But a handy mental tool to see how far we’ve come in such a short time – and to comprehend facts like a 1.6 billion-people smiling country abounding under practical Christianity while the USA broils in fat: and why Maori and PI grow while colonists fret and sweat.

And crims have always lacked only love: it’s their definition, completely true alright r0b, nothing new there, thanks Charles. Take our feet off em, water, sun, the right dirt and watch em recover, every time.

Future policy? Depends on human evolution, but l suss that eugenics is out, so only one way for the Keyster to go really: and looking back at the past 50 year rate of progress, I’d say the next decade’s gonna be a cracker. Revolutionary even – Darwinistically speaking, of course.

Happy new decade r0b – I reckon you’re gonna love it.
Ag 53

1 January 2009 at 6:30 am

So specifically then in this case – assume that this evolutionary account of crime is completely true. What does this understanding change? How does it guide future policy or action?

It means that we don’t waste time with silly right wing lectures about “responsibility”, and that we tailor our society to minimize the risk by providing young men with jobs and economic security to make it easier for them to marry and have children.

Our societal prohibition against polygamy already helps to lower the rate of young male violence (polygamy actually benefits women over men, but don’t let feminists hear you utter that little truth), but providing public support of expectations of social norms regarding monogamy and fidelity would also help. If this sounds socially conservative, then that’s because it is to some degree. One reason such rules existed was to tamp down male violence, but our society seems to have conveniently forgotten that (on the other hand prostitution ought to be legal).

Of course right wingers will moan on about social engineering, but who gives a damn about what those deluded idiots have to say. A society that ignores evolutionary psychology does so at its own peril.

We also tailor our prison sentences to keep young men who prove violent in jail until they are 35 or so. By that time most of their angry juice tends to have run out.
r0b 54

1 January 2009 at 1:14 pm

Happy new decade r0b – I reckon you’re gonna love it.

I do hope so! And to you ak, and to all here. (I’m off the net now for several days, but I’ll be fascinated to check this thread again when I get back!)
Rex Widerstrom 55

1 January 2009 at 6:08 pm

I’d answer r0b’s questions with: nothing much. Evolution provides one tool too help explain the problem, but isn’t a great deal of help in crafting solutions.

Just to pick up on one point Ag’s made: silly right wing lectures about responsibility aren’t so silly if they’re talking about balancing that against the second part of your praragraph – providing people with jobs and economic security.

A judge in Australia was ridiculed when, confronted with an 11 year old Aboriginal girl brought before him for the umpteenth time for burglary and similar offences, he said “behave yourself for six months and I’ll give you a bike”. But it actually worked. With another, even worse, young offender, he offered the chance of a holiday with him and his wife. Not sure how that one turned out.

Where the right fails when talking of “responsibility” is that they ignore human nature and expect that responsibility to be inculcated solely by a “good talking to”… or a prison term.

Any parent who’s said “behave or I’ll smack you” knows that any effect is likely to be short term, and only engender resentment. “Be good all year and you can have that bike you wanted” tends to work better, as does “stop that or I’ll take the Playstation away for a week”.

Even though the good behaviour is initially only acting against type, often the unruly child discovers that, when they’re not stressed and yelling, mum and dad aren’t too bad after all. And good behaviour becomes a habit. An ownership leads to pride in what you own and a desire to take care of it. And so on.

I’m not suggesting rewarding crims for not mugging us by handing out free Holdens – which is how the right sees many programs aimed at helping the underclass. They tend to see the left as wanting to hand out privileges (paid for by their taxes), without any accompanying responsibilty.

Neither answer, IMHO, is right. Instead I am positing that social contracts, which trade privilege for responsibility, can be part of the answer – and not just to crime.
Chris G 56

2 January 2009 at 12:14 am

Ill second the amazement of this thread. It truly is fascinating. I’ve barely contributed but mainly just read what you jokers have to say – Quality.

That is all.
RedLogix 57

2 January 2009 at 8:38 am

I’m a big fan of evolutionary explanations in general, they can be very compelling and powerful. But they also frustrate me, because it’s hard to build on them, to use them to guide future action. An evolutionary explanation is pretty much saying well, this is just the way we are, the way we’re made.

Yes that is sort of true, but that may be just because this science is so new to us; we are the very first generation of humans to be faced with this evidence based evolutionary social dynamic, and it is like we have yet to figure out the best way to unpack the potential. But maybe this thread has been making little steps in the right direction.

I want to see if I can wrap together Rex’s critical point above, with the idea of ‘future discounting’.

A society where there primary political driver is capitalist self-interest, tends towards increasing inequality of wealth and opportunity. As wealth concentrates into fewer and fewer hands, so does opportunity, leaving the huge majority of people with less opportunity… and critically far less security. (So far this is just standard Marxism I guess.) Not only does the gradient between sucess and failure become too steep for an increasing portion of the population, at some point class divisions become so entrenched, people realise the rich have pulled the ladder up behind them.

When a person perceives the environment around them is insecure, they will discount long-term investments because of the very real risk that they will never get the pay-off. This is called ‘future discounting’. Instead they will resort to short-term tactics that yeild immediate results…even if the longer term consequences are bad. (An increased crime rate is merely one expression of this at the lower boundary of acceptable social tactics.)

Moreover both males and females participate in this process; with males taking increased risks as the disposable gender, and females selecting the risk takers in order to secure protection and resources for their children, In a dangerous socially incohesive environment, not only do nice guys finish last, but so do nice girls, but the tactics they both use to improve their chances are for very good reasons different. (Notably if the environment becomes too hostile, even the girls give up trying to have children, transitioning quite dramatically into bad behaviour and crime simply in order to survive.)

The power of an evolutionary explanation, is that it informs our rational mind what the problem is, and what actions will be effective. It is as if we were faced with a complex unruly machine that we have finally discovered the long-lost program documentation for; finally we can set the damm thing to doing some useful work.

The rational choice is to substitute service to others as the prime social driver, instead of self-interest. This yields a completely different result. Now prosperity becomes a tool for helping others, those who have the opportunities that wealth creates use them to also increase the opportunities for others. This in turn increases their opportunities and over time replicates itself virtuously. It also reduces the perceived inequality gradient in society, and increases security… which reduces ‘future discounting’. This means long-term investments in people and the environment become worthwhile because the pay-off is not only greater… but far more likely to be realised.

The correct response as Rex lucidly outlines above, is BOTH reward and punishment. Our current punishment system is really just an institutionalised form of revenge… and entirely absent any meaningful reward. The supposed reward is their eventual release; right back into the shit pile they came from. There is no choice, opportunity .. nor even security… in what we are doing. The real choice we should be offering criminals needs to be far more clear; continue on your current anti-social path and be separated from society, or change and participate in it.

The problem is that it is totally unjust to offer a criminal MORE opportunity than is generally available to most people, especially those struggling honestly at the lowest margins. And for many criminals… they make the not wholly irrational choice that they would sooner be in prison and maintain their self-respect on their own terms (however much you and I might deplore that)… than be openly humilated as the lowest of the low on our meanest streets.

What all this tells us is that poverty is the cause of crime, but not in a way we usually think of. It depends on what the cause of poverty is. If it is the result of a universal lack of resource and development, then everyone is pretty much in the same boat and the inequality gradient (GINI) is fairly mild. By default everyone has pretty much the same order of opportunity, even if it is fairly limited, and the general level of social security, while compromised by physical things like poor food, shelter and health… is at least evenly distributed. This means that crime has a very poor pay-off, there is not much to be gained even if there is not much to be lost either.

If however poverty is deeply endemic in a society that is actually very prosperous, this is a wholly different thing. Now there IS the appearance of something to be gained from crime, however short-term and illusory it may turn out to be. (And of course the most effective criminals may go on to be very respectable pillars of society indeed..). Moreover such inequality gives the criminal a self-serving rationalisation to justify his actions, because “hell everyone else is a self-serving prick anyhow, why do I have to change?”.

Worse still it frustrates most attempts at rehabilitation because the effective choice between being imprisoned behind physical bars, and imprisoned in poverty.. in terms of security and opportunity… are not so very different.
Carol 58

2 January 2009 at 9:15 am

This is a very interesting discussion. The main problem I have is differentiating a sociological explanation from a Darwinian one. Most of the convincing explanations for crime expressed here, seem to me to be more sociological than Darwinian (eg inequalities, social values/goals that become unachievable to large sections of society etc).

There maybe is an underlying social evolutionary explanation, but is it needed to support the sociological ones? The main evolutionary element that seems to be included in these arguments makes me a little uneasy as it seems to be quite conservatively heteronormative and gender-normative, positing the main (or even only) relevant human drives as being towards hetoerosexual coupling and reproduction. This seems to incorporate an underlying stereotypical gender division in which males are the criminals and/or perpetrators of violence, and women seek a male partner for security and protection for them and their children.

I have always felt there is far more to human motivations and underlying drives than a desire, always focused on the future, to reproduce new generations. I do concede that this heteronormative, gender-normative reproductive drive in an evolutionary theory, only needs to apply to the majority of people for the community to be reproduced. It doesn’t automatically dismiss those who fall outside this norm.

But it still leaves me feeling uneasy and dissatisfied with a social evolutionary explanation.

BTW my understanding of classical physical evolutionary theory is that it is not explained by human motivations or drives, but almost by unintended results of a group fo organisms’ adaptations to their environment. ie the organisms most suited to existence in their environment will survive over other organisms least suited to that environment. So if an organism has drives that are maladaptive or less adaptive than that of another organism, that organism will die out.

But how can such explanations be easily and credibly adapted to explanations of differences in class behaviour? Other people may be a step ahead of me on this. But I find it quite hard to pull all these threads together into one comprehensive theory.
RedLogix 59

2 January 2009 at 10:12 am

But how can such explanations be easily and credibly adapted to explanations of differences in class behaviour?

Would you be willing to consider class behaviour to be the two biological drives of ‘group identification’ and ‘self interest’ manifesting together in a sociological complex?

Humans do have an innate drive to belong to a group and behave altruistically. This makes sense as the isolated individual is not only likely to die, but will fail to reproduce.

On the other hand when resources are limited, then self-interest demands that we compete for them. This makes sense as poverty causes early death and failure to not only to reproduce, but death of the children as well.

For most of our history resources have been limited, so self-interest has tended to dominate, but fundamentally neither can our altruistic social drives be totally displaced either. This means that we have to operate both drives in some kind of compromise with each other.

Naturally (and essentially) there is always some variation in wealth. This creates opportunities for those in different strata to create perceived ‘classes’ within society. This satisfies our ‘socialising nature’ as class group then treats it’s own as ‘insiders’ and other classes as ‘outsiders’. Which of course the economic self-interest of the most powerful wealthy group, acts to amplify and make permanent, the original wealth variations in the first place.

The modern technological world we live in has released potentially unlimited resources (yes the planet is still finite, but we have endless opportunity to use resources in smarter and more effective ways), therefore realistically we have the opportunity to switch from competition to cooperation. Rationally this leads to an unlimited win-win scenario for the entire human race.
Carol 60

2 January 2009 at 10:53 am

Oh, yes, RL. I am very interested in this dynamic between group-allegiance and self-interest. In fact, I am at present reading a book that focuses just on that: ie between human tendencies to act cooperatively verses that of (capitalist) competition. It draws strongly on Marxist theory, and focuses on the dynamic between cooperation and competition within network/informational capitalism (characterised as the current form of capitalism). The book is a difficult read in terms of its language and style. This may be because the author’s first language is not English (I think Austrian). It is:

Fuchs, Christian (2008) Internet and Society: Social theory in the Information Age.

