Double Blind

From CKNW:

NPA City Councillor Suzanne Anton has changed her mind about the controversial Hornby Street bike lane.

Initially speaking against the thoroughfare, Anton ended up voting in favour of it during Tuesday’s lengthy public hearing. Anton says when the meeting concluded she was satisfied that two of her biggest concerns were met.

Then, early Wednesday, she discovered crews and equipment began immediate work on the project.

Now she says, it’s clear, from prepared signage and work plans, that logistics for this project were not done overnight, and that staff was given direction to undertake this work weeks ago.

She says it is crystal clear now that Tuesday’s Council meeting was a mere formality, and pure political theatre. Therefore, she is submitting a motion to rescind and withdrawing support of the project.

She will also demand answers from staff to explain how these preparations had been completed in time to stage work the morning after the vote.

She’s making Barack Obama look competent.

This motion by the UBCM to curb alcoholism by increasing the price of hard liquor is faulty. I don’t have issues with the motion itself (assuming it is not implemented as a tax grab and is genuinely “revenue neutral”), but the reasoning for it is incorrect.

Current liquor taxes don’t escalate by alcohol content and coalition chair Lembi Buchanan said that encourages heavy drinkers and young people to buy what gives them more bang for their buck.

Binge drinking, accidents, crime and health problems are the result, she said.

“The communities are so fed up with bearing the burden of the high cost of alcohol abuse,” Buchanan said, adding she’s pleased the Victoria-led resolution passed.

The two issues are significantly different. While taxing alcohol by alcohol content is indeed a more ‘balanced’ measure of taxation than arbitrary categorizing beverages, it has nothing to do with reducing the amount of alcoholics out there that will get their fix. They will do so anyway.

Even going back to the prohibition (which certain groups, like MADD want) will not solve this problem. It just drives the marketplace into the black market, which is very evident in many illegal narcotics when one takes a stroll down Main and East Hastings.

Finally, I doubt the government will executive and implement this motion in a “revenue neutral” fashion – they will likely put a price floor on 5% beer, and then raise the rate on everything else. If liquor tax prices were transparently put on receipts, I wonder how this would affect the politics of alcohol pricing.

Rule #1: Tell non-supporters you will kill them if they don’t support you.

(For those of you that don’t want to bother watching the video, it is some global warming group that asks a bunch of people whether they are going to reduce their emissions by 10%, and for those that do not say they will, the person asking pushes a button and the non-supporters get blown up.)

The sad thing is, a lot of radical environmentalists have hinted that if they had the power, they would do this. The smarter ones think of it, but know that mentioning it is political suicide for their cause.

This type of thinking is also not just limited to environmental causes.

Pay no further attention than to China to see the impact of oddly spaced government mandated statutory holidays.

This ties in with Justin’s latest post on “scheduling productivity“. In knowledge-based work environments (where the primary way that employees add value is with their brains and not some assembly-line process), the 9am to 5pm typical working schedule is very sub-optimal for productivity. I am generally a zombie at very inconsistent times of the day and it is very difficult to know when I will be “on” to do some legitimate mental work.

Statutory holidays (and even weekends) are great, but wouldn’t it be more productive to let people take the time whenever they want to, instead of having the whole country forced to take a day/weekend off? At a very minimum, it would assist with load balancing. On a typical summer Friday, you see a mass exodus of vehicles on Highway 1 take off eastbound so they can get into the interior, just as you see Highway 1 westbound get gummed up on Sunday evening as everybody returns back. Would the elimination of weekends and letting people choose their two days off balance this? What are the social impacts of having a worldwide concept of “weekends” where most working people do not work? Is this advantageous or would eliminating weekends cause more social stress? I’m sure somebody has studied this.