I’m glad you agree that banning is overused. I don’t see why you put ‘victims’ in scare quotes though…

You asked three questions:

1. Great white sharks. Currently commercial fishing in NZ is covered by individual transferable quotas (ITQs). This is a good first step to real property rights for marine resources as the quotas can be bought and sold. I think great whites are covered by recreational fishing rules (the ban comes into force in April), but since the few sharks hunted are by charter firms (only on the Chathams AFAIK) why not institute an ITQ for them? Ecotourism (eg shark cage diving) or conservation groups should also be able to purchase rights to the sharks. Perhaps this could be enforced using tagging, but an ITQ for hunters is a first step, and better than an outright ban as it gives an incentive to use the sharks sustainably. Banning will increase the price of shark products, creating an unintended incentive to hunt more sharks.
2. Cigarette vending machines in high schools. No, I don’t support that. I advocate school privatization, however. As I say above, let the teachers and parents decide.
3. I don’t support the abolition of drink driving rules, but there is something wrong with road rules at present where innocent drivers are presumed guilty. Privatise the roads. Road owners can implement their own licensing, fines, rules etc. And without a public health system, private health insurance companies will provide massive disincentives for reckless behaviour. Under such a system, if you caused a crash through your own stupidity, you would be personally liable for the healthcare costs for the victims, and your insurance probably wouldn’t apply either.

Sorry, I took it from the use of ‘we’ in Luke’s post that you were happy to have each other’s views attributed to site as a whole. You might want to use ‘I’ if you’re just talking for yourself in any given instance.

I was talking about Communist East Berlin of course.

Well, okay. And I was talking about Capitalist USA, of course. I just think saying ‘very East Berlin’ is somewhat emotive. If you’d said ‘very Hawaii’ – it doesn’t have the same bite, does it?

But to actually address the issue – “Banning has become a knee-jerk response” – is probably a fair enough statement to make. The Government’s approach (local or national) when faced with a problem is often to take the extreme opinion that banning is best. Then they invariably work things back to a compromise where whatever it is isn’t banned, but regulated in some way. By taking an extreme initial ‘banning’ position, whatever compromise is invariably comes to is usually seen by the purported ‘victims’ as being better than an outright ban. Clever, no? As I’ve said, how many of these bans have actually come into force?

And can you explain to me how the hunting of the great white shark should be covered by property rights?

And, while I’m here…

* Do you support the selling of cigarettes in High Schools from vending machines?

* Would you propose an abolition of drink-driving rules under the auspices that we can ‘privatise road, and that insurance will handle this’?

What I actually said was that Labour is particularly bad. Which is true. I blame “elected officials” in general. Banning has become a knee-jerk response to just about any perceived problem, and it’s wrong. In fact in most cases it is utterly indefensible.

Also, I was talking about Communist East Berlin of course.

“East Berlin”? It’s covered in billboards. Try Vermont, Hawaii or Kansas in the good ol’ ‘petty fascist’ USA.

And, as per your other post on the same subject, you seem to be tarring the Labour government with a least a couple of policies mooted by other bodies, namely the Auckland & Christchurch councils.