Fuch’s argues that there is an antagonism between cooperation and competition in this latest manifestation of capitalism (eg as seen in online gift economy like open source software and wikis, verses attempts to commodify the Internet and digital culture generally). Fuch argues that within this informational version of capitalism, the fundamental antagonism (between cooperation and competition) has a Marxist type potential for the present form of capitalism to self-destruct, or at least evolve into a non-capitalist form of society. Though he also says that, this won’t happen as some form of inevitable evolution, but through individuals struggling to enable or free up the (cooperative) potential within the system to promote revolutionary change.

Yes, RL, I have long thought that there is some sort of basic human tendencies towards cooperation and competition. I think both have helped to benefit human societies and their technological and social achievements. I have thought that problems arise when these two elements are out of balance. This has happened within neoliberalism with its dangerously extreme focus on individualistic competition.

I am not sure what the biological basis is for these two tendencies of cooperation & competition, but they do seem to be necessary for the survival of human society. This does not require that everyone be focused on reproducing (over-population can threaten survival as much as underpopulation, or inadequate care for the young). Some people who don’t have children, contribute to the overall success of society by working (cooperatively) for its betterment( eg within social services etc, or even sometimes within business).
RedLogix 61

2 January 2009 at 11:24 am

Carol,

Very interesting. I wonder if I could try another approach here. Consider the American experiment with alcohol in the 1920’s; the Prohibition.

We all know that the unrestrained abuse of alcohol is a terrible thing; imposing enormous costs to society. Yet when the state imposed draconian restrictions, the result was entirely peverse and counterproductive and the experiment was eventually abandoned.

And as should be totally obvious to all but the most blinkered ideolog, unrestrained, ‘self-regulating’ capitalism is a total disaster. Yet attempts by the State to impose restrictions on capitalism are often less effective than we hope for, and finish up being resented and rejected by the electorate. (The Soviet state being the most egregious example.)

Yet if as an individual and alcoholic truly determines to go sober, it can and will happen. I personally only drink very modestly (mainly a few glasses of nice reds) from time to time… I can choose not to abuse alcohol… and do so successfully.

Equally there are any number of wonderful individuals who give generously of their time, energy and wealth to help their family, their friends and others less fortunate than themselves. Millions of individuals successfully put into practise the ideals of socialism every day. In other words, what we dream of achieving, is successfully actualised by millions of individuals everyday, but the overall oppression of a hostile society limits and frustrates the effectiveness of their altruism.

(And this is why right wingers so often come at us with from a ‘there is no such thing as society’ perspective. In this one sense they are correct, that individuals routinely achieve what as a society we routinely fail at.)

The missing link is this; how do we get from inspiring the few individuals to inspiring the whole of humanity?
RedLogix 62

2 January 2009 at 11:27 am

Carol,

Very interesting. I wonder if I could try another approach here. Consider the American experiment with alcohol in the 1920’s; the Prohibition.

We all know that the unrestrained abuse of alcohol is a terrible thing; imposing enormous costs to society. Yet when the state imposed draconian restrictions, the result was entirely peverse and counterproductive. The experiment was eventually abandoned.

And as should be totally obvious to all but the most blinkered ideolog, unrestrained, ‘self-regulating’ capitalism is a total disaster. Yet attempts by the State to impose restrictions on capitalism are often less effective than we hope for, and finish up being resented and rejected by the electorate.

Yet if as an individual and alcoholic truly determines to go sober, it can and will happen. I personally only drink very modestly (mainly a few glasses of nice reds) from time to time I can choose not to abuse alcohol and do so successfully.

Equally there are any number of wonderful individuals who give generously of their time, energy and wealth to help their family, their friends and others less fortunate than themselves. Millions of individuals successfully put into practise the ideals of socialism every day. In other words, what we dream of achieving, is successfully actualised by millions of individuals everyday, yet one cannot help but observe that a hostile or indifferent society limits and frustrates the effectiveness of their altruism.

(And this is why right wingers so often come at us with from a â€˜there is no such thing as society’ perspective. In this one sense they are correct, that individuals routinely achieve what as a society we routinely fail at.)

The missing link is this; how do we get from inspiring the few individuals to inspiring the whole of humanity?

PS The prior post in moderation can be deleted please.
RedLogix 63

2 January 2009 at 11:43 am

I have long thought that there is some sort of basic human tendencies towards cooperation and competition. I think both have helped to benefit human societies and their technological and social achievements. I have thought that problems arise when these two elements are out of balance.

Agreed. But what if our thinking that this kind of ‘either/or’ balancing act was too limiting? What if we could have BOTH competition AND cooperation at the same time?

What if for instance, we redefined competition so as we vied with each other to be of the greatest possible cooperation with each other? It is not so silly; just a question of what we believe in.
ak 64

2 January 2009 at 1:52 pm

….classical physical evolutionary theory is that it is not explained by human motivations or drives, but almost by unintended results of a group fo organisms’ adaptations to their environment.

Absolutely Carol: certainly not explained by human motivations (as it explains development prior to humans even existing), but rather a stunningly simple and compelling explanation of the inevitable physical reality.
Random mutations occur at conception (how/why is a whole nother story which doesn’t matter) and those best suited to the world they meet at birth will survive.

Many won’t even make the hatching: miscarriages, stillbirths, dead-eggs – sans or defective in some essential feature, never made the first cut. And runt of the litter, spotted tail at a pedigree stud, twin-headed or even boy-calf on a dairy farm (twin udders might be different) – bad Darwinian luck, baby.
The “invisible hand” of brutal reality weeds out the weak and the fittest survive: and those survivors in turn fight tooth and claw to ensure their own genes survive in further offspring. Beautiful, simple, accessible theory at the individual level – and many are happy to leave it there, embrace the individualistic “chemical soup” nihilism of the pure Libertarian, and live and die as a dog-eating dog.

The vast majority aren’t though. Its a pretty bitter soup – and as top dogs we’ve long since left the individualist jungle – in fact it’s how we got out.
Even dogs (and Libertarians) will form packs: bees and ants have done pretty well out of being hard-wired for self-sacrifice. Ants at the lead of an army on the march will cheerfully pile in and make a bridge of their own dead bodies. We did the same at the Somme. Our greatest heroes have faced down tanks, cut their lifeline to save their pals, risked disease to save the lowly – as one famous bloke said, “No greater love….etc” – and He and his disciple Karl seem to be pretty widely accepted still.

And there’s a hint, when it comes to understanding our social evolution. Look back. The jungle delivered us huge brains – and philosophies and ideas are the “genes” of our social evolution. What works and endures will survive and prosper – so what has endured longest might just be our best bet. Such random mutations as colonisation, centrally-controlled markets, free Markets, Chicago School economics, imperialism, chauvinism – all gulped oxygen for a time, but succumbed to the rapidly-changing reality.

And there’s another clue: and where the theory becomes less useful. Time has shrunk. Thanks to that big-brain-delivered technology, change has accelerated exponentially. Even our big brains struggle to process alarming developments like finite resources, shifts in societal power-balances, global warming or economic turmoil: we cower and fret, grasp wildly at archaic ideas (or even inanities like lightbulbs!), and all the time our socio-evolutionary psyche restlessly scans the horizon for that elusive Third, fourth or fiftieth Way – the mutant and miraculous instant Key to nirvana. (Jesus, look at the time, better land this lumbering hulk….)

Forget about a second coming, we haven’t used the first yet – but even it’s partially-implemented record is top of the longevity pops so far. Puts us lefties on the right side of history. Rex and Redlogix are onto it: use those big brains and thoroughly research what’s worked – then use that technology to disseminate that knowledge to every other big brain on the globe. Just as reality changes apace, so too can social evolution: but only if the pure oxygen of competing ideas can elude the filters of current vested interests.

Hence my inordinate optimism in this wonderful new-fangled tool and folks like youse Standardistas and commenters. Happy New Year and keep up the good work.
Bill 65

2 January 2009 at 4:44 pm

Been dipping into this thread off and on. Some interesting stuff. However, one painfully obvious point that seems to have been overlooked is that the article linked from the post posits an explanation from a vacuum. By that I mean that it discounts the environment (capitalism) within which it’s topic (human behaviour) exists. Further, it decries the descriptive nature of other analysis and then offers up a purely descriptive analysis!

Attempting to explain behaviour through evolutionary theory is, I’m sorry to say, completely bogus and nothing beyond an interesting mental exercise. Sure we have biological parameters and motivations. But that is only a part of the story. And a not very interesting part at that. ( I cannot flap my arms and fly and I cannot think or behave in ways that are not human. Big deal.)

But are we to believe that capitalism is neutral with regards the effect it has on behaviour? Why would we believe such a ridiculous suggestion and why would anyone suggest such a thing in the first place? Could it be because without that premise being accepted the authors would have nothing to say?

We are multi faceted and our intentional environments offer incentives and disincentives to certain types of behaviour. We live in an environment (Capitalism) that rewards some of the worst behaviours and motivations which is enough by itself to act as a disincentive to some of the better expressions of being human. ( Under Capitalism, good guys come last).

Forget evolution in this context and forget about putting the blame for this state we’re in on unimaginative or self interested leaders. Those leaders sought a mandate and for some reason that escapes me, people keep on giving a mandate to leaders in order that they make life altering decisions on behalf of others. Were there any evolution in the sense that some commentators have suggested, (evolution as a progression; a process of betterment) ,we would surely have outgrown that particular stupidity long ago n’est pas?
RedLogix 66

2 January 2009 at 7:42 pm

Attempting to explain behaviour through evolutionary theory is, I’m sorry to say, completely bogus and nothing beyond an interesting mental exercise

I guess that had to be my initial response when I first encountered these ideas some years ago. It turns out that Darwin’s theory is far more generally applicable than even Darwin himself could have suspected. It is in fact one of the two or three most potent ideas humanity has ever had… and that is scarcely exaggerating. Most people are reasonably comfortable with the basics of evolution as we learnt it at school, but the the cutting edge of evolutionary theory has swept a deep transformative path through biology and now through sociology, in a way that until recently I was quite unaware of.

Radio NZ had an excellent series of talks about a month ago.

There is a lot of great material in them, but the fifth lecture by Professor Russell Gray is especially apposite.
Bill 67

2 January 2009 at 8:36 pm

Ok. Will give a listen. Sceptically. And if they allow space for the intentional environment….a dynamic of our behavioural patterns in context, then I’ll allow that it’s not bunk. But so far it’s a theory in a Petri dish. Cheers for the links.
RedLogix 68

2 January 2009 at 9:20 pm

Just listened through one of them again, and found it really worthwhile.

Actually I totally agree with you… somewhere way up in this thread I think I was pretty much saying the same thing, that while the human physical being is definitely an evolved creature, complete with a whole range of complex evolved behaviours that very much drive aspects of our behaviour… our most distinctive feature (I’ll hold back from the word unique, it’s too limiting) is our ability to conceive and manipulate purely abstract concepts. Much of Prof Gray’s talk explores the outlines of this faculty, giving examples of how it might express itself in say toolmaking, language and so on.

And of course it is from this ability for abstract thought, springs what you have called the intentional environment.

Curiously enough of course, all the religions have made explicit reference to humanity having a dual nature; essentially the same idea but using of course a non-scientific language to express it.
Rex Widerstrom 69

2 January 2009 at 9:53 pm

I wondered how long it would be till someone proclaimed “capitalism is the root of all evil” 😉

Unmitigated capitalism is a recipe for disaster as is, at least IMHO, unmitigated socialism. It could be argued that enlightened capitalism would offer just the sort of Utopian society where everyone could prosper and crime would thus be much reduced. The kind of altruism mentioned above, such as Bill and Melinda Gates’ support of microloans (amongst other charitable enterprises) is offering an essentially capitalist solution to the problems of poverty and thus, indirectly, crime.

I think Redlogix almost has it with:

What if for instance, we redefined competition so as we vied with each other to be of the greatest possible cooperation with each other?

That, though, ignores the very strong motivation still within our brains to win, be the best, run the fastest, make the most money. Rather than try to go so far in the other direction, why not at least start by encouraging everyone to strive to win, to acknowledge their achievement when they do, but acknowledge also their “sportsmanship” along the way? Just as sport has awards called “best and fairest” implying the two qualities are inextricably linked.

Rather than denounce capitalism, why doesn’t the left counter the “rich list” with the “altruism list”? Acknowledge the (usually) hard work and intelligence that’s gone into making the pile, but also the generosity of spirit in giving some of it away?

And concentrate not on those who chuck some at the opera or the ballet (in return for a corporate box, usually) but those who truly want to change society.

Rather than hiss at the telly every time the BRT comes on, let’s do a NZ version of The Secret Millionaire – a show that simultaneously shows that capitalism works for those who can master it, but that those who have can, and should, remember what it’s like to have not. And that they can instigate huge change through relatively small investment if done cleverly.

On a different note…

The stabbing over the “frightened cat” has awakened the commentariat and the response is universally one of condemnation of the Parole Board (because the stabber was close to release), calls for longer sentences, etc etc. I’ve even had to get very crotchety at one person who (no doubt “jokingly”) suggested the cat problem could be solved by “giving 1080 to the vermin… and then the cats”.

I envy other commenters their optimism, but the dissemination of rational argument which you’re advocating as a means of societal change works only when it comes up against another rational, though perhaps mistaken, argument.

The nuances of correctional policy, let alone the underlying causes of crime, cannot be debated with someone who, as RedLogix perfectly described on the “prison tucker” thread, has dehumanised the people about whom they’re being asked to change their opinions.

And those people, I’m afraid, are the majority. Vast numbers of them are Labour voters (it’s these people who peeled off to support NZF in the mid-90s, though the “other” then were immigrants). Some probably even vote Green. I’ll guarantee that outlook finds favour with a proportion of members of the Maori Party, despite their whanaus’ appalling over-representation in our prisons. And of course it’s a favourite theme of the right – even those who are utterly liberal on every other social issue.

So sorry to beat the same drum, but I don’t believe this is an area where change will come from popular opinion. It’s one that requires brave, even reckless (from the POV of the proponent’s career) political leadership.
Rex Widerstrom 70

2 January 2009 at 10:04 pm

I should note for the record that I appear to have misinterpreted the comment about “vermin” I referred to above and that the commenter says he was referring to actual vermin (rats and mice), which I accept.
RedLogix 71

2 January 2009 at 10:50 pm

Rex

I’m very concious that I (along with most others here) have had a pleasant few days THEORISING over crime, criminals and how it all comes about, and what might hypothetically be done to improve matters.

But Rex, at each turn you bring us back to the truth; a gritty reality that you are actually DOING something about. For that I stand in sincere respect.

The stabbing over the “frightened cat’ has awakened the commentariat and the response is universally one of condemnation of the Parole Board

Curiously enough today we nearly lost our faithful old dog. She was chasing sticks in the river and swallowed a bit too much water. For a few moments she was choking and floundering very badly in about a foot of water… if I had not got to her PDQ she would have drowned. Gave us both a bad fright.

People love the animals in their lives, and this man serving his sentence loved this cat… and when this other bloke scares it he reacts emotionally… just like 99% of all other humans do. (The other 1% are psychopaths and I’m not sure about them.) Prisons are evil, evil places…and in them people get worse not better, and mad, vicious stabbings are nothing especially new or unusual in these places. It is probably a wonder they do not occur more often. And few of us who have not so much as spent several seconds inside a prison, should be so cock sure as to exactly how WE would react under the sustained stress of being forced into such a dehumanising place.

Am I excusing this act? Of course not. It was wrong, and the man will pay a consequence for it. And being stabbed in the neck will likely affect the victim’s health all his life. A needless tragedy for the both of them really.
ak 72

3 January 2009 at 1:32 am

Rex: Unmitigated capitalism is a recipe for disaster as is, at least IMHO, unmitigated socialism.

Granted, under the current understanding of the terms. The point I was (rather clumsily) trying to make is that neither exists as a pure (or “unmitigated”) entity – and never has. Rather, these concepts (and others) have interacted and produced a single evolving socio-political reality since the coining of the word “capitalism” as the initial explanation for a particular stage of political evolution around the 18th century.

Today’s “capitalist” countries, with progressive taxation, public companies, employment law etc., have little in common with the system that dragged feudalism into the satanic mills. And “pure socialism” has never been even approached in practice: it can be more usefully viewed as a similarly-evolving ameliorating reaction to the downsides of capitalism. Karl was right – it’s just that good things take time, and rarely turn out exactly as you planned.

..but I don’t believe this is an area where change will come from popular opinion. It’s one that requires brave, even reckless (from the POV of the proponent’s career) political leadership.

Oooooo…..dunno, Rex. Fiats don’t have the best track record (the 125 I had was a real lemon… 😉
True, the public will accept the odd “punt”: Roger Douglas was given rope to produce our “Switzerland of the South Pacific”, but as he well knows, it punishes failure heavily – and as you note above, in the area of punishment it has a particularly short fuse. It just threw out a perfectly good government because it tried to curb child-beaters, remember? Nope, any govt going “soft” on crims without a mandate will be caned black and blue at the first opportunity.

Sorry, but public opinion is all, especially in these focus-group/permanent-poll days. And sorry too to keep beating this drum, but public opinion is at the mercy of the media. Clubs, dances, lodges, union meetings, the flix, neighbours, churches – all fading relics of the glory days of social interaction and opinion formation – the box and the dailies hold a growing monopoly on our hearts and minds.

Rex Widerstrom’s thoroughly informed and eloquent positions on Correction hold a power born from experience that resonates with truth (and even blows kiwiblog flies out the door I see): he’ll be read once or twice by a motley handful of tragic die-hards, while the asinine bile of Laws, George and McVicar is pumped almost daily into the living rooms of millions. Don’t blame the millions, Rex. It’s literally all they know.

Which brings us back to evolution (and incidentally to a prediction from Marx): technology has lured us into this blind alley, and it can take us out again. Bring on that fibre to the gate, Johnny boy, and limber up your fingers, Rexes of the world.
Bill 73

3 January 2009 at 9:26 am

Competition can be fun and affirming. But in the capitalist scenario where the winner takes all and everyone else loses…well, far too much weight to undesirable traits is necessary if you don’t want to wind up last. And ‘last’ includes second.

Facile examples. The Crystal Maze was a game show where teams had to cooperate to get anywhere. It stands in sharp contrast to the ‘Survivor’ type shows where cooperation is ultimately subverted by the individuals need to turn everyone else into losers.

Can we can have what we want and desire without the rapaciousness of Capitalism? Yes. But only if we reward better aspects of our behaviours and create systemic disincentives for behaviours currently associated with success under Capitalism.

Our internal and external environments create a reinforcing loop. Under Capitalism, it’s a fairly negative reinforcement. The solution is to break the cycle.

And that means no Capitalism. And it does not mean a socialist state either. And it can not mean solutions being crafted and handed down from leaders because in such a situation we are already back to a scenario of privilege. And privilege encourages ‘means to an end’ mentalities and behaviours…much like Capitalism.
RedLogix 74

3 January 2009 at 1:39 pm

The Crystal Maze was a game show where teams had to cooperate to get anywhere. It stands in sharp contrast to the â€˜Survivor’ type shows where cooperation is ultimately subverted by the individuals need to turn everyone else into losers.

That is not a facile example. It is a powerful instance of exactly how parts of our media machine has completely trashed it’s moral compass.

And it gets pumped straight into the formative brains of our young people. It is this kind of thing that really scares me.
Carol 75

3 January 2009 at 7:17 pm

I said:

I have thought that problems arise when these two elements are out of balance.

RedLogix replied:

Agreed. But what if our thinking that this kind of â€˜either/or’ balancing act was too limiting? What if we could have BOTH competition AND cooperation at the same time?

What if for instance, we redefined competition so as we vied with each other to be of the greatest possible cooperation with each other? It is not so silly; just a question of what we believe in.

I was a little confused by this response because, RL, you just seemed to be repeating the same idea I expressed, but seemed to misunderstand me. Actually, I think we are really in agreement.

When I talked of cooperation and competition being out of balance, I was not thinking of an either/or situation. It’s more that both exist, as fundamental elements of human society, but that competition has dominated over cooperation. So to get back into balance would have them both co-existing on an equal basis.

Fuchs convincingly argues that the information society, the Internet etc, are fundamentally constructed as cooperative enterprises, with lots of individual autonomy for participants who are distributed across a decentralised network. But big corporates have increasingly colonised these cooperative enterprises, and have moved in the opposite direction towards more centralised control, based on competitive market ethos aimed at making big profits. Think for example of social network sites that big corporates have been taking over: corporates that amalgamate others, and get bigger and more centrally controlled. Meanwhile the users continue to operate cooperatively, with a certain amount of independence. But it is the competitive ethos that dominates and has most control and power, and makes money from it all. (That’s the antagonism built into the current system between cooperation & competition)

These big corporates also often encourage cooperative practices amongst their workers, who are given a fair amount of opportunity for decision-making, flexibility etc. But, ultimately it’s a way of getting the workers to (apparently willingly) participate in furthering the competitive profit-making goals of the elite in control of the enterprise.

Along with this comes a certain amount of worker insecurity, especially in moments of crisis as we have now. And many are excluded from the major rewards of the system, and are likely to become criminals and commit acts of violence, as others have discussed above. I was reminded of this when I read news reports (eg on Stuff) of the increase in domestic violence reported by women’s refuges over the Xmas-New Year period. This seems to be a response to the increase in worker and/or unemployed insecurity during the global financial crisis.

So basically, we have a system where a wealthy & powerful elite has co-opted cooperative methods and enterprises, in the service of a highly competitive system.

The alternative is to use the cooperative potential of contemporary technologies to work towards a situation where cooperation and competition are more equally employed and in balance with each other. But I’m not sure exactly what that would look like. However, the aim would be for a more inclusive system than the divisive competition-dominated hierachy we have now. And therefore, hopefully, less crime and violence.
Rex Widerstrom 76

5 January 2009 at 4:06 pm

ak:

Actually I was having a wee nudge at Bill for his “nice guys finish last under capitalism” comment 😉 Quite a few nice guys have finished last under socialism too.

You’re of course completely right that any government that was perceived as going “soft on crims” would be committing electoral harakiri in the present environment. But it’s all about how you sell it politically.

I’d simply sell it as an attempt at a solution to having the occasional sociopath slip under the gaze of an overworked psychologist, to be released into the community ready to engage in a fresh round of slaughter – i.e. longer sentences for truly dangerous crims.

Of course to achieve that we need more prison beds. So do we waste the taxpayer’s dollars on building new prisons just to accommodate non-violent offenders? To hell with them… they don’t deserve a nice new prison. Let them repay the rest of society by working to repair the damage they’ve caused and/or to make general reparation…

Of course someone from the “hang ’em high” brigade would cotton on, and McVicar would be let out of his cage to snarl and wail, but if one seizes the initiative one sets the terms of the debate. I’d love to see how he constructed an argument against longer sentences for the truly dangerous…

Bill:

Hadn’t heard of “The Crystal Maze” but it’s helped to… crystalise, if you’ll pardon the inadvertent pun… my thinking on the media’s potential to change attitudes through shows which don’t attempt to pilgerise on some weighty topic but in fact tap in to formats people already have an appetite for, like game shows.

I shall do some more thinking on the topic this year, and endeavour to do something about it. I’d been considering something on documentary lines, about the lives of prisoners etc… but this line of thinking is potentially much more effective. Thanks for that.

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It’s not (just) about the economy, stupid.

In 1992 James Carville, Bill Clinton’s lead strategist, hung a sign on the wall of the Democratic candidate’s campaign office in Little Rock, Arkansas. It had three lines on it to focus the team on the key vote-swinging issues and one of those lines would become so famous it’s turned ...

PunditBy Tim Watkin

11 hours ago
Let’s Make Things Better

If you're down and out and you feel really hurtCome on over to the place where I workAnd all your loneliness, I'll try to sootheI'll play the blues for youLyrics: Albert King.Often, in these newsletters, I tell you about what is wrong. You know the sort of thing - oh ...

Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel

12 hours ago
Floating a few ideas

Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on anything you may have missed.Share Read more ...

More Than A FeildingBy David Slack

17 hours ago
Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

A new book challenges how we need to think about technological innovation.Last week’s column mentioned the three 2024 Nobel laureates in economics. The column focused only on the 2012 book Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson with little reference to Simon Johnson, although the three have worked ...

PunditBy Brian Easton

19 hours ago
Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles thanks to the Sabin Center for Cl...

Earlier this year our volunteer editor Marc Kodack spotted an impressive answer to climate change solutions denial, "Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles," which he included in our weekly climate research survey. Written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel ...

Skeptical Science

1 day ago
An expert walks into a bar

Quiz1. On what study was Mike King basing his assertion that Alcohol is not a problem for people with mental issues. It’s actually the solution ?a. Klein, Sawyer, Chomsky et al; Harvard, 2002b. Black Brown and Bleu; Yale, 1999c. Bloomfield, Verall, Ardern et al, Otago 2022d. Homer, Lenny, Carl and ...

More Than A FeildingBy David Slack

1 day ago
The High Court says “Land Back”

Way back in 1839, the New Zealand Company bought the area that is now Nelson from local iwi and hapu. As part of the deal, they promised that Māori would retain their homes, fields, and burial grounds, and that in addition, 10% of the land in the planned township and ...

No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant

1 day ago
US military-industrial-sports complex.

A US friend of mine wrote on social media about attending a Homecoming football game at her niece’s Red State university. Although the referees stunk and her team lost, my friend said that she enjoyed her visit, especially the halftime … Continue reading → ...

KiwipoliticoBy Pablo

1 day ago
The Hoon around the week to November 1

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts & talking about the week’s news with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on the latest climate news, including research showing the lethality of gas hobs and research on the health effects of climate ...

The KakaBy Bernard Hickey

2 days ago
‘Get ready for more landlord buying’

The RBNZ sees the potential for a spike in demand from landlords. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāKia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Friday, November 1: The RBNZ has warned the Government’s tax changes ...

The KakaBy Bernard Hickey

2 days ago
Alcohol and Mental Health

Are you so lonely?You don't even know meBut you'd like to stone meMr Writer, why don't you tell it like it is?Why don't you tell it like it really isWhy don't you tell it how it really isBefore you go on home?Writers: Stuart Cable, Richard Mark Jones, Kelly Jones, Marshall ...

Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel

2 days ago
Weekly Roundup 1-November-2024

Wow, we’re in November already and it’s a Friday so welcome to another round-up of interesting stories about what’s happening in Auckland and other cities. Feel free to add your links in the comments! This post, like all our work, is brought to you by a largely volunteer crew and ...

Greater AucklandBy Greater Auckland

2 days ago
A Mysterious Sound

Hi,Thanks for all your feedback to Hayden Donnell’s fantasy of communal living. “Camping in summer is really the only time I get to experience village life and I love it so much,” said Michelle. “You’ve infuriated me by writing the article that’s been in my head only much better than ...

David FarrierBy David Farrier

2 days ago
Toxic positivity and toxicity in the kitchen

Long stories short, here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer:A study looking at psychological distress associated with climate change has stimulated discussion about the insistent demands for ‘hope’ ...

The KakaBy Bernard Hickey

2 days ago
Geoffrey Miller: New Zealand’s breakthrough free trade deal with the Gulf

New Zealand’s new free trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council is a major win for both sides. Todd McClay, New Zealand’s trade minister, announced the long-awaited deal on Thursday with his counterparts in Doha, Qatar. It is a remarkable, yet also surprising sudden success: the genesis of the agreement ...

Democracy ProjectBy Geoffrey Miller

2 days ago
Todd McClay wins breakthrough for women in Saudi Arabia

In a major international breakthrough, New Zealand has negotiated a free trade agreement with Saudi Arabia and other Arabian Peninsula countries, which includes a provision requiring them to uphold the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. Trade Minister Todd McClay signed the agreement in Doha overnight. The ...

PolitikBy Richard Harman

2 days ago
Gordon Campbell on America’s fear of foreigners

Mike King’s latest comments about the relationship between alcohol and mental health – according to King, alcohol does more good than harm – raises red flags once again about this organisation, and the quality of the “counselling” it provides. Here’s what the scientific research says. The latest example of King’s ...

WerewolfBy ScoopEditor

2 days ago
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #44 2024

Open access notables Communicating the most accurate and reliable science on climate change to society: A survey of editors from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Molina & Abadal Abadal, Geoscience Communication: This study focuses on the perspectives of scientists involved in the IPCC AR5 and AR6 synthesis reports, examining ...

Skeptical Science

2 days ago
Gumboot Friday’s Founder Says Drugs and Alcohol Is A “Solution”

This afternoon, I turned to the fellow sitting near me and called out:“Guess what? A guy who runs a charity for mental health just said alcohol is a solution!”And his eyes popped out…his mouth opened ajar.That gave me some satisfaction - only because this person has zero care when it ...

Mountain TuiBy Mountain Tui

2 days ago
What can you do about bad journalism?

Day after day of David Seymour being accorded media time and attention like he’s doing this stuff in good faith and advancing these ideas in earnest. Come on. He’s a cosplaying libertarian who is really just a glove puppet for anti-democratic capitalist pigs. Read more ...

More Than A FeildingBy David Slack

2 days ago
A collapse in police legitimacy

Last week, the government had a big wank about police raids in Ōpōtiki, crowing about "gangs" and "drugs" and "law and order". Unfortunately the police did exactly the same shit they did in the Urewera terror raids 17 years ago, dragging people off in front of their kids and terrorising ...

No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant

2 days ago
2024 Reading Summary: October (+ Writing Update)

No, I haven’t vanished from the Internet. Or died. Completed reads for October: The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole The Sidereal Messenger of Galileo Galilei, by Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell A very quiet reading month, and a very quiet writing month ...

A Phuulish FellowBy strda221

2 days ago
Suicide Rates Continue To Climb (Because We Are Not Treating Suicidal Patients)

Our suicide rates are skyrocketing again, and I’m going to spare you the faux-shock I could put on here, given that it would be frankly more surprising to me if our death toll had gone in the other direction. Preliminary data from 2023-24 shows that our annual suicide deaths have ...

Sapphi’s SubstackBy Sapphi

2 days ago
Are We The Baddies?

Difficult Questions: Does denying human equality and rejecting the principles of colour-blind citizenship place you among the baddies? Yes, I’m afraid it does.THE DEMON OF UNREST documents the descent of the United States into civil war. The primary focus of its author, Erik Larson, is the period of roughly five months ...

Bowalley Road

2 days ago
Thursday 31 October 2024

Health and safety campaigner Sonya Rockhouse has come out in support of the joint open letter from the NZCTU, Business NZ and others. A new Xero Small Business Insights report shows that small businesses are cutting staff and keeping wages low, while the Salvation Army’s State of the Pacific Peoples ...

NZCTUBy Jeremiah Boniface

2 days ago
Today’s Political Roundup – From Health to Self-Certification Risks

The focus on budgets is "going to cripple the health system".1. Cardiac specialist quits, saying Dr Lester Levy, the Part Time Health Commissioner, is "living in La La Land" and has no idea what's happening on the groundDr Dean BoddingtonDr Boddington, an electrical cardiologist, was the only person who did ...

Mountain TuiBy Mountain Tui

3 days ago
A deliberate and unnecessary crash landing

Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāKia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Thursday, October 31: US and European GDP growth figures overnight show the world’s largest economies, along with that of our nearest neighbour Australia, ...

The KakaBy Bernard Hickey

3 days ago
Seymour: Swastikas OK

Race hatred cannot stop usThis one thing we knowYour poll tax and Donald TrumpGreed has got to go!You’re bound to loseYou fascists bound to lose.Original Lyrics: Woody GuthrieThere are a lot of things this government doesn’t like. Te Reo - got to go, they said, it’s too confusing for our ...

Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel

3 days ago
Sumbission: Have Your Say on Work Health and Safety

Health and safety is core union mahi. Unions recognise that health and safety is a fundamental aspect of good work, and that every worker has the right to work that is safe and healthy, and to have a voice on the operation of their work. In this submission on MBIE’s ...

NZCTUBy Jeremiah Boniface

3 days ago
The hidden health toll of hurricanes

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Neha Pathak Disasters can disrupt medical care both during and long after the event. (Photo credit: U.S. Air National Guard / Sgt. Jorge Intriago) Weeks after Hurricanes Milton and Helene tore paths of destruction across the Southeast, pictures of communities ...

Skeptical Science

3 days ago
First section of Te Ha Noa Opens

Something definitely worth celebrating is the opening of the first section of Te Hā Noa, the Victoria St Linear Park. As we highlighted eight years ago, this project is vital for helping move the thousands of people that will pour out of the Te Waihorotiu station once the CRL opens. ...

Greater AucklandBy Matt L

3 days ago
Boldness be my friend

When Nicola Willis gave the annual Finance Minister’s speech to the country’s top public servants last week, what she said must have landed like a bomb. “Now is the time for your best and boldest ideas,” she said at the Institute of Public Administration (IPANZ) event. Coming from a minister ...

PolitikBy Richard Harman

3 days ago
Wednesday 30 October 2024

The NZCTU has joined with Business NZ and health and safety groups to call on the Government to drop its plans to reform health and safety law. The Postal Workers Union is opposing a plan to reduce rural postal deliveries from five to three days a week. The Government has ...

NZCTUBy Jeremiah Boniface

3 days ago
Yer doin it all wrong mate

Reader Jeff Howell is the best kind of social media friend to have. When there's outrage and denunciation needed he’s in there dishing it with verve; and when those storms pass you get happy Jeff, sharing his projects. His projects are awesome.Until a week or so ago it was a ...

More Than A FeildingBy David Slack

3 days ago
Out Of Sympathy.

Unsympathetic Characters: Christopher Luxon should be grateful that his principal opponent, Chris Hipkins, is as out of sympathy with the temper of the times as he is.CHRIS HIPKINS had both a good week and a bad week. He and his team were able to press home Labour’s attack on the ...

Bowalley Road

3 days ago
Two States – But No Solutions.

My Enemy’s Enemy Is My Friend: Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, at the opening of the Islamic Central Institute in Berlin, December 19, 1942. The elimination of the Jewish state has been the unwavering ambition of successive generations of Palestinian leaders.AMIDST ALL THE HORROR of the Israel-Hamas War, ...

Bowalley Road

3 days ago
NZ For Sale: Chris Luxon Is Concierge To The Wealthy

Watching a Christopher Luxon press conference is a masterclass in gaslighting. You just know what he’s saying is disingenuous - if not outright deceptive and lies - but out he comes - with confidence and vigour - telling me black is white, and white is red.According to the Prime Minister, ...

Mountain TuiBy Mountain Tui

3 days ago
Will banks & insurers back self-consented homes?

Kia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, October 30: The Government’s move to allow qualified builders, plumbers and drainlayers to self-consent their work faces potential hurdles from reluctant insurers and bankers wanting protection against ...

The KakaBy Bernard Hickey

4 days ago
Ātahu from Moana Maniapoto

We are blessed in Aotearoa with certain people that you might call National Treasures—those with great talents and a strong affinity for this place they are the custodians of. It’s not an official list; the people you think of might differ from those I think of.What are the attributes of ...

Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel

4 days ago
Henderson Station Upgrade but will it Improve Customer Experience

Over the long weekend rail shutdown a new project got underway, an upgrade to Henderson station but the plans highlight that improving the customer experience by making it easier to use public transport is not a part of Auckland Transport’s agenda. ...

Greater AucklandBy Matt L

4 days ago
Climate Adam: Is climate change fuelling mega hurricanes?

This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). From hurricanes like Helene and Milton, to typhoons like Gaemi, vast storms are causing devastation: destroying cities and tearing up lives. ...

Skeptical Science

4 days ago
Get in the sea, old mate

For the State Highway One traveller, some sights remain dramatic no matter how many times you see them: Wellington harbour opening out at the bottom of Ngauranga Gorge; the first glimpse of Ruapehu; three quarters of the South Island. Also: the moment when you reach the top of the Brynderwyns and ...

More Than A FeildingBy David Slack

4 days ago
Taking the piss again

Remember Casey Costello? The government's most ignorant Minister? First she was referred to the Chief Archivist after claiming that key advice on her cancer promotion policy had simply magically appeared on her desk one day, and that she had no idea where it came from. Then, when the Ministry of ...

No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant

4 days ago
Monthly Employment Data shows weakness in economy

Monthly employment data released today by Statistics New Zealand showed our continuing labour market weakness, and particularly challenging conditions for young working people, said NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi Economist Craig Renney. “There are 21,000 fewer filled jobs than this time last year, and the fall has been led by those ...

NZCTUBy Jeremiah Boniface

4 days ago
Copy of Rwanda’s Kagame: from Saviour to Tyrant?

Is Rwanda turning into a country that seeks regional dominance and exterminates its rivals? This is a contention examined by Dr Michela Wrong, and Dr Maria Armoudian Dr Wrong is a journalist who has written best-selling books on Africa. Her latest, Do Not Disturb. The story of a political murder ...

Fabians

5 days ago
We’ve got issues

'Cause I got issues, but you got 'em tooSo give 'em all to me, and I'll give mine to youBask in the glory of all our problems'Cause we got the kind of love it takes to solve 'emYeah, I got issuesAnd one of them is how bad I need yaSongwriters: ...

Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel

5 days ago
‘Happy to watch your grandkids grow up in Australia via WhatsApp?’

Globally, NZ has the second-highest share of its population living overseas permanently, many of them now permanently in Australia. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāKia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Tuesday, October 29: A ...

The KakaBy Bernard Hickey

5 days ago
October-24 AT Board Meeting

Today the Auckland Transport board meet again as a whole for the first time in two months. AT note: Members of the public are welcome to join the meeting via Teams. Please note, due to technical difficulties, the video feed will be unavailable. However, attendees will still be able to view ...

Greater AucklandBy Matt L

5 days ago
The fourth article of the Treaty

While Parliament struggles with David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill, a Christian scholar and some heavyweight mainstream church leaders have developed a different perspective on the Treaty of Waitangi. Theologian Alistair Reese presented a petition to Parliament’s Petitions Committee on Thursday asking Parliament to legislate to recognise the oral agreement “4th ...

PolitikBy Richard Harman

5 days ago
Gordon Campbell on why so many young males like Donald Trump

To foreigners, the fact that so many millions of Americans are buying the used and poisonous goods that Donald Trump is selling is an unfathomable mystery. However, some clues to the allure of Trumpism can be found in the gender gap of unprecedented size that has opened up between those ...

Gordon CampbellBy ScoopEditor

5 days ago
Building a Safer Future for Every Worker

Every New Zealander deserves a workplace that puts safety and wellbeing first. Too often, we’ve seen the real cost of a system that doesn’t fully protect workers. Lives are lost, families grieving, and communities bearing the burden of preventable tragedies. That’s why, alongside Business New Zealand, the New Zealand Institute ...

NZCTUBy Jeremiah Boniface

5 days ago
Not all authoritarians are fascists.

A few days ago I responded to a post about Trump being a fascist on one of my friend’s social media page, then made a few comments on the consultancy social media page by way of follow up. Given the … Continue reading → ...

KiwipoliticoBy Pablo

5 days ago
Keep the Vampires From Your Door

I'll protect you from the hooded clawKeep the vampires from your doorWhen the chips are down I'll be aroundWith my undying, death-defying love for youEnvy will hurt itselfLet yourself be beautifulSparkling love, flowersAnd pearls and pretty girlsLove is like an energyRushin' an' rushin' inside of me, ehSongwriters: Brian Philip Nash ...

Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel

6 days ago
The Odd Couple.

Strange Political Bedfellows: Matthew Hooton’s support for Winston Peters’ New Zealand Futures Fund reflects the Radical Right’s newfound reluctance to bet everything on the efficacy of market forces.AS IF HE WASN’T IN ENOUGH TROUBLE, Matthew Hooton has now come out for Winston Peters’ New Zealand Futures Fund (NZFF). Not only ...

Bowalley Road

6 days ago
Your Friends Should Be Close By

Hi,I’ll never forget the time the guy next to me on the plane got really angry because the Wi-Fi wasn’t working. Here we were, 40,000 feet in the air, and he couldn’t get Facebook. He was huffing, he was puffing. He was insufferable.I’m constantly amazed you can get the internet ...

David FarrierBy David Farrier

6 days ago
2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #43

A listing of 30 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 20, 2024 thru Sat, October 26, 2024. Story of the week As an experiment, we asked Google's Gemini for help categorizing the articles we shared during the week. ...

Skeptical Science

6 days ago
Labour Weekend

Stand up all victims of oppressionFor the tyrants fear your mightDon't cling so hard to your possessionsFor you have nothing if you have no rightsLet racist ignorance be endedFor respect makes the empires fallFreedom is merely privilege extendedUnless enjoyed by one and allSongwriters: Eugene Edme Pottier / Petrus Christianus De ...

Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel

7 days ago
Fact brief – Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Do volcanoes emit ...

Skeptical Science

1 week ago
People of Courage & Decency. And Everyone In Between.

Today, news broke that Jeff Bezos, the American billionaire with a net worth of $206 B (NZ $344B), personally vetoed Washington Post’s Editorial Team from endorsing Kamala Harris.That stops the decades-old tradition of the Wapo for endorsing Presidential candidates. And editors have resigned - that includes Editor at large Robert ...

Mountain TuiBy Mountain Tui

1 week ago
Let’s Talk About… Anything.

Can't we talk about anything else but love?Love that launched a thousand shipsPlease! Let's talk about anything else but loveLove that causes war and famineCan't we speak about real estate?Love of wifeWatergate?Love of children!Seasonal fluctuations in the prime interest rate?Love of chocolate, you must love chocolate, everybody loves chocolate, say ...

Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel

1 week ago
Can you hear me now?

Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on anything you may have missed.Share Read more ...

More Than A FeildingBy David Slack

1 week ago
Why Nations Fail

This year’s Nobel awards in economics raise critical issues about the future of the world.I was not alone with high hopes when the Soviet Union collapsed. It has been good to see various nations leave the yoke of the Soviet Empire and move towards liberal democracies with thriving economies although ...

PunditBy Brian Easton

1 week ago
All very instructive

1. Who played the sax solo on Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street?a. Kenny Gb. Lisa Simpsonc. Bill Clintond. Raphael Ravenscroft2. What did Nicola Willis, addressing a large gathering of senior public servants this week, ask them to do?a. Come up with fresh ideas and innovative audacious out of the box thinking b. ...

More Than A FeildingBy David Slack

1 week ago
More Sabotage

The Waitangi Tribunal has been one of the most effective critics of the National government and its racist, anti-Māori agenda. So naturally, they're sabotaging it with a crony appointment: Former ACT Party leader Richard Prebble has been appointed to the Waitangi Tribunal. Prebble, a Commander of the British Empire, ...

No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant

1 week ago
Ghost of a (Mad) Dog

How can that dog be barkin' in the backyard?We ran over him years agoHow can that dog be runnin' by the backfence?We ran over him years agoGhost of a dogBarkin' in the backyardSongwriters: Edie Brickell, Kenny Withrow.I have to say this one caught me by surprise. I had to check ...

Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel

1 week ago
David Seymour’s School Lunch Provider Has Questionable Record – Including Listeria, Hors...

Yesterday, I looked into Seymour’s school lunch provider and found out it was Compass Group - a group that has had a long list of food quality issues and settled out of court for corruption and bribery of officials.Never mind the food looked like slop - heavy, process laden food ...

Mountain TuiBy Mountain Tui

1 week ago
After years of cover ups and hacks, the truth on gas is out

Long stories short, here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer:Gas is worse for the climate than coal, over any timeframe that is relevant for a ‘bridging strategy’. The ...

The KakaBy Bernard Hickey

1 week ago
Brown orders motorway building to start before business case done

Kia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Friday, October 25: Scoop of the day: Oliver Lewis reported for BusinessDesk-$$$ this morning that Transport Minister Simeon Brown ordered construction to start on the four-lane Hawkes Bay ...

The KakaBy Bernard Hickey

1 week ago
The Hoon around the week to October 25

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts & talking about the week’s news with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on the latest climate news, including another extreme climate event in the United States; on the escalating conflict between Israel, Iran ...

The KakaBy Bernard Hickey

1 week ago
Weekly Roundup 25-October-2024

Happy Friday, even more so as we’re head to a long weekend, so welcome to another round-up of interesting stories about what’s happening in Auckland and other cities. Feel free to add your links in the comments! This post, like all our work, is brought to you by a largely ...

Greater AucklandBy Greater Auckland

1 week ago
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #43 2024

Open access notables The rate of global sea level rise doubled during the past three decades, Hamlington et al., Communications Earth & Environment: The rise in globally averaged sea level—or global mean sea level—is one of the most unambiguous indicators of climate change. Over the past three decades, satellites have ...

Skeptical Science

1 week ago
Does New Zealand need Vegas-style transit security on our busses?

There’s a reason why people are supposed to stay on the Strip when they go to Las Vegas, and it’s not just proximity to the best attractions. This city of fluorescent lights and gambling halls extends in all directions across the Nevada landscape, for as far as the eye can ...

Sapphi’s SubstackBy Sapphi

1 week ago
No Enemies To The Left – Or The Right.

Wrong Turn: Labour and National can only reduce the toxic influence of their electoral competitors by rejecting their extremism.“NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT” has always been Labour’s rule-of-thumb. What, after all, does a moderate, left-of-centre party gain by allowing its electoral rivals to become repositories for every radical (i.e. congenitally dissatisfied) ...

Bowalley Road

1 week ago
All the tools we need

Off I went yesterday, me and my little ear robots, to a workshop.Did I hear every word? Reader, I most surely did. Did I have to ask anyone to repeat themselves? I did not, not one single time.Ironically, the subject of the workshop was one that prompts many to cover ...

More Than A FeildingBy David Slack

1 week ago

Greens call for bottom trawling ban and call out Minister for lacklustre response

The Green Party is urgently calling on the Government to ban bottom trawling, following news a New Zealand bottom trawler caught 37kg of coral in international waters, prompting the suspension of all fishing in the area until 2026. ...

Greens

2 days ago
Mark Patterson: Farmers understand we have their backs

Spring is here which means the start of the A&P show season. Those treasured community days where town meets country. There's no rural-urban divide here, just a chance to meet up with family and old friends and celebrate all things that make rural New Zealand so special. I'm embarking on ...

NZ First Press Release

2 days ago
Release: Funding for Gumboot Friday should pause

The National Government should review its support for Gumboot Friday after unacceptable comments by its leader and champion Mike King. ...

Labour Blog

2 days ago
Louise Upston cherry-picks data to punch down on the poor

The Government has very conveniently cherry-picked data from the latest MSD projections to justify its cruel agenda and punch-down policy when it comes to people living in poverty. ...

Greens

3 days ago
Luxon needs to address the cow in the room

The Green Party was appalled to hear Prime Minister Christopher Luxon claim we are “doing everything we can” on climate change, while his government does nothing to address emissions in our most polluting sector. ...

Greens

4 days ago
Govt Must Clean Up ‘Its Shit’ From Sunken HMNZS Manawanui

Te Pāti Māori is calling out the Government and New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) for their inaction and disgraceful downplaying of the impact caused by the sunken HMNZS Manawanui in Samoa. “We demand the Government move without further delay to clean up its shit from the sunken HMNZS Manawanui in Samoa,” said co-leader Debbie ...

Māori Party

6 days ago
Jamie Arbuckle: Inquiry into Banking Competition

This week was the start of the bank inquiry hearings into banking competition. The inquiry was confirmed in the NZ First/National Coalition agreement. 140 submissions were received on the inquiry, and we will hear from over 60 submitters including all the major banks. ANZ, New Zealand's largest bank, was first ...

NZ First Press Release

6 days ago
Tanya Unkovich: It’s time to start the debate on palliative care as a ‘right’

There is one topic that is the great human leveller, and that is of death and dying. One day, we will all have to face it, and I am of the belief that being able to pass away with grace and dignity is a vital, basic, human right. How we ...

NZ First Press Release

1 week ago
Release: Labour backs Christchurch City Council sanctions on Israel

Labour is backing Christchurch City Council’s decision not to do business with firms involved in Israel’s illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories. ...

Labour Blog

1 week ago
Release: Government driving away offshore wind industry

The Government has created a hostile environment for companies seeking to build offshore wind farms. ...

Labour Blog

1 week ago
Another step towards Pasifika justice

The Green Party acknowledges the historical importance of MP Teanau Tuiono’s Member’s Bill, Restoring Citizenship Removed By Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act 1982 Bill, passing its second reading in Parliament today. ...

Greens

1 week ago
Sanctions Soar, Jobs Vanish – National’s Cruelty Exposed

Te Pāti Māori is enraged at the National government’s ruthless punishment of beneficiaries, all while jobs are disappearing. MSD data shows a 133% increase in sanctions over the past year, with over 14,000 sanctions in just three months. The kicker? The jobs this government insists people should find are nowhere ...

Māori Party

1 week ago
Police Perpetuate Siege on Ōpōtiki

Te Pāti Māori MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi, says today’s police-sponsored terrorism in Ōpōtiki is a continuation of the State’s predatory behaviour towards the iwi of Te Whakatōhea. "Ōpōtiki is once again being intentionally targeted and is the direct byproduct of this Government’s 'tough on crime' legislative changes,” said MP ...

Māori Party

2 weeks ago
Release: Govt cuts school lunches even further

The Government has gone back on its word and cut the full school lunch programme in primary schools after saying it wouldn’t. ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
Time to shut down failed Youth Justice Residences

The Green Party is calling for Youth Justice Residences to close, following a protest in which a group of young people spent the night on the roof of an Oranga Tamariki justice facility. ...

Greens

2 weeks ago
Release: Appalling process on three strikes law

The Government is subverting parliamentary process on laws the evidence already shows don’t work. ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
Release: Labour calls for investigation into tobacco tax cut

The Government’s decision to award a $216 million tax break for Philip Morris’ heated tobacco products reeks of tobacco industry interference and needs to be thoroughly investigated. ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
Release: Delay to retirement village review won’t help residents

The National Government is treading water on a much-needed review of the Retirement Villages Act, kicking any amendments down the road till the next parliamentary term in 2027. ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
Release: Serious concerns ignored in Govt’s fast track bill

National’s fast track bill enables the most radical and unbalanced consenting regime in living memory. ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
Fast-Track, off the rails: Submitters show strong opposition to Bill

Despite resounding public opposition, the fast-track legislation is being pushed through Parliament with provisions that could have real consequences for people and planet. ...

Greens

2 weeks ago
Release: Labour supports continuing fight for dairy access

Labour welcomes the National Government’s decision to further pursue our access to the Canadian dairy market under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
Release: Job losses devastating for Timaru

Confirmed news that the Smithfield meatworks will close is devastating for the hundreds of people who work there, Timaru and the wider region. ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
New Zealand First Member’s Bill to Improve Access to Palliative Care

New Zealand First has introduced a Member’s Bill which aims to improve access to palliative care for all New Zealanders, ensuring kiwis have better access to the compassionate palliative support they may need. The ‘Improving Access to Palliative Care Bill’ seeks to guarantee that every New Zealander has the right ...

NZ First Press Release

2 weeks ago
Release: Further uncertainty for Kiwirail as jobs set to go

KiwiRail offering voluntary redundancy to all its staff is hugely concerning given the future of New Zealand’s rail system is under threat. ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
ASA Declares Hobson’s Pledge Advertising Misleading and Socially Irresponsible

Te Pāti Māori Co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer welcome today’s ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which found that a Hobson's Pledge advertisement regarding customary marine titles was misleading and socially irresponsible. The two-page wraparound ad, published in The New Zealand Herald, suggested that nearly the entire coastline ...

Māori Party

2 weeks ago
Release: Benefit numbers continue to soar under National

National’s all pain approach to beneficiaries has yielded no gain as benefit numbers continue to surge past projected figures. ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
Casey Costello: What Once Was…

Entering politics is a privilege afforded to very few and, as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. Being an MP is a call to service. Whatever your politics you have a duty to show up. Whatever your party's policy, you have made a promise to those who ...

NZ First Press Release

2 weeks ago
Soaring benefit sanctions push more into poverty

Sanctions on beneficiaries have sky-rocketed since the Coalition Government came to power, pushing more families into poverty. ...

Greens

2 weeks ago
International Energy Agency issues wake-up call on climate action

Today’s report from the International Energy Agency highlights how far this Government’s actions are dragging us backwards in the fight against climate change. ...

Greens

2 weeks ago
Release: Lack of funding puts pressure on frontline Police

News that 173 roles are being cut at Police will only put more pressure on the frontline. ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
Release: Bipartisan agreement on outdated marriage law

Changes to outdated relationships legislation has passed its third reading giving family violence survivors the power to quickly dissolve abusive marriages. ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
Release: Cuts to Apprenticeship Boost will fail future NZ

The Government’s cuts to the Apprenticeship Boost programme will leave New Zealand without the workforce it needs to build homes, schools and hospitals. ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
Release: Sluggish economy means struggles ahead for Kiwis

While today’s inflation numbers are good news for Kiwis, there are still struggles ahead with rising rents, rates, insurance and high unemployment. ...

Labour Blog

2 weeks ago
CPI figures show rents continuing to soar

Stats NZ has confirmed that higher rent prices were the biggest contributor to the annual inflation rate. Almost a fifth of the 2.2 per cent annual increase in the CPI was due to rent prices. ...

Greens

2 weeks ago

New Charter to guarantee better access for hunting and fishing

Minister for Hunting and Fishing Todd McClay has today launched an Access Charter (the Charter) to ensure better access for recreational hunting and fishing on public conservation land (PCL) across New Zealand. “This Charter establishes guiding principles for the Department of Conservation (DOC) to provide clear and transparent decisions on ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

14 hours ago
Pou Whenua blessing honours Tongariro

A beautiful new Pou Whenua at the beginning of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing will introduce visitors to the sacred landscape they are entering, says Conservation Minister Tama Potaka. Mr Potaka attended a blessing for the specially carved Pou Whenua at Mangatepopo, at the start of the track on 1 November. ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 day ago
New members appointed to the NZTA Board

Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today announced two new appointments to the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) Board. Mary-Anne Macleod and Mike Rudge have both been appointed as members for three-year terms commencing 1 November 2024 and ending 31 October 2027. “Transport is a critical part of our Government’s plan ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 day ago
Welcome relief from new oestradiol gel funding

Associate Health Minister David Seymour is welcoming Pharmac’s funding of oestradiol gel, following global shortages of oestradiol patches earlier this year. “I’m well aware of the stress caused by the global shortage earlier this year. At the time I said I was confident Pharmac was working hard to find a ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 day ago
Deputy Prime Minister visit to Australia

Foreign Minister and Racing Minister Winston Peters will visit Australia next week. “Australia is New Zealand’s closest partner, and we are pleased to make this second official visit there for 2024 following the first ever Foreign and Defence Ministers 2+2 Meeting between our two countries in Melbourne in January,” ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

2 days ago
Applications now open for new training pathway

Applications have now opened for tertiary education organisations to seek Government funding to develop New Zealand’s first postgraduate diploma programme for associate psychologists, Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey announced today. “Investment in this new training pathway supports the Government’s target to grow our mental health and addiction workforce and ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

2 days ago
Increased medicines access continues following budget boost

Associate Health Minister with responsibility for Pharmac David Seymour is pleased to see further increased availability of medicines for Kiwis following the Government’s increased investment in Pharmac. “Pharmac operates independently, but it must work within the budget constraints set by the Government,” says Mr Seymour. “When this Government assumed office, ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

2 days ago
New Zealand concludes high quality trade deal with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)

New Zealand and the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have concluded negotiations on a trade agreement that will open up significant opportunities for New Zealand exporters in the Gulf region, Minister for Trade and Agriculture Todd McClay announced from Doha today. Today’s announcement follows significant reengagement with the GCC following meetings ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

2 days ago
Government seeks views on remote court attendance

The Government is exploring how to modernise the law around people attending court remotely, to support access to justice and enhance court performance. Courts Minister Nicole McKee says the current law has not kept up with evolving court practices and public attitudes to the use of remote technology, nor been ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

2 days ago
Breast screening age extension begins in Nelson Marlborough

Free breast screening has been extended for 70 to 74-year-old women living in the Nelson Marlborough district, ahead of a national roll-out late next year, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “Breast cancer is the most common cancer in New Zealand with about 3,400 women diagnosed with the disease ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

2 days ago
Te Māori Manaaki Taonga Trust Board strengthened

He toi whakairo, he mana tangata. The reappointment of one trustee and the appointment of four new trustees to the Te Māori Manaaki Taonga Trust Board will enable the legacy of Te Māori to be carried forward into the future, Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka and Arts Minister Paul Goldsmith ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

3 days ago
Affordable housing project supporting home ownership

Up to 300 affordable, healthy, community-tailored homes helping to support home ownership are set to be built in eastern Porirua, supported by Government funding for Our Whare Our Fale through the Building Homes for Pacific in Porirua initiative, Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti and Associate Housing Minister Tama ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

3 days ago
Dire benefit forecasts show the need for Welfare that Works

A new report that forecasts young people on benefits will spend an average of 20 more years relying on welfare underscores the need for the Government’s reforms, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. MSD’s latest Benefit System Insights report, released today, which estimates how many future years different ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

3 days ago
Trade Minister travels to Doha for GCC trade discussions

Trade Minister Todd McClay will hold trade discussions with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) trade ministers in Doha this week. Minister McClay will meet with all six GCC Trade Ministers, as well as the GCC Secretary General. “This will be my seventh visit to the region this year including two Ministerial ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

3 days ago
Podiatry prescribers will boost patient care

Health Minister Dr Shane Reti and Associate Minister David Seymour say it’s great news that podiatrists will soon be able to prescribe medicines, meaning patients with painful foot and leg conditions don’t have to make a separate trip to the doctor. “This simple step means a big change for people ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

3 days ago
Historic redress inequities finally resolved for Lake Alice Unit survivors

The Government is addressing historic redress inequities for some survivors abused at the Lake Alice Child and Adolescent Unit. In 2001, the Crown reached a $6.5 million group settlement with 95 survivors subjected to abuse at the Lake Alice Unit. Law firm Grant Cameron & Associates (now GCA Lawyers) represented ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

4 days ago
ERO report shows Government’s truancy emphasis is vital

Associate Education Minister David Seymour says that the Education Review Office’s (ERO) timely report on chronic school absence released today is further evidence of a truancy crisis. “Chronic absence has doubled since 2015. This report reinforces that action is needed to ensure this generation reaches its full potential,” says Associate ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

4 days ago
Minister welcomes business view on AML

Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee welcomes BusinessNZ’s report which addresses reducing the compliance burden on small businesses. “The challenges outlined in the report released today echo many of the concerns I have heard from businesses, which have informed my Anti Money Laundering/Countering Financing Terrorism (AML/CFT) priorities,” she says. “I have ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

4 days ago
Mangamuka Gorge opening in time for Christmas

State Highway 1 through the Mangamuka Gorge will be open for Christmas, with critical work currently underway to clear the large slips and dropouts that have caused significant disruption for Northlanders trying to get where they want to go quickly and safely, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The Mangamuka Gorge ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

4 days ago
Trusted building professionals able to self-certify

The Government is proposing further significant action to reform the building and construction sector to support more affordable homes and a stronger economy, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “If we want to grow the economy, lift incomes, create jobs and build more affordable, quality homes we need a ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

4 days ago
New appointments to the TEC board

Dr Alan Bollard CNZM and Mr Bharat Guha have been appointed to the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) board, Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds says. “I would like to welcome the two new members joining the TEC board,” Ms Simmonds says. “Dr Alan Bollard CNZM is an experienced public ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

4 days ago
Move to fast-track overseas doctors welcomed

Fast tracking applications for registration by eligible specialist doctors wanting to practice in New Zealand is in line with the Government’s push to improve the health outcomes for New Zealanders, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. This fast-track pathway applies to specialists trained in anaesthesia, dermatology, emergency medicine, general practice, ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

4 days ago
Address to Western Sydney University: Constitutional and Rule of Law challenges in current global en...

Tēnā koutou Nau mai haere mai ki tenei hui Thank you to Vice Chancellor Williams, and the University of Western Sydney, for inviting me to speak today. I speak to you today in my capacity as Attorney-General – the New Zealand Crown’s Senior Law Officer. In this capacity, I serve ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

4 days ago
Security advice for start-ups welcomed

Minister responsible for the security and intelligence agencies Judith Collins has welcomed new guidance that aims to protect New Zealand’s start-up and emerging technology sector from the threat of economic espionage. “We are a nation well-known for our ingenuity, and our willingness to openly collaborate in the spirit of enterprise ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

5 days ago
Funding support to strengthen frontline volunteer service organisations

The Government has approved $23.1 million for four critical frontline volunteer service organisations to replace storm-damaged assets and provide training and equipment to improve New Zealand’s response to future emergency events, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Transport Minister Matt Doocey says. $14.6 million for Surf Life Saving New ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

6 days ago
Jones heads to international mining conference

Resources Minister Shane Jones will speak at Australia's largest annual mining event in Sydney this week to mark New Zealand’s return to the international industry stage. Mr Jones will attend the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) where he will update the sector’s most influential players on the work the ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

6 days ago
NZ investing in Pacific disaster preparedness & climate resilience

New Zealand will contribute $20 million to the Pacific Resilience Facility, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters have announced. “The Pacific Islands region faces severe challenges from natural disasters and climate change impacts and New Zealand is committed to doing its part to help meet them,” ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
Police to increase presence on Auckland public transport

Aucklanders will see a greater Police presence on public transport services to boost safety and reassure public transport workers and passengers, Police Minister Mark Mitchell and Transport and Auckland Minister Simeon Brown say. “Minister Brown and I are working together, alongside Police and Auckland Transport in response to the horrific ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
Government funds helicopter replacements

The Government is investing in eight new emergency helicopters to replace some of New Zealand’s ageing air ambulance fleet, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello and ACC Minister Matt Doocey announced today. “Our air ambulance helicopters play a vital role in saving lives around New Zealand,” Casey Costello says. “This is ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
China and New Zealand strengthen organic trade

An uplift to New Zealand’s organic product trade is expected through a new upgraded arrangement with China, Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard says.“The upgraded Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA) for organic products will deliver opportunities for our organic export sector.”The upgraded MRA was signed in Central Otago today by Andrew Hoggard ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
Judicial appointments announced

Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced two Court of Appeal and two High Court appointments. The four appointments will take effect on 21 November 2024 and are: Justice Christine French Justice French, who has been appointed President of the Court of Appeal, graduated with an LLB (Honours) from the University of Otago ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
Tuatapere Hump Ridge Track becomes New Zealand’s 11th Great Walk

Conservation Minister Tama Potaka joined tangata whenua from Ngāi Tahu and local community members today to celebrate the opening of New Zealand’s eleventh Great Walk – the Tuatapere Hump Ridge Track. “The 60km upgraded track provides the opportunity to do one of New Zealand’s world-class multi-day walks, and will bring ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
New Chief Criminal Cases Review Commissioner

The Honourable Denis Clifford has been appointed Chief Commissioner of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says. Hon Clifford brings a wealth of expertise and experience that will prove invaluable to the Commission. “He has served as a judge at both the Court of Appeal and High ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
Changes to improve building fire safety

The Government is progressing changes to better protect Kiwis and their property from fires, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Following the tragic Loafer’s Lodge fire in 2023, 37 boardings houses across the country were assessed and I am pleased to say that all fire safety recommendations from the ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
Germany and New Zealand partner to support agriculture and tackle global emissions

New Zealand and Germany have announced the official start of a partnership aimed at supporting the agriculture sector and tackle global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “The partnership, called the Alliance for the Climate – Dialogue on Climate and Agriculture between New Zealand and Germany (Agri-DENZ project), ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
New members appointed to the Waitangi Tribunal

Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka today confirmed the appointment of two new members to the Waitangi Tribunal, as well as the reappointment of Kevin Prime. The members appointed and reappointed are: Hon Richard Prebble (CBE). Mr Prebble is a former Cabinet Minister where he held a broad range of portfolios. ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
New appointments to the Local Government Commission

Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has today announced the reappointment of the current Chair and the appointment of a temporary member to the Local Government Commission.Current Chair Brendan Duffy ONZM has been reappointed as Chair for a one-year term ending 23 October 2025, while Gwen Bull CNZM will be joining ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
New Electoral Commission Chair appointed

Today the House agreed to Justice Simon Moore KC being appointed chair of the Electoral Commission, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Justice Moore brings with him a high level of legal acumen and decision-making ability, strategic planning skills and unquestionable personal integrity and independence. “He retired from the High Court ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
Education Minister attending conference in Australia

The Education Minister is travelling to Australia today to attend the 23rd edition of public policy conference, Consilium. “New Zealand and Australia share common challenges and aspirations for education. New South Wales has recently introduced a new curriculum that is explicit, sequenced and knowledge based while Victoria is requiring structured ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago
Launching VisAble to enable safer lives

The launch of new community advocacy group VisAble signals an important development in community advocacy to achieve more focus on the needs and rights of disabled people in the family violence and sexual violence system. Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, Karen Chhour, and Disabilities Issues Minister, ...

BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz

1 week ago

Palau newspaper sued by president’s family company ahead of general election

By Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Palau’s largest newspaper is being sued for defamation by the company of President Surangel Whipps Jr’s father, just days ahead of general elections in the Pacific nation. Surangel and Sons alleges “negligence and defamation” by the Island Times and its editor Leilani Reklai for an ...

Evening ReportBy Asia Pacific Report

2 hours ago
Cook Islands PM calls for easing of tensions in New Caledonia

By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has returned from New Caledonia saying it is not a simple “black and white situation”. Brown returned from a three-day Pacific fact-finding mission in the French Pacific territory alongside the Prime Ministers of Solomon Islands, Tonga and Fiji. ...

Evening ReportBy Asia Pacific Report

10 hours ago
Another Palestinian journalist killed in Gaza as Israel ‘suffocates the truth’

“In his message for the day, the secretary-general underscores that a free press is fundamental to human rights, to democracy and to the rule of law,” Dujarric said. ‘Alarming rate of fatalities’“Recent years have seen an alarming rate of fatalities in conflict zones, particularly in Gaza, which has seen the ...

Evening ReportBy Asia Pacific Report

11 hours ago
Chris Penk lays foundations for self-certified building scheme

As the government sets about laying the foundations for tradespeople to sign off their own work, RNZ sits down with the minister responsible to hammer out the details. ...

Radio NZ – political

13 hours ago
Where the brain goes, the gut will follow

Comment: There has been a growing understanding of the powerful two-way connection between our stomach and brain in recent years, suitably named the gut-brain connection. This link is so strong that the gut is sometimes nicknamed our “second brain”, highlighting how real your “gut feelings” can be. If you’ve ever ...

NewsroomBy Dr Mikaela Law

17 hours ago
Short story: 3rd place, Sargeson Prize

WinterI still think of Michael often. We first met at Grace’s thirty-first birthday party. I was sitting outside on the back deck when he came out through the sliding glass doors. He was pulling a pouch from his coat pocket.“You want a smoke?” he asked, planting himself on the bench ...

NewsroomBy Cello Forrester

17 hours ago
The Secret Diary of .. Mike King

MondayI sat in at a team meeting to discuss our suicide prevention fundraising event this Friday night in Dunedin and was told we were struggling to gain an alcohol licence from the council.“Tell them Mike King is behind it,” I said. “My name opens doors. Do you see that door? It ...

NewsroomBy Steve Braunias

17 hours ago
The making of Donald Trump

It’s taken six years, but The Apprentice, the film former US President Donald Trump didn’t want anyone to see, is finally out in cinemas, just ahead of the US presidential election.There was so much back-and-forth around whether or not the production would go ahead that by the time filming was ...

NewsroomBy Davina Zimmer

17 hours ago
The Weekend: When the tide turns

Madeleine Chapman reflects on the week that was. The window in which to “have an opinion” on an unfolding news story is shockingly small. Just as large newsrooms know that being “the first” to publish a breaking news story is often more important than anything written in it – ever ...

The SpinoffBy Madeleine Chapman

18 hours ago
Let people respond to the haka how they want to

Cultural challenges are an integral part of sports, but how teams respond has been a point of debate for some time. Self-proclaimed “loose head” England prop Joe Marler called for the haka to be scrapped earlier this week, before “clarifying” what he meant, attempting to pivot his statement, and then ...

The SpinoffBy Liam Rātana

18 hours ago
‘I’ve never lived it down’: The Breakfast live cross that still haunts Jack Tame

The TVNZ broadcaster reflects on his life in television, including a full circle moment with David Attenborough, his favourite politicians to interview and why he’ll never watch Game of Thrones. Jack Tame spends most of his time grilling our own MPs, but at the moment his heart is somewhere else. ...

The SpinoffBy My Life in TV

18 hours ago
‘So subtle, yet so chaotic’: Wiri Donna’s perfect weekend playlist

Wellington’s Wiri Donna shares her perfect weekend playlist. Bianca Bailey is the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter behind the chamber-pop project Wiri Donna, which recently released its second EP, In My Chambers. “I’m feeling a little vulnerable about it, almost like I’m about to out myself as an angry person. ...

The SpinoffBy Lyric Waiwiri-Smith

18 hours ago
How the Gen Z broccoli haircut became big business for a teen barber

Three teenage barbers in Mt Albert have capitalised on a viral haircut to build businesses on Instagram. Duncan Greive gets a haircut and a lesson in modern business. Photography by Jin Fellet. ‘When I first started cutting hair, I messed up my friend really badly,’ says Ali. I shiver involuntarily ...

The SpinoffBy Duncan Greive

18 hours ago
A new novel imagines a New Zealand version of the conservative South Asian grifter

There’s little to like about figures like American politician Vivek Ramaswamy, but there is a lot to learn. Earlier this year, American politician and failed Republican candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, hosted notorious bagpipe, Ann Coulter, on his podcast. They talked for an hour, and frankly there’s no way I’m going to ...

The SpinoffBy Brannavan Gnanalingam

18 hours ago
The wild, exotic life of Katherine Mansfield

https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.jsKatherine Mansfield left New Zealand when she was 19 years old and died at the age of 34.In her short life she became our most famous short story writer, acquiring an international reputation for her stories, poetry, letters, journals and reviews. Biographies on Mansfield have been translated into 51 ...

NewsroomBy Newsroom Contributor

18 hours ago
Podcast: Giving employees what they want, when they want it

Fintechs are changing the way we spend and save, but they are also set to change the way we could be paid for work, or more correctly, how workers receive fringe benefits. As New Zealanders we’re used to having the bulk of our remuneration paid as an electronic payment ...

The SpinoffBy When the Facts Change

18 hours ago
Albanese promises changes to HELP repayment arrangements to ease cost of living

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra People repaying HELP student debts would get cost-of-living relief under changes to repayment arrangements to be announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Sunday. The minimum threshold for repayments to start would be lifted ...

Evening ReportBy The Conversation

22 hours ago
Philippine Supreme Court orders ‘temporary protection’ for abducted environmental activist

By Jairo Bolledo in Manila The Philippine Supreme Court has granted temporary protection to an environmental activist abducted in Pangasinan earlier this year. In its resolution dated September 9 — but only made public this week — the court granted Francisco “Eco” Dangla III’s petition for temporary protection, and prohibited ...

Evening ReportBy Asia Pacific Report

1 day ago
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Bruce Wolpe says personal relations between Trump and Albanese would...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Days from the US presidential election, the polls are showing the outcome of the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump remains a nail biter. With the United States our closest ally, the result ...

Evening ReportBy The Conversation

1 day ago
Indo-Fijian ‘listen to us’ plea to NZ over Pacific ethnicity classification

By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific presenter/Bulletin editor Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka says that as far as Fiji is concerned, Fijians of Indian descent are Fijian. While Fiji is part of the Pacific, Indo-Fijians are not classified as Pacific peoples in New Zealand; instead, they are listed under Indian and ...

Evening ReportBy Asia Pacific Report

1 day ago
Is thirst a good predictor of dehydration?

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland KieferPix/Shutterstock Water is essential for daily functioning and health, and we can only survive a few days without it. Yet we constantly lose water through sweat, urination and even ...

Evening ReportBy The Conversation

1 day ago
US election: The world could wait a fortnight thanks to one Arizona County

Come next Tuesday, the world will be watching Nate Young and his team – literally. There are now 21 livestream cameras showing early voter ballot drop-off locations and the inner-workings of the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center.The 24/7 livestreams that capture election employees’ every move might seem like overkill, but ...

NewsroomBy Laura Walters

1 day ago
Te Arawhiti – the Office for Māori Crown Relations set to lose more than 50 roles

Two proposals were made to staff on Friday - one would see a transfer of functions to Te Puni Kōkiri - with 44 employees transferred. ...

Radio NZ – political

1 day ago
Naked tennis, outback feuds and a chimp named Tonka: what we’re streaming in November

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexa Scarlata, Research Fellow, Media & Communication, RMIT University As I write this, people around the country will be recovering from last night’s Halloween shenanigans, perhaps even experiencing a candy-induced comedown. Luckily, this month’s streaming picks include a serial killer flick that’ll ...

Evening ReportBy The Conversation

1 day ago
Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s social media posts have had a ‘sudden boost’ since July, new rese...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Graham, Associate Professor in Digital Media, Queensland University of Technology On July 13, shortly after Donald Trump was targeted by an assassination attempt, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter), tweeted to his more than 200 million followers: ...

Evening ReportBy The Conversation

1 day ago
Could Ukraine be heading toward a frozen conflict? Why so much is hinging on the US election

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Genauer, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Flinders University In recent months, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pushing hard for the United States and European countries to double down on military support for his country until he can achieve his “victory ...

Evening ReportBy The Conversation

1 day ago
Australians love sport, but which ones do they actually play? National survey results paint a surpri...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Liderina/Shutterstock Sport and physical activity are an important part of Australian culture and society. But how do we know which sports have the highest participation rates in Australia? ...

Evening ReportBy The Conversation

1 day ago
Mike King: A timeline of ups and downs in mental health

The former comedian is back in the headlines, this time for making controversial comments about alcohol - but it's not the first time he's ruffled feathers. ...

Radio NZ – political

1 day ago
‘I’m coming home from a party, and I don’t want to end up getting arrested’: do driving apps...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Verity Truelove, Senior Research Fellow in Road Safety Research, University of the Sunshine Coast Vlad Ispas/Shutterstock Apps such as Google Maps, Apple Maps and Waze can tell drivers when they are approaching speed cameras or random breath testing stations. Countries such ...

Evening ReportBy The Conversation

1 day ago
The Friday Poem: ‘THE THING IS’ by Johanna Cosgrove

A new poem by Johanna Cosgrove. THE THING IS i don’t know how to write about you while my heart bloated is mince for the jackdaws the slack jaw you pried open with careful fingers stroking my tongue as a treasure belonging to only you my whole mouth bruised by ...

The SpinoffBy Johanna Cosgrove

1 day ago
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending November 1

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $37) “Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for ...

The SpinoffBy The Spinoff Review of Books

1 day ago
Dunedin council grants liquor licence for suicide prevention event that sparked Mike King’s al...

Dunedin's district licensing committee has granted a special licence for alcohol sales at a fashion show on Saturday that is raising money for a suicide prevention charity. ...

Radio NZ – political

1 day ago
This new docuseries shows us another world of learning

Episode four of Home Education follows Kensey and her mum Alesha as they navigate a new journey of learning at home. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. As the wind blows through the poplar trees and the sun begins to lower, a ...

The SpinoffBy Tara Ward

1 day ago
Which Australian states and territories perform best on gender representation in parliament? We crun...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Blair Williams, Lecturer in Australian Politics, Monash University Abortion became a key issue at the recent Queensland election, despite its decriminalisation in 2018. Voting against the motion at the time, LNP leader David Crisafulli fumbled questions throughout the election campaign about ...

Evening ReportBy The Conversation

1 day ago
Dunedin council grants liquor license for suicide prevention event that sparked Mike King’s al...

Dunedin's district licensing committee has granted a special licence for alcohol sales at a fashion show on Saturday that is raising money for a suicide prevention charity. ...

Radio NZ – political

1 day ago
Te Arawhiti – the Office for Māori Crown Relations set to lose 40% of its staff – union

Te Arawhiti is being "gutted", the Public Service Association says. ...

Radio NZ – political

1 day ago
Fisheries Minister Shane Jones calls for review of coral limits to avoid fishing bans

Shane Jones' comments come after a New Zealand vessel caught more than double the legal amount of coral - triggering an automatic suspension of fishing in the Lord Howe area of the Tasman Sea. ...

Radio NZ – political

1 day ago
NZ must step up to protect its own oceans to match international commitments made at Commonwealth le...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Scott, Professor in Law, University of Canterbury Fiona Goodall/Getty Images New Zealand and other Commonwealth nations wrapped up their global meeting in Samoa last week with a declaration to protect the ocean in the face of severe climate change, pollution ...

Evening ReportBy The Conversation

1 day ago
Big Job Losses Coming As Govt Guts Te Arawhiti – Office For Māori Crown Relations

Te Arawhiti - the Office for Māori Crown Relations will focus on its legislative functions to progress settlements under Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act. Te Puni Kōkiri will take over the post Treaty settlement ...

Scoop politics

1 day ago
Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu elected as Fiji’s new president

RNZ Pacific Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu has been elected as the new president of Fiji, despite opposition from women’s rights groups. Ratu Naiqama was the current Speaker of Parliament and nominated by Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka. He was elected yesterday after getting 37 out of 55 votes. He is the ...

Evening ReportBy Asia Pacific Report

1 day ago

